Charles Carroll Taylor (born October 25, 1917) was a human pilot, a lieutenant in the United States Navy during the 1940s. He was the commander of Flight 19, which mysteriously vanished over the Atlantic Ocean after leaving the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on December 5, 1945.
The Navy incorrectly attributed the loss of Flight 19 to Taylor being drunk and to his inexperience over the Atlantic. In fact, Taylor had the flu on the day of the flight, and the planes disappeared into a wormhole. The pilots found themselves on the planet Alin, where they met Suben, a humanoid artificial intelligence who brought water to the planet through wormholes, killing inhabitants of other planets from whose oceans the water came. After Suben killed five pilots who tried to leave his city, Taylor and the others realized that Suben was weakened by the radium dial on Taylor's watch. The pilots used their watches to incapacitate Suben and then trapped him in a cavern, placing their aircraft instruments, also painted with radium, in the wall. Taylor and the other survivors then journeyed to villages they saw in the distance, hoping to live on the planet.
When the surviving planes and Taylor's logbook were discovered by archeologists in 2371, Captain Jean-Luc Picard recommended Taylor and his crew for the Federation Cross. (TNG - Strange New Worlds IV short story: "Flight 19")