On December 7, 1941, when news of the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor reached Norfolk, Virginia, the U.S. Navy began prepping one of its brand new Yorktown-class aircraft carriers, USS Hornet (CV 8), to reinforce the beleaguered U.S. Pacific Fleet. In March 1942, after a whirlwind of training, along with 2,200 other sailors, Hornet carried twenty-five-year-old Ensign Donald Kirkpatrick, Jr. of Scouting Squadron Eight into the vortex of war.

Before the Pacific War came to an end, Kirkpatrick had participated in three of its costliest carrier-versus-carrier battles, and he returned home as a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Navy Cross. No Routine Flights traces the story of his exciting career: his witness to the thrilling takeoff of Jimmy Doolittle's raiders; his air mission against the Japanese cruiser squadron at the Battle of Midway; his crash landing near Pentecost Island; his dive-bombing attack against the Japanese fleet carrier Shokaku at the Battle of Santa Cruz; his air raid missions with Bombing Squadron Sixteen against the Japanese bases at Wake Island, Mili, Apamama, Kwajalein, Koror, Woleai, and Truk; his dramatic crash and rescue during the Second Truk Raid; his dive-bombing attack against the Japanese carrier Hiyo at the Battle of the Philippine Sea; and his fight to stay aloft during the fabled "Mission Beyond Darkness." A survivor of forty-one combat missions and eight crash landings, Donald Kirkpatrick's story shows how being a U.S. Navy dive-bomber pilot meant accepting that no flight would ever be "routine."