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Posted on 12/05/2025 4:28:37 AM PST by DFG
At 1410 hours on 5 December 1945, a group of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the U.S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine overwater navigational training flight. The flight leader in charge of the unit, dubbed “Flight 19,” was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, who had amassed some 2,500 flying hours in addition to the completion of a combat tour in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Taylor and his crew of 13 airmen, some trainee pilots, were to execute “navigation problem No. 1,” described by the Naval History and Heritage Command as the following:
“(1) depart 26 degrees 03 minutes north and 80 degrees 07 minutes west and fly 091 degrees (T) distance 56 miles to Hen and Chickens Shoals to conduct low level bombing, after bombing continue on course 091 degrees (T) for 67 miles, (2) fly course 346 degrees (T) distance 73 miles and (3) fly course 241 degrees (T) distance 120 miles, then returning to U. S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.”
The weather in the area to be covered by the training flight appeared fairly standard. Save for a few scattered showers, visibility, and wind speeds were considered to be normal for a training exercise of this nature. The beginning of the exercise was just that: normal. Taylor and his crew made it easily to Hen and Chickens Shoals, where bombs were dropped according to plan sometime around 1430. At 1500 hours, a recording shows that one of the student pilots in the flight requested and was permitted to drop his plane’s last bomb.
Flight 19 turned and began to make its way toward the second leg of its exercise, and things took a turn for the strange. A radio message was intercepted from the flight at around 1600 hours, recording a conversation likely between Taylor and the pilot of one of the other planes. On the recording, one of the student pilots was asked by a crewman for a compass reading, to which the pilot replied, “I don’t know where we are. We must have gotten lost after that last turn.” On the same recording, Lieutenant Taylor can be heard saying, “Both my compasses are out, and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land, but it’s broken. I am sure I’m in the Keys, but I don’t know how far down and I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.” Soon after, one of the planes in the flight called in to the NAS Fort Lauderdale to report that they were lost. Operators at the NAS tried many suggestions, from switching radio frequencies to the search and rescue frequency, to imploring Taylor to turn on his YG (IFF transmitter) so that his location could be triangulated. For whatever reason, these attempts were ignored by Taylor and the other pilots of Flight 19. In one of these recordings, a member of the flight can be heard exclaiming, “Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit.” Taylor ordered the flight east.
By this time, weather conditions in the area had deteriorated, and the sun had set. A handful of land-based radio stations were able to triangulate Flight 19’s position as being somewhere north of the Bahamas and significantly off the coast of Florida. Despite this knowledge, the flight’s location was not adequately reported to naval air traffic control personnel at NAS Fort Lauderdale. At 1820, the last message from Flight 19 was received. In this recording, Taylor 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.”
All 14 airmen involved in Flight 19 were never seen or heard from again. But these 14 men wouldn’t be the only men to vanish into thin air on 5 December 1945.
Knowing that the planes’ fuel would have run out at 2000 hours, a search and rescue effort was launched to locate the flight and its crew at around 1800 hours that evening, just before the last message was received. Surface vessels, both military and merchant, were notified of the disappearance and two consolidated PBM Mariner flying boats were diverted from their original training flights to participate in square pattern searches in an attempt to locate any trace of Flight 19. One of these planes, PBM-5 Bureau Number 59225, took off from NAS Banana River in Brevard County, Florida, at 1927 hours carrying a crew of 13 rescue personnel. The plane called in a routine message a few minutes later but disappeared off the radar entirely within around 20 minutes of takeoff. That night, a merchant ship off the coast of Fort Lauderdale reported seeing a “burst of flame” shortly before passing through an oil slick in the same vicinity the missing PBM had dropped off the radar.
At daybreak the following day, the Navy launched an even larger rescue effort, now having to search for a total of six downed aircraft. The efforts lasted around 5 days, during which 300,000 square miles were combed for any sign of the planes or the men working aboard them. Theories surrounding these disappearances are varied, ranging from alien abductions, to secret government experiments, to the fan-favorite Bermuda Triangle. The official account of the events of 5 December 1945 suggest that Lieutenant Taylor mistook his location, believing he was flying over the Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico. Armed with broken compasses, he was unable to determine his true location. Eventually, Taylor and his airmen ran out of fuel, forcing them to down their planes and succumb to the elements. The disappearance of the PBM-5 is most often attributed to an explosion, as this particular model of plane was prone to such accidents.
Whatever the case may be, not a single trace of them has been found.
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Navy PBM-5 Mariner
The ones who fly in and out of the hollowed-out volcano down in Mexico, but only at night.
You mean the ones at Skinwalker Ranch? where is Travis when you need him?
