TextSearch

Flight 19 was comprised of five military Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, a plane that had been instrumental in bringing down Japanese warships...

Home Articles 20th Century The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19 Amy Irvine 07 Feb 2023 Five U.S. Navy Grumman TBF-1 Avengers from Escort Scouting Squadron 29 (VGS-29) flying in formation over Norfolk, Virginia (USA), on 1 September 1942. The same planes that comprised Flight 19. Image Credit: National Archives and Records Administration, 520770 / Public Domain Flight 19 was comprised of five military Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, a plane that had been instrumental in bringing down Japanese warships in the Atlantic Ocean. The planes had a range of 1,000 miles and each was crewed by three men except for one plane which only carried two. All of the trainees involved had each completed around 300 hours in the sky. On 5 December 1945, the flight set off from the US naval base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine navigational training mission to include a few bombing practice runs over ‘Hen and Chickens Shoals’, and was the 19th of such flights that day (hence ‘Flight 19’). The planes were equipped with enough fuel to fly for 4 hours and were expected to return to the base before sunset. However, all five planes disappeared without a trace, in a case that captivated the public and baffled experts for decades – often cited as one of the earliest examples of the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. What might have happened? Flight 19’s scheduled navigation exercise on 5 December 1945. Numbers 1, 2, 3 are the intended route, Number 4: radio triangulation at 17:50 establishes flight’s position to within 50 nautical miles of 29°N 79°W and their last reported course, 270°. (Numbers 5 and 6 show the route of PBM Mariner who went to search for Flight 19, culminating in its explosion)Image Credit: Wikipedia: Anynobody / CC BY 2.5 What went wrong After just 30 minutes, its leader, 28-year-old Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor (an experienced pilot having carried out more than 2,000 flight hours, over 600 of them in Avengers) reported that his compass was not functioning properly, convincing him that they’d been travelling in entirely the wrong direction. The weather was increasingly turbulent, and records show one of the pilots stated: I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn. Instead of flying West towards the mainland, Lt. Taylor became disoriented and ordered Flight 19 to travel further out to sea, in a northeasterly direction. Having been airborne for 4 hours and with fuel running dangerously low, Lt. Taylor could then be heard stating: “All planes close up tight, We’ll have to ditch unless landfall… when the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.” Despite the best efforts of the control tower to provide guidance, Taylor and his planes continued to fly in the wrong direction. Radio transmissions slowly fell silent, and Flight 19 eventually disappeared from radar. Located off the coast of Florida, Puerto Rico, and its namesake Bermuda - the mysterious Bermuda Triangle is an urban myth that's risen in popularity over the decades. But how come so many planes and boats disappear in this region - and what makes Flight 19 so special? In December 1945, at the end of the Second World War, 5 bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale in a routine navigational training exercise. But these bombers, along with the crew members inside them, would never be seen again. So what happened to Flight 19 and its men? Listen Now Their disappearance launched one of the largest air and sea searches in history. (Two PBM Mariner flying boats were sent out and one of these also disappeared, believed to have exploded shortly after take off.) Despite the Navy searching more than 300,000 square miles of water, no trace of Flight 19 was ever found. The causes or reasons for its disappearance were recorded as ‘unknown’, beginning the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. Bermuda Triangle The Bermuda Triangle is a western area of the North Atlantic Ocean that extends from Florida to Bermuda to Puerto Rico. Over the last 200 years, around 20 aircraft and 50 ships have vanished without a trace within it. Unusual compass readings in the area had been reported for centuries are such a common phenomenon that some believe mysterious forces are at work. In 1492, Christopher Columbus described bizarre compass readings in the area on his way to the New World, and in 1928 the compass aboard the Spirit of St Louis plane span uncontrollably when Charles Lindbergh attempted to fly from Cuba to Florida. In 1952, Fate magazine published an article by George Sand called ‘Sea Mystery at Our Back Door’ which first laid out the triangular area, yet the region didn’t get its name until August 1964, when Vincent Gaddis coined the term ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in a magazine article for Argosy magazine about the disappearance of Flight 19. Despite numerous ships and aircraft disappearing in the region, there is no scientific evidence that proves the existence of any supernatural or extraterrestrial activity – instead such incidents ...