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“Over the decades theories as to the cause of the disaster have emerged, with proponents referencing wholly invented portions of the official record devised to make this strange event even more mysterious.” By Steve MacGregor...

The Disappearance of Flight 19 — Shedding Light on the Mystery of the Missing Torpedo Bombers Published Date: 3 December, 2023 What happened to Flight 19? The five U.S. Navy Grumman Avengers vanished off the coast of Florida in 1945. Over the years, conspiracy theorists have attributed the disappearance to everything from the Bermuda Triangle to little green men. The tragic real-life explanation is far less outlandish. (Image source: U.S. Naval Institute) “Over the decades theories as to the cause of the disaster have emerged, with proponents referencing wholly invented portions of the official record devised to make this strange event even more mysterious.” By Steve MacGregor THE GROUP of five Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers that vanished during a routine training mission in 1945, known as Flight 19, is one of the most enduring aviation mysteries. A number of outlandish explanations for the disappearance have been suggested; all are based on faulty logic and spurious evidence. This is the story of what really happened on a December afternoon in 1945 over the ocean east of Florida. Charles C. Taylor, leader of Flight 19. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons) Flight 19 A number of training flights were scheduled at Naval Air Station Ft. Lauderdale in Florida for Wednesday December 5, 1945. Although the weather during most of the day was forecast to be good, a storm front bringing strong winds and heavy rain was expected to arrive by the early evening. All flights were scheduled to be safely back at base well before the storm arrived. Flights from NAS Ft. Lauderdale were assigned a number according to the order they were expected to take off on a particular day, Flight 19 was one of them. The mission was to be led by Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor, USNR, an instructor at the base and an experienced combat pilot with over 2,500 hours of flying time. The four remaining aircraft were to be flown by trainees from the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps. All the aircraft involved were Grumman TBM Avengers. The flight plan, known as Navigation Problem No.1, included four legs. The first leg headed east from Ft. Lauderdale on a heading of 091° for 56 miles to an area on the charts known as Hen and Chicken Shoals. There the aircraft would conduct glide-bombing attacks on a wrecked ship. (Image source: The author) The second leg continued for a further 67 miles on the same heading to a small island called Great Stirrup Cay. At that point, the flight would turn on to a heading of 346°, which they would maintain for 76 miles to Great Sale Cay. Finally, the aircraft would turn on to the last leg, holding a heading of 241° for 120 miles. This would bring them back over the east coast of Florida somewhere north of NAS Ft. Lauderdale. The flight was scheduled to take-off at 13:45 and the total flight time was expected to be two-and-a-half hours, bringing the planes back to base before sunset and well before the expected arrival of bad weather. The same exercise had been successfully completed by hundreds of trainees flying from NAS Ft. Lauderdale. In fact, Flight 18, the flight that took-off immediately before Flight 19, was also running through Navigation Problem No.1. It completed the flight and returned to base without incident. For Flight 19, this routine training exercise would go horribly wrong. The planes vanished and a number of young men lost their lives as a direct result. What went wrong? After the events of Dec. 5, the U.S. Navy established a Board of Investigation to look into what went wrong. Investigators relied heavily on radio messages and transcripts. Over the decades theories as to the cause of the disaster (some fantastical) have emerged, with proponents referencing wholly invented portions of the official record devised to make this strange event even more mysterious. For example, a 1962 magazine article about the Flight 19 disappearance references the radio transmission: “Everything looks wrong, strange, the ocean doesn’t look as it should.” And in Charles Berlitz’ book The Bermuda Triangle (1974) you’ll find my personal favourite: “Don’t come after us. They look like they’re from outer space!” Although several of these purported radio messages have entered the mythology of Flight 19, there is no good evidence that any of them are real. What we do know is that Flight 19 took off at around 14:10 (25 minutes later than scheduled) and that between 14:30 and 15:00, Ft. Lauderdale Operations logged two radio messages from planes in Flight 19. These were aircraft-to-aircraft communications regarding the dropping of bombs. The messages confirm that the flight had reached Hen and Chicken Shoals on schedule and were carrying out practice attacks. The next person to overhear radio calls between the aircraft of Flight 19 was Lt. Robert Cox, a senior flight instructor at NAS Ft. Lauderdale who was flying above the base in another Avenger aircraft. At around 15:40 he picked up signals from a training flight that seemed to b...

The Disappearance of Flight 19 — Shedding Light on the Mystery of the Missing Torpedo Bombers - MilitaryHistoryNow.com