Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945, after losing contact during a United States Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 naval aviators on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a Martin PBM Mariner that subsequently launched from Naval Air Station Banana River to search for Flight 19.

A report by Navy investigators concluded that flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor mistook small islands offshore for the Florida Keys after his compasses stopped working, resulting in the flight heading over open sea and away from land. The report was later amended by the Navy to read "cause unknown" to avoid blaming Taylor for the loss of five aircraft and 14 men. The report attributed the loss of the PBM aircraft to an explosion in mid-air while searching for Flight 19.

thumb|Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, USNR, flight leader of Flight 19

Flight 19 undertook a routine navigation and combat training exercise in TBM-type aircraft. The assignment was called "Navigation problem No. 1", a combination of bombing and navigation that other flights had completed or were scheduled to undertake that day. It has been explained that this can be attributed to military discipline. He was heard saying, "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."

| date = December 5, 1945

| summary = Disappearance, Presumed mid-air explosion

| site =

| crew = 13

| fatalities = 13

| survivors = 0

| aircraft_type = Martin PBM-5 Mariner

| operator = United States Navy

| origin = NAS Banana River

| destination = NAS Banana River

As it became obvious the flight was lost, air bases, aircraft, and merchant ships were alerted. A Consolidated PBY Catalina departed after 18:00 to search for Flight 19 and guide them back if they could be located. After dark, two Martin PBM Mariner flying boats originally scheduled for their own training flights were diverted to perform square pattern searches in the area west of . US Navy Squadron Training No. 49 PBM-5 BuNo 59225 took off at 19:27 from Naval Air Station Banana River, called in a routine radio message at 19:30 and was never heard from again.

At 21:15, the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported it had observed flames from an apparent explosion leaping high and burning for 10 minutes, at position . Captain Shonna Stanley reported unsuccessfully searching for survivors through a pool of oil and aviation gasoline. The escort carrier also reported losing radar contact with an aircraft at the same position and time. The most likely conclusion is that the PBM had a mid-air explosion.

Investigation

A 500-page Navy board of investigation report published a few months later made several observations:

  • Flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor had mistakenly believed that the small islands he passed over were the Florida Keys, that his flight was over the Gulf of Mexico, and that heading northeast would take them to Florida. It was determined that Taylor had passed over the Bahamas as scheduled, and he did, in fact, lead his flight to the northeast over the Atlantic. The report noted that some subordinate officers did likely know their approximate position, as indicated by radio transmissions stating that flying west would result in reaching the mainland.
  • As noted in the report, Taylor refused to change the radio training frequency to the search and rescue radio frequency. (The training frequency was difficult to use because of interference from Cuban radio stations and also a radio carrier wave.)
  • Taylor was not at fault because the compasses stopped working.
  • The loss of PBM-5 BuNo 59225 was attributed to an explosion.

This report was subsequently amended "cause unknown" by the Navy after Taylor's mother contended that the Navy was unfairly blaming her son for the loss of 5 aircraft and 14 men, when the Navy had neither the bodies nor the airplanes as evidence.

Had Flight 19 actually been where Taylor believed it to be, the flight would have made landfall with the Florida coastline within 20 minutes, depending on how far down they were. However, a later reconstruction of the incident showed that the islands visible to Taylor were probably the Bahamas, well northeast of the Keys, and that Flight 19 was exactly where it should have been. The board of investigation found that because of his belief that he was on a base course toward Florida, Taylor actually guided the flight farther northeast and out to sea. Further, it was general knowledge at NAS Fort Lauderdale that, if a pilot ever became lost in the area, to fly a heading of 270° (due west). Likewise, a rule of thumb was that any pilot who got lost going south would simply turn his plane around with the sun on his port side [left] and then follow the Florida coast heading north. By the time the flight actually turned west, they were likely so far out to sea that they had already passed their aircraft's fuel endurance. This factor, combined with bad weather and the ditching characteristics of the Avenger, meant that there was little hope of rescue, even if they had managed to stay afloat.

