On December 5, 1945, at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, a fragment of a radio transmission crackled through from a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that had taken off from Fort Lauderdale earlier that day. The voice was believed to be that of Lt. Charles Taylor, the senior flight instructor. His message suggested that the group was lost somewhere over the Atlantic east of Florida, and that all of their compasses were malfunctioning.
The U.S. Naval Air Station tried to reach the squadron on the training frequency, but interference from Cuban radio stations, static, and poor atmospheric conditions made communication nearly impossible. Only brief, broken messages were heard on the mainland. Some of them hinted that the student pilots were urging Taylor to turn west toward land, but he refused. By early evening, the Navy had determined that Flight 19 was east of central Florida, yet they could not get word to the pilots. The planes continued flying northeast, farther out to sea.
When contact could not be reestablished, the Navy launched a full scale search. Among the aircraft sent out was a PBM patrol plane that took off from Florida at 7:30 PM. It vanished without a trace. A merchant ship later reported seeing a burst of flame and an oil slick, which was believed to be the missing PBM, but no wreckage or bodies were ever recovered.
Flight 19 was known to have enough fuel to last only until 8:00 PM. When that time passed with no sign of the planes, the search shifted into a massive rescue effort. It was assumed the pilots had been forced to ditch their aircraft in rough seas once the fuel ran out. For five days, ships and aircraft scoured the area. On the sixth day, worsening weather made further searching too dangerous.
The twenty seven airmen of Flight 19 were never heard from again, and no confirmed wreckage has ever been found. Their disappearance occurred in the region now known as the Bermuda Triangle. Although other incidents had taken place there before, the loss of Flight 19 is what truly ignited the legend.
There are several non supernatural explanations for what happened. The Navy’s original investigation concluded that Lt. Taylor had become hopelessly lost and ignored the advice of his students to turn west. Taylor’s mother refused to accept that conclusion, and eventually the Navy changed the report to state that the cause of the disaster was unknown.
As for the lack of debris, the ocean that night was experiencing fifty foot waves from a storm. The heavy aircraft would have sunk quickly, and any floating wreckage would likely have been swept away by the fast moving Gulf Stream.
In 1991, five Avenger aircraft were discovered 600 feet underwater off the coast of Florida. For a moment, it seemed the mystery might be solved. But the serial numbers on the engine blocks showed that none of them belonged to Flight 19. Despite being found close together, each had crashed there on a different occasion. To this day, no verified remains of the Flight 19 planes have ever been located.
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