Flight 19
From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)
Flight 19 was a flight of five US Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers which disappeared on a training flight out of the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on December 5, 1945. The aircraft and 14 crew members were never found, and neither was one of the search planes, a Martin PBM Mariner, which exploded [1] with the loss of 13 aircrew. U.S. Navy investigators concluded that Flight 19 became disoriented and ditched at sea when they ran out out of fuel [2]. Some questioned the explanation, doubts which helped develop the Bermuda Triangle legend.
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Mission, crew, and disappearance
The instructor leading the flight was Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, an experienced Pacific Theatre pilot but who had not long been at Fort Lauderdale and was unfamiliar with the area. The trainee pilots had little experience in Avengers, but had trained at Fort Lauderdale and knew the area well. The Berlitz TBM Avenger bombers were built to float for long periods the basic facts of Berlitz's version of the story are accurate but some important details are missing from the story. The image of a squadron of seasoned combat aviators disappearing on a sunny afternoon is inaccurate. Rather, it was a squadron of lost, inexperienced flight trainees forced to ditch their out-of-fuel airplanes into unknown stormy waters in the dark of night. But for the Navy's report, it is claimed that the original report blamed the accident on the commander's confusion (Lt. Taylor abandoned his airplanes twice in the Pacific after getting lost returning to his carrier), but the wording was changed in deference to the wishes of his family.
A factor to consider was that the TBM Avenger Aircraft were never designed for crash-landing into water. Wartime experience in the Pacific showed that an Avenger aircraft would sink very quickly if landed on the water. Especially with novice pilots at the helm, an Avenger would be very difficult to land on calm water, let alone the perilous rough seas in the Bermuda Triangle.
Flight 19 was undertaking a routine over-water navigation/bombing exercise, similar to one completed a few hours earlier by another flight. (The enlisted men in the aircraft were taking part in advanced combat aircrew training). Called “Navigation Problem 1”, it involved the Avengers negotiating a triangular course from Fort Lauderdale. The first leg was due east for 123 miles, then slightly north of north west for 73 miles, crossing Grand Bahama Cay, before heading south west for 120 miles back to base. Just 56 miles into the first leg, the aircraft dropped bombs as scheduled on the Hens and Chickens Shoals, just south of the Grand Bahamas, and practiced strafing.
The five aircraft making up Flight 19 were routinely armed, pre-flighted and filled with enough fuel for a minimum five hours flying before leaving the naval air station at 14:10 local time when the weather was fine although the sea state was described as moderate to rough. As is customary on many training flights, one of the trainee pilots assumed the role of leader out front, and Taylor rode shotgun at the rear.
Radio conversations between the pilots were monitored by base and other aircraft in the area, and it is known the bombing operation was completed successfully. Subsequent conversations indicated that shortly after turning to port on to the second leg of the flight plan, Taylor had taken over the lead of the flight after there were indications the aircraft were lost. Taylor radioed to a senior flight instructor flying in the area that he "thought he was over the Keys(sic)" but "did not know how far down", that both of his compasses were unserviceable, and that he did not know how to get to Fort Lauderdale. He was advised to put the sun on his port wing and fly up the coast to Fort Lauderdale. A later reconstruction of the incident showed that the islands in question were probably their bombing target, well east of the Keys. The Board of Enquiry alleged prejudicially against Taylor that in his erroneous belief that he was on a base course toward Florida, he actually guided the flight further north.
Meanwhile as the weather worsened and radio contact became more intermittent, the five aircraft were in fact well out to sea east of the Florida peninsula. At 17:16 Taylor said he was flying west and would do so until landfall or running out of gas. He requested a weather check at 17:24 and at about 18:20 in his last decipherable message, he was heard asking his colleagues to close formation. He informed them they would need to ditch unless reaching land, and advised them that when the first plane dropped below 10 gallons of fuel they would all descend together. Nothing more was heard from Flight 19.
At 17:50 several land based stations had triangulated Flight 19's position as being well off the coast of central Florida, but the weak radio reception and interference from radio stations in Cuba meant the pilots could not be reached to give them this information.
Search
Earlier, as it became obvious the flight was indeed lost, numerous air bases, aircraft and merchant ships were alerted. Several aircraft were dispatched to search for the Avengers and guide them back if they could locate them. One of the aircraft was the PBM-5 Martin Mariner (Buno 59-225) which took off at 19:37 with a crew of 13 from Banana Beach Naval Air Station at Cocoa Beach, (now Patrick Air Force Base). The aircraft radioed a routine message to its base a few minutes later, but was never heard from again, as it exploded 13 minutes after takeoff.
At 19:50 a tanker reported seeing a mid-air explosion then flames leaping 120 ft high and burning on the sea for 10 minutes. The captain, Shonna Stanley, reported searching a sea of oil for survivors, but found none. The USS Solomons, also reported the explosion, in the exact same position an aircraft had disappeared off radar. The nickname for the Mariner was "the flying gas tank" due to fumes from the aviation fuel constantly leaking into the fuselage.
Navy investigators spent months examining thousands of pages of testimony from people involved in any way with the disappearance of the Avengers and the Mariner. The board of enquiry concluded that the Avengers became lost and ditched into very rough seas after running out of fuel, and that the Mariner exploded in mid-air, probably when fuel fumes were ignited.
Aircraft and ships carried out what has been described as one of the most rigorous searches in history, but no trace of aircraft or crews were ever located. In 1981 the wreckage of five Avengers was discovered off the coast of Florida, but it was found later from serial numbers on engine blocks that they were not Flight 19. The five Avengers had crashed on five different days "all within a mile and a half of each other" (Dive to Bermuda Triangle 2004; telecast on The Science Channel, February 17, 2006).
In 1986, the wreckage of another Avenger was found off the Florida coast during the search for the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In 1990, aviation archaeologist Jon Myer located and raised this wreck from the ocean floor. He was convinced it was one of the missing planes but positive identification could not be made. In 1992 another expedition located scattered debris on the ocean floor that may have come from an Avenger but nothing could be identified.
Bermuda Triangle connection
The disappearance of Flight 19 has long been associated with Bermuda Triangle lore. Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous phenomena, attributed the loss of Flight 19 to anomalous or unexplained forces but there is not definitive evidence for that.
The fate of Flight 19 was a plot element of the 1977 science fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, Angel Witch, had a song entitled "Flight 19".
The guitarist Buckethead has a song entitled "Flight 19", found on the album Bermuda Triangle.
In the TV miniseries The Triangle a Boeing 747 collides with a flight of Avenger torpedo bombers while traversing the Bermuda Triangle, probably Flight 19. All crash.
References
- "Lost Patrol", Naval Aviation News. June 1973, pp. 8-16; reported at U.S. Navy Historical Center FAQ
External links
Categories: Accidents and incidents in the aviation sector | 1945
