BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — A Brevard County man has a direct connection with the vintage plane that crashed on a fantasy flight in Connecticut yesterday.

"Found out it was built towards the end of the war — it never saw battle," said Lloyd Behrendt. "So they used it for a transport plane around the Caribbean."

Behrendt is very familiar with the “Flying Fortress” that crashed early Wednesday, killing seven people on board.

Back in 1948 post World War II, his dad was stationed at a U.S. military base in Jamaica when his mother went into labor. She was flown on the Nine-0-Nine to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where he was born.

"I wish I was born on the B-17, because being an Air Force brat, that would have been really cool," Behrendt said. "They put me on my mother's lap on the plywood jump-seats, and flew us back to Jamaica."

His dad was transferred to Patrick Air Force Base a year later, and Berendt has been in Brevard ever since.

He was feeling nostalgic when he caught up with the plane at a Vero Beach airshow in 2009.

"I have a picture of me standing in front of it in my dad's bomber jacket," he recalled.

The restored bomber flew in countless airshows over the past 30 years.

He felt crushed when he learned of the plane's fate in Connecticut.

"It's been my buddy for 70 years, then just days later, it's gone," Behrendt said. "Makes me feel mortal."

Officials are still investigating the cause of the Connecticut crash.