Very interesting - thanks for posting. I can’t believe this wasn’t as well known as any other mystery about planes..such as Amelia Earhart. Can’t say I’d ever heard of it..it wouldn’t be surprising if I had and just forgot..I’ve been pretty much in tune with anything to do with military/aviation...I was always interested in the Bermuda Triangle mysteries so I’m leaning in that direction on this...
“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.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19
Goes to show not to follow an idiot. Speak up and save your own bacon.
The lead pilot was known to have issues navigating.
“I can’t believe this wasn’t as well known as any other mystery about planes”
It is a major incident to anyone who is curious about the Bermuda Triangle and aviation.
PBM-5 Mariner’s had a known history of fuel leaks in the wings and a number had blown up mid-air in the past before this.
That was debunked decades ago but the Bermuda Triangle nonsense is still going on.
The leader of the flight reportedly had been drinking before flight, once in the air he thought he was over the Fla Keys and ordered the flight to fly North east to their doom.
Charles Berlitz, who popularized the Triangle, decades ago listed all the ships lost in the Bermuda Triangle. I pinpointed every one and only about three or four went down in the triangle, the rest well outside it.
Berlitz even tried to tie the death of Bo Rein to the triangle by saying his aircraft was being mysteriously pulled to the triangle from a short flight in Louisiana to the Atlantic.
As fro the triangle shown, it is different from the triangle of decades ago. This one shown is much bigger and extends to
Washington DC. The old one started at Miami fla.
Charles Berlitz tried to popularize another “triangle” in the Philippines. It did not go over.
Many years ago I read a book detailing all the Bermuda Triangle disappearances. I was convinced it was real. Then a couple years later I read a book that legitimately disputed every single case in the first book. That was when I realized you can’t believe anything.
Lt. Taylor didn’t trust the compasses on his planes. He did the same “We aren’t in the right place” in the South Pacific and almost got a flight killed there. He also didn’t trust the training of the others in his flight. When radio stations from Cuba started overwhelming the flight radios, he wouldn’t try to get them to switch frequencies, because they might not be able to find each other again.
The Navy knew where they were too. About 70 miles off of New Smyrna Beach. That’s why the Mariner that blew up as it took off from Canaveral was heading North.
I recommend Kursche’s work “The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved”. He just lays out the facts without the extra stuff to make it “more interesting” like Richard Warner said on the “Nova” special back in the 70s.
Don’t forget there was also a Great Lakes Triangle. I used to eat this stuff up when I was younger and had the book.
Any reason the PBM-5 had a crew of 13 that day? Wikipedia says it has a normal crew of 7.
Remember reading somewhere that the PBM took off at 80 knots, landed at 80 knots, and stalled at 80 knots.
The God, AI sayeth:
Were Flight 19 planes ever found?
AI Overview
No, the planes of Flight 19 and their search-and-rescue plane have never been definitively found. While there have been false alarms and claims of wreckage, no definitive wreckage matching Flight 19 or the lost search plane has been recovered.
Initial search: Hundreds of aircraft and ships conducted one of the largest peacetime search-and-rescue efforts in history, covering over 200,000 square miles, but found no trace of the six planes or their 27 crew members.
Misidentified wreckage: In 1991, a group of treasure hunters found the remains of five TBM Avenger planes off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. However, it was later confirmed that these were not Flight 19, as their serial numbers did not match.
Claims of wreckage: There have been other claims of finding wreckage, including one in a swamp that was later found to be a different aircraft, and more recent claims from the past few years about finding wrecks underwater. However, these claims have not been confirmed as belonging to Flight 19.
Official explanation: The official explanation from the Navy was that Flight 19 was a result of pilot error and navigational confusion, leading the planes to run out of fuel and ditch in the open ocean. The search plane, a Martin PBM Mariner, was thought to have suffered a mid-air explosion, which was a known issue with that aircraft model, but no wreckage from either incident has been recovered.
"Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit." Taylor ordered the flight east.
In one of the reconstructions of this "Bermuda Triangle" fake mystery, based on the radio transmissions, that pilot got everyone except the nutjob instructor on the same page and they started heading west, but all were low on fuel. When the "dammit" pilot ran out of fuel and splashed, Taylor got them all to turn east again, to their deaths.
Every heavily trafficked coastal area is a “Triangle”. Deep water (whether ocean or lake) eats things. Once stuff sinks it’s gone until some deep dive treasure hunter lucks into it. But that kind of talk doesn’t sell books (or grocery store circulars, how the Bermuda Triangle first came to fame), so nobody likes that answer.
No idea as to why. Do know the PBM-5 leaked a lot of fuel and it ran down to the engine compartments and have explosions as a number had blown up with the crews during WW2.
I had seen the plane was plagued with troubles.
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