The Bermuda Triangle and Flight 19

 

At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945 United State Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor set off from Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a routine bombing and navigation exercise.  The flight involved a total of five Grumman Avenger type aircraft. 

          The fate of Flight 19 is well known in aviation history, a favorite topic of conspiracy theorists, paranormal devotees, and writers of fiction.  It makes good reading for anyone who likes a mystery, though the deaths of good men deserve a bit more probity.  Here is what we do know.

          The three-hour mission was supposed to take the five planes due east for 120 miles, then north for 73 miles and then hard west for the final leg home.  Two hours in, Taylor’s compass and back-up compass failed.  Despite being familiar with the area the squadron leader stated that his position was unknown.  The other planes experienced similar malfunctions.  There followed two more hours of confused messages from the fliers.  At 6:20 p.m., running on nothing but fumes for fuel, a final transmission from Taylor called for the entire squadron to prepare to ditch simultaneously in the open ocean. 

          It was getting dark and a storm was closing.  A routine training mission was now anything but. 

          Several land radar stations showed Flight 19 somewhere north of the Bahamas and considerably east of the Florida coast.  A Martin PMB-5 Mariner, carrying 13 men, was dispatched around 6:00 p.m. to try to find and guide the lost squadron home.  This sea plane added to the other worldliness of the entire Fight 19 incident when, at around 9:30 p.m., it made a routine transmission and was never heard again.  A ship in the area, the SS Gaines Mills, reported seeing an explosive, fiery column about 100 feet in the air where the Mariner should have been, but searched the oil-slicked water without finding a survivor.   

          The rest of this story becomes the debatable points.  What happened to Flight 19?  The transmissions made by Squadron Leader Charles Taylor do provide some evidence.  Taylor sent transmissions to indicate that he thought he was, somehow, probably due to his failed compasses, in the Gulf of Mexico.  He had mistaken the Bahamas for the Florida Keys.  This is a serious mistake.  It sent his entire thinking in the wrong direction and, unable or unwilling to believe he could make a rooky mistake, Taylor insisted that the squadron set a course to the northeast.  

          If you are over Key West, a setting of northeast gets you back to Florida.  If you are over the Bahamas, the same setting sends you off into the cold, lonely Atlantic Ocean.  Further transmissions show a leader who became more confused, more unsure, and then more convinced that he HAD to be right, despite evidence to the contrary.  At one point he is heard saying that they simply had not gone far enough east.  Then comes the saddest transmission of all.  An unknown pilot of one of the other doomed planes is heard, “Dammit, if we could just fly west, we could get home; head west, dammit.” 

          The other pilots could have heeded this one voice crying in the wilderness.  They could have turned west and left their commander to face his own destiny.  Either out of fear, rigid discipline or lack of faith they chose to follow Commander Taylor.  He led them to crash in the sea.  Neither the 14 men nor any of their planes has ever been found. 

          What about the Bermuda Triangle?  It is a myth.  If you draw a similar triangle, around any part of the ocean with similar shipping and air traffic, you will find the same number of lost ships and lost souls.  You will find the same stories of tragic and mysterious loss.  The world is bigger than we are, but nature, not the paranormal are in charge. 

          We are the masters of our fate, we are the captains of our soul.  We need to keep the faith. 

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