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December 22, 2020 | Karl’s KornerThe Mysterious Disappearance of Navy Flight 19Hello, Midway Family! Welcome back to “Karl’s Korner”, a historical segment written by myself, Karl Zingheim – Ship Historian of the USS Midway Museum. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the mysterious disappearnace of Navy flight 19, I wanted to look back on this anomaly with all of you. Keep reading...75 Years agoSeventy-five years ago, five TBM Avenger bombers failed to return to Naval Air Station (NAS) Fort Lauderdale from a training flight over the Bahamas. Later that same day, a search and rescue PBM Mariner flying boat apparently exploded in mid-air early in its search leg, killing all thirteen men aboard. The resulting air and sea search involved scores of ships and nearly 500 aircraft scouring thousands of square miles of the Caribbean, Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and even portions of Florida and Georgia. Although trace wreckage from the PBM was found, no sign of the Avenger flight’s 14 men was discovered. In the decades since, the catastrophic loss of so many aviators and aircraft on a single day of flying in what later became dubbed, “The Bermuda Triangle,” has fueled speculation of supernatural involvement, peculiar distortions of the planet’s magnetic field in the region, exceptional atmospheric disturbances, or even extraterrestrial intervention. This last interpretation was employed in Steven Spielberg’s science fiction film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” for dramatic effect and helped popularize the legend of the disappearance of Flight 19.What really happened?However, a closer look into the circumstances of Dec. 5, 1945 instead reveal a classic example of a chain of minor, and seemingly unrelated, setbacks and misfortunes that connected to create a catastrophe before the day concluded. The first unfortunate circumstance was the region. The greater area of south Florida and the neighboring Bahamas presents a complex topography of flat, broad beaches, large and tiny islands, and coral shoals with few distinguishing characteristics to set one apart from another. Considering the high speeds with which even a 1940s-era aircraft could fly, a glimpse of one island could readily lead to a misinterpretation of where one was. Another important factor for the region is the climate. Anyone familiar with living and working in the Southeast can attest to the extraordinary changes wrought by the weather over short spans of time, and the weather for that December day was less than moderate. Although conditions permitted local flying at the naval air station, 20 knot winds with gusts to 31 knots made landings difficult. Furthermore, the scattered clouds at 3,000 feet foreshadowed a powerful weather front blowing in from the west southwest with winds exceeding 50 knots at 6,000 feet. The proposed route of Flight 19’s training exercise over the Bahamas promised scattered showers, a ceiling of just 2,500 feet, and moderate visibility. Though not prohibitive, the weather that day was challenging, and flying conditions were later rated at “average to undesirable.” Most of the men comprising Flight 19 were student aviators of Class 46330 completing their syllabus in the advanced TBM course before ultimately reporting to their operational squadrons. The four student pilots had compiled approximately 60 hours each in the Avenger. One, Marine Capt. George W. Stivers, Jr., had seen combat with the 2nd Marine Division on Guadalcanal as an infantry officer. Another, Marine Capt. Edward J. Powers, was the flight’s senior man, by date of rank, and volunteered for flight training after an extended tour as a training officer at Quantico. The third student was 2nd Lt. Forrest J. Gerber, a former enlisted Marine who transferred to aviation after a tour of duty in the Aleutians, and the fourth was Ensign Joseph T. Bossi, whose love of flying prompted him to decline a postwar discharge so he could become a naval aviator. Flying with these officers were young sailors and enlisted Marines: Walter Parpart, an only child looking forward to continuing employment in the peacetime Navy; George Devlin, who enlisted underaged under a pseudonym and displayed a talent for aerial gunnery; Howell Thompson, who had already survived a kamikaze attack on the carrier Bunker Hill, and was looking forward to Christmas leave back home in Chicago; George Paonessa, one of five sons from an immigrant family to see action in World War II; Robert Gruebel, a blond 18-year old who had seen nothing but training since joining the Marines, as had his Navy classmate, Burt Baluk, Jr.; Robert Gallivan, who kept Marine aircraft armed from primitive airfields in the Solomons, and now was flying in them; William Lightfoot, descended from a family that had fought in all of America’s wars since the Revolution, and had already lost an older brother in World War II; and Herman Thelander, who hailed from a tiny Minnesota whistle stop village called Kinbrae, next to the Iowa border...

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