In 1969, four recent college graduates, each with the dream of becoming Naval Aviators, meet in Pensacola Florida. Completing Aviation Officers Candidate School (AOCS), sixteen weeks of intense Marine Corps training, is the first step towards their dream. They soon realize that the Marine Corps training was far more rigorous than anything they could have imagined. In addition to the friend- ships formed with each other and their fellow AOCS candidates, the four men make other new friends: two young women who moved to Pensacola to start new lives after experiencing personal losses, a Naval Aviator who returns to Pensacola to reunite with the love of his life, and a recently divorced nurse who returns to continue her career. The young men, Striker, Sticky, Hound, and Bulldog, are faced with tragic accidents and altered choices in their careers and personal lives.