FLIGHT 19

Opening

At 14:10 on 5 December 1945, five US Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a routine training flight called Navigation Problem No. 1. There were fourteen men aboard. About two hours later the flight leader, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, radioed that both his compasses had failed and that he believed he was over the Florida Keys.

He wasn't. As the light faded and the fuel ran down, the flight wandered over the Atlantic and was never seen again. A flying boat sent to find them exploded that evening with thirteen more men aboard. Flight 19 became the founding story of the Bermuda Triangle.

Timeline

5 December 1945, 14:10Flight 19 leaves Fort Lauderdale. The plan: fly east to practise bombing at Hens and Chickens Shoals, continue east, then turn north and back west to base, a triangular route over the sea.

About 15:40Lieutenant Robert Cox, a flight instructor in the air near Fort Lauderdale, hears Taylor on the radio. Taylor says both his compasses are out and he is sure he is over the Keys, but doesn't know how far down. In fact he is east of Florida, near the Bahamas.

Late afternoonBelieving he is over the Gulf of Mexico, Taylor leads the flight north-east and then east, further out over the Atlantic. Some students can be heard saying that if they flew west they would reach land. Radio contact grows weak and broken.

About 18:20Taylor's last messages: the flight will stay together and ditch when the first plane drops below ten gallons of fuel, unless they sight land.

19:27A PBM Mariner flying boat of Squadron Training 49 takes off from Naval Air Station Banana River with thirteen crew to search.

21:15The tanker SS Gaines Mills reports flames leaping about 100 feet high for ten minutes. The Mariner is never heard from again.

Following daysOne of the largest air and sea searches in history finds nothing of either.

1946 to 1947The Navy board blames Taylor's navigation. After his mother objects, the finding is changed to causes or reasons unknown.

Key figures

Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor led the flight. He had about 2,500 flying hours, much of it in the Keys area, but had recently transferred to Fort Lauderdale and didn't know the Bahamas well. The four student pilots had about 300 hours each, only around 60 of them in Avengers.

Lieutenant Robert Cox was the instructor who heard Taylor and tried to guide him. Taylor declined his offer to fly out and meet them.

Physical and documentary trail

The trail: the Navy's board of investigation report, partial transcripts of the radio traffic, the search records, and the SS Gaines Mills report of the explosion.

Still missing: any wreckage of the five Avengers or the Mariner.

Both my compasses are out and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale.

Things you might not know

• Twenty-seven men died. Fourteen on Flight 19 and thirteen on the Mariner sent to find them.
• The Mariners had a nickname. PBM flying boats were known as "flying gas tanks" because fuel vapour built up inside, which fits the explosion.
• The route was a triangle. The training course itself was a three-legged route over the ocean.
• Five Avengers were found in 1991. A wreck-hunting expedition found five Avengers together off Florida. Their serial numbers showed they were not Flight 19.
• Spielberg brought them back. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the missing Avengers reappear, perfectly preserved, in the Sonora Desert.
• "Bermuda Triangle" came later. Writer Vincent Gaddis coined it in a 1964 magazine article, with Flight 19 at the centre.

Competing explanations

Lost and out of fuel. The Navy's original reading: a leader who thought he was over the Keys, flying away from land as darkness and bad weather came in, until the planes ditched in a rough winter sea. The radio traffic supports it closely.

Something in the Triangle. Later books describe strange compass failures, the sea looking wrong, and an unexplained force. These details mostly come from embellished retellings, not the transcripts.

Later life of the case

Flight 19 is the story every Bermuda Triangle book begins with. Wreck claims surface every few years. None has been confirmed.

Finding

The record points clearly to a navigation error: a leader who believed he was somewhere else, a flight that turned away from land, and empty fuel tanks over a dark winter sea. The Navy's own "cause unknown" is honest only in the sense that no wreck was found.

What still will not resolve: where the five Avengers came down. The ocean off Florida has never given them up.