After trying that for a while and with no land in sight, Taylor decided that it was impossible for them to fly so far west and not reach Florida. He believed that he might have been near the Key West Islands. What followed was a series of serious conversations between Taylor, his other aircrew and the control tower. Taylor was not sure whether he was near the Bahamas or Key West, and he was not sure which direction he faced because of a compass malfunction. The control tower informed Taylor that he could not be in Key West since the wind that day did not blow that way. Some of the aircrew believed that their compass was working. Taylor then set a course northeast according to their compass, which should take them to Florida if they were in Key West. When that failed, Taylor set a course west according to their compass, which should have taken them to Florida if they were in the Bahamas. If Taylor had stayed on this course, he would have reached land before running out of fuel. However, at some point, Taylor decided that he had tried going west enough. He then once again set a course northeast, thinking they were near Key West after all. Finally, his flight ran out of fuel and may have crashed into the ocean somewhere north of Abaco Island and east of Florida.

Avenger wreckage mistaken for Flight 19 and other searches

In 1986, the wreckage of an Avenger was found off the Florida coast during the search for the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Aviation archaeologist Jon Myhre raised this wreck from the ocean floor in 1990. He mistakenly believed that it was one of the missing planes.

In 1991, a treasure-hunting expedition led by Graham Hawkes announced that the wreckage of five Avengers had been discovered off the coast of Florida, but their tail numbers revealed they were not Flight 19.), but he was unable to definitively identify the other planes; the documentary concluded that "Despite the odds, they are just a random collection of accidents that came to rest in the same place from home."

In March 2012, Hawkes was reported as saying it had suited both him (and indirectly his investors) and the Pentagon to make the story go away because it was an expensive and time-consuming distraction, and that, while admitting he had found no conclusive evidence, a statistician he consulted said it was Flight 19.

Records showed that training accidents between 1942 and 1945 accounted for the loss of 95 aviation personnel from NAS Fort Lauderdale. In 1992, another expedition located scattered debris on the ocean floor, but nothing could be identified. In the 2000s, searchers expanded their search area farther east, into the Atlantic Ocean, but the remains of Flight 19 have still not been confirmed found.

A 2015 newspaper report claimed a wrecked World War II era warplane with Navy markings and two bodies still inside was retrieved by the Navy in the mid-1960s after being discovered by a hunter in the woods near Sebastian, Florida. The Navy initially said it was from Flight 19 but later recanted its statement. Despite Freedom of Information Act requests for details in 2013, the names are still not known because the Navy does not have enough information to identify the bodies.

A wrecked plane found in the Everglades in Broward County was also, incorrectly, postulated to be from Flight 19. However, it was later determined that the TBM-3E had crashed on March 16, 1947; the crash reportedly occurred because its pilot, Ensign Ralph N. Wachob, developed vertigo. Wachob was killed in the crash.

As of the 2020s, no trace of the five TBM Avengers or the PBM Mariner and the 27 missing aviators have been found. The most likely conclusion is that the Avengers ran out of gas and ditched at sea, and the PBM experienced a mid-air explosion.

In fiction

Flight 19 is featured in the 1977 science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the film's opening, the aircraft are discovered in the Sonoran Desert, in pristine condition with full fuel tanks, one of several mysterious events that imply extraterrestrial activity. In the film's ending scene, a number of men in World War II-era US naval aviator uniforms are among the people who are returned to Earth from the alien mothership. It is implied that they are the crews of the planes of Flight 19 that turned up in the Sonora Desert at the beginning of the movie, seemingly the same age as at their disappearance. However, the names they give are not those of any of the missing crews of the historical Flight 19.

Flight 19 made an appearance in the 2006 direct-to-DVD movie Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!

Crews of Flight 19 and PBM-5 BuNo 59225

{|class="wikitable"

!colspan="4"| <div style="text-align: center;">The men of Flight 19 and PBM-5 BuNo 59225 </small></div>

|}

See also

  • List of people who disappeared at sea
  • List of missing aircraft

References

  • "The Loss Of Flight 19" by the Navy History and Heritage Command
  • "The Mystery of Flight 19" by Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum
  • "The Lost Patrol" a 1982 Flight article