FLIGHT 19

Opening

On 5 December 1945 five TBM Avengers left Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale on a navigation hop east of Florida, Flight 19. Lieutenant Charles Taylor led. Radio from the flight spoke of compass trouble and of not knowing where they were. A PBM Mariner went after them and vanished in an explosion seen from a ship. The five Avengers were not found. Fourteen men on the TBMs and thirteen on the Mariner sat in the loss list. The Navy's accident report pointed at Taylor's navigation and at the sea. The Bermuda Triangle industry pointed at a door in the air. This card is the training flight and the missing wrecks.

Wreckage offered in later decades has not been accepted as Flight 19 in a closed Navy chain. The Atlantic keeps the rest.

The spine of the file is five aircraft and no accepted wreck. Flight 19 is 5 December 1945. It is not a triangle drawn on a paperback.

Timeline

5 December 1945, afternoon launch. Radio of compasses and position doubt. Dusk and fuel math.

Mariner launch. Explosion reported. Night search. No TBM wreck the Navy closed.

Board report on navigation and sea. Later triangle books.

Later claimed wrecks. Those claims are later life unless a chain holds. The December radio is first.

Taylor had transferred in and the students were on a hop they had done in pieces. Fuel and December daylight are ordinary killers. The Mariner loss is a second file that the triangle industry likes to glue on. Keep the explosion seen from a ship as its own accident while the five stay missing.

Key figures

Charles Taylor owns the lead aircraft and the radio.

The four student crews own the other Avengers.

The Mariner crew owns the second loss.

The Navy board owns the navigation close. Later writers own the triangle.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 5 December 1945 gives you four hard objects and no accepted TBM on a chain.

One: flight schedule and launch from Fort Lauderdale.

Two: radio transcript of disorientation.

Three: the Mariner loss.

Four: the Navy accident report. Navy Board of Investigation, Flight 19, December 1945, is the official tray.

There is no wreck the Navy has signed as the five. There is no triangle on the board page. There is no surviving raft the file can close.

Radio and a loss list are the stay-behinds. A chained wreck would finish the five. A triangle does not.

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

Competing explanations

A navigation failure and a winter sea. This is the Navy. It has radio. It has no wreck.

A door in the air. This is the paperback. It has a name. It has no board sentence.

A later found wreck not yet chained. Possible. Not closed.

Hybrid caution. Five aircraft left. Radio went wrong. The sea did not give them back on a signed chain.

Later life of the case

Triangle books and later sonar claims. I keep those on the later-life shelf. The December radio stays first.

Finding

Five Avengers left Fort Lauderdale on 5 December 1945, their lead spoke of dead compasses, a Mariner blew up going after them, and the Navy never signed a wreck as the five. Believe the radio. A training squadron does not invent a loss list for a later paperback.

What still will not resolve: a wreck with a Navy chain to those bureau numbers, or a page that makes the radio a fiction. Either one would pin the flight. The proving object is still those five aircraft, held on the bottom by a chain, not by a triangle on a map.