It's not the age of the pilot or doctor, but the experience. In WW2, some pilots were considered combat capable after 150 hours of flight time, basically 6 months. They died. Eventually the flight programs ended up taking 1.5-2 years on average to crank out a new pilot. A pilot that also died quickly.

Now in war, you have to throw bodies at a problem, and if the bodies end up 6 ft under, that's war. But generally bad pilots only kill themselves, they don't kill patient after patient through malpractice.