Bermuda Triangle - Flight 19

One of the most famous Bermuda Triangle disappearances involves Flight 19.
Happening in 1945, this took place in a modern era of radio communication
and radar.

This flight involved five bombers that were stationed in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. Four of the five bombers was pilotted by trainees. On December 5
1945, the group flew a training mission out over the Bermuda Triangle area.
The bombers, known as "Iron Birds", were a very heavy 14,000 pounds each.

The flight left at 2pm, with about 6 hours of fuel. The weather turned cloudy
and rainy, and by 4pm the base heard the lead pilot calling to one of the other
pilots, saying that he was having problems with his compass. This is typical for
the Triangle, as magnetic issues with the region are well known. In addition, as
they were out of sight of land, the lead pilot got disoriented and thought he was
over the Keys, when actually he was probably over islands east of Florida. As a
result, the more he tried to fly north "back to Florida", the more out to sea he
got.

Transmission between the other planes indicates that the other pilots had
figured this out - but that the leader refused to listen and stubbornly lead them
on. The ground stations tried their best to help out. Through careful work, the
ComGulf Sea Frontier Evaluation Center managed to get a positional fix on the
group, east of Florida. But the pilots were so far from land that they could not
hear the messages sent to them.

Unfortunately for the group, the planes never made it back to land. By the time
they ran out of fuel, it would have been quite dark in heavy seas.

The weather was so bad that even the search / rescue attempts were hampered.
One of the planes sent out to search crashed into the sea and was lost - this was
a PBM plane.
Fourteen men of Flight 19 took off at 2:10 p.m. in five US Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers from Ft.
Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida. They were on a routine 3-hour training mission. The flight was
scheduled to fly due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would
return them to the naval base. They never returned and the planes, wreckage, or pilots have never been
recovered.
Two hours after the flight began, the squadron leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, reported his compass and back-up
compass had failed and his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument
malfunctions. After two more hours of confused messages from the pilots, radar stations determined Flight
19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the coast of Florida at 6:20 p.m. By this time the pilots
would be running out of fuel.

A search and rescue aircraft took off at 7:27 p.m. with a thirteen-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner
aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again.
The disappearance of these aircraft led to the largest search and rescue to that date. This helped cement
the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.

There have been many theories; including instrument failure, natural causes, storms, sucked down into the
water, and UFO’s. The investigation board says it just vanished. They cannot find any reason and actual
cause for the disappearance of the planes and the pilots.

Larry Kusche, a librarian at Arizona State University, investigated claims made and reached a totally
different conclusion of the Bermuda Triangle. Kusche dug into records other writers neglected and found
that in some cases the remains had been found and when reported missing in calm seas, there were
actually storms. He published a book titled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved.

The term ‘Bermuda Triangle’ was first coined by Vincent Gaddis for Argosymagazine in February 1964.
Gaddis claimed that in this area, the points of the Florida coast, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda; a number of
ships and planes had disappeared without explanation. Gaddis reported a thousand people, thirty-four
planes, and fifty-one ships disappeared in this area.
USS Cyclops and Other Disappearances

The USS Cyclops disappeared in 1918 during World War I. It made a stop at Barbados on March 3rd and
4th to get additional supplies, it disappeared without a trace. No wreckage was ever found and no distress
signal was received. The deaths of the 306 crew and passengers of the USS Cyclops remains the single
largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history with the exception of combat.

On the night of December 28, 1948 a DC-3 passenger plane, NC16002, vanished during a flight from Puerto
Rico to Miami. The weather was fine and within 50 miles of Miami when it disappeared with three crew
members and twenty-nine passengers. There was no probable cause for the disappearance according to
the official report.

The SS Maine Sulphur Queen, a tanker ship, disappeared off the southern coast of Florida in 1963. The
crew of thirty-nine or wreckage was never recovered. The Coast Guard concluded the vessel was in
deplorable condition and should have never gone to sea.

Still Trying to Solve the Mystery

In 1975 a coast guard plane flew the Flight 19 route with the same type of plane and same weather
conditions to replicate the exact same flight path and conditions. Richard Adams thinks they just got lost and
ran out of fuel. He thinks the Mariner exploded and there was a report of an explosion at that time by the
crew of the SS Gaines Mill over the water shortly after the Mariner had taken off. Walter Winchell, air
controller in tower, advises he never heard the transmission Taylor was flying into ‘white water’ as has been
reported.
In May 1991 Graham Hawk found five US Navy warplanes, Avengers, undamaged ten miles from Ft.
Lauderdale, Florida in 600 feet of water. He thought he had finally found the missing Flight 19. After running
the serial numbers he found they did not match.

Officials Say No Mystery

Some have theorized the possibility of unusual local magnetic anomalies in the area. Compass problems
are often cited in many Triangle incidents. Navigators have known for centuries that the only places in the
US where magnetic north and geographic (true) north are exactly the same are on a line running from
Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico.

What has happened to all the missing ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle? Are these waters any
more dangerous than the rest? There are some incidents that can be explained away. The rest are left to
our own imagination when there is no plausible reason for their disappearance. Naval officials maintain that
Flight 19 or the Mariner could not be found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence.

References:
“Flight 19.” History: This Day in History. history.com 1996-2010 Accessed February 15, 2010.
“Flight 19.” The Museum of UnNatural Mystery: The “Mystery” of the Bermuda Triangle. unmuseum.org
Accessed February 15, 2010.
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