Flight 19 was the name given to a group of five Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945. The planes were on a United States Navy training flight over water from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 pilots on the flight were lost, along with all 13 crew members of a Martin PBM Mariner aircraft that later took off from Naval Air Station Banana River to search for Flight 19.
A Navy report stated that the flight leader, Lt. Charles C. Taylor, thought small islands were the Florida Keys after his compasses stopped working. This mistake caused the planes to fly over open sea away from land. Later, the Navy changed the report to say the cause was unknown to avoid blaming Lt. Taylor for the loss of five planes and 14 people. The report also said the PBM aircraft was lost due to an explosion in mid-air while searching for Flight 19.
Navigation training flight
Flight 19 participated in a routine training exercise involving navigation and combat skills using TBM-type aircraft. The mission, called "Navigation Problem No. 1," combined bombing practice with navigation tasks that other flights had completed or planned to complete that day. The flight leader, Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, had about 2,500 hours of flying experience, mostly in similar aircraft. His trainee pilots had 300 total hours and 60 hours flying the Avenger. Taylor had previously served as a torpedo bomber pilot on the USS Hancock and had recently arrived from NAS Miami, where he taught torpedo-bombing techniques. The student pilots had recently completed other training missions in the area where the flight was to occur. The trainees included U.S. Marine Captains Edward Joseph Powers and George William Stivers, U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant Forrest James Gerber, and U.S. Navy Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi.
The aircraft involved were five TBM models: three TBM-1Cs (BuNo 45714, 'FT3'; BuNo 46325, 'FT81'; BuNo 73209, 'FT117'), one TBM-1E (BuNo 46094, 'FT36'), and one TBM-3 (BuNo 23307, 'FT28'). These were versions of the Grumman TBF Avenger, produced by General Motors under a wartime license. During World War II, the U.S. Navy designated Grumman-built Avengers as TBF and General Motors-built models as TBM. Each aircraft was fully fueled, and pre-flight checks revealed that all planes were missing clocks. Navigation relied on dead reckoning, a method that requires tracking time, but the absence of clocks was not a concern because pilots were expected to use personal watches. Takeoff was originally scheduled for 13:45 local time but was delayed until 14:10 due to Taylor’s late arrival. Weather conditions at NAS Fort Lauderdale were described as "favorable, with moderate to rough sea state."
The exercise required three flight legs, with the fourth leg returning to NAS Fort Lauderdale after reaching the Florida coast. After takeoff, the flight headed east at a heading of 091° for 56 nautical miles (64 miles; 104 kilometers) to Hens and Chickens Shoals, where low-level bombing practice occurred. The next leg required continuing east for 67 nautical miles (77 miles; 124 kilometers) before turning to a heading of 346° for 73 nautical miles (84 miles; 135 kilometers), passing over Grand Bahama Island. The final leg involved turning to a heading of 241° for 120 nautical miles (140 miles; 220 kilometers), after which the flight would turn left to return to NAS Fort Lauderdale.
Radio communications between the pilots were monitored by the base and other aircraft. A pilot confirmed the bombing practice by requesting permission to drop his final bomb at around 15:00. Forty minutes later, Lieutenant Robert F. Cox, flying FT-74, received an unidentified transmission. A crew member asked Powers, one of the trainees, for his compass reading. Powers responded, "I don’t know where we are. We must have gotten lost after that last turn." Cox then asked for identification from the flight. After a delay, Taylor, identified as FT-28, responded, "Both of 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 or how to get to Fort Lauderdale." Cox informed the base that aircraft were lost and advised Taylor to fly north along the coast with the sun on his port wing. Base operations asked if Taylor’s aircraft had a YG (IFF) transmitter for triangulation, but Taylor did not acknowledge the message.
At 16:45, Taylor reported, "We are heading 030 degrees for 45 minutes, then we will fly north to ensure we are not over the Gulf of Mexico." No bearings could be obtained, and IFF signals were not detected. Taylor was ordered to broadcast on 4805 kHz, but he did not respond. He was then asked to switch to 3000 kHz, a search and rescue frequency, and replied, "I cannot switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact." At 16:56, Taylor was again asked to activate his YG transmitter, but he did not acknowledge the request. Minutes later, he instructed his flight to change course to 090 degrees (due east) for 10 minutes. Around the same time, someone in the flight said, "Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit." This disagreement later raised questions about why the trainees did not head west independently. It was explained that military discipline likely prevented them from acting on their own.
As weather worsened, radio contact became intermittent, and it was believed the five aircraft were more than 200 nautical miles (230 miles; 370 kilometers) out to sea, east of the Florida peninsula. Taylor requested a weather check at 17:24 and reported, "We’ll fly 270 degrees west until landfall or running out of gas." By 17:50, land-based radio stations triangulated Flight 19’s position as within a 100 nautical mile (120 miles; 190 kilometers) radius of 29°N 79°W, north of the Bahamas and far from the Florida coast. At 18:04, Taylor ordered, "Holding 270. We didn’t fly far enough east; we may as well just turn around and fly east again." By 18:20, Taylor’s final message was received: "All planes close up tight… we’ll have to ditch unless landfall… when the first plane drops below 10 gallons [38 liters], we all go down together." (Some sources report this message was received at 19:04.)
PBM-5 (Bureau Number 59225)
As it became clear the flight was lost, air bases, planes, and ships were warned. A Consolidated PBY Catalina took off after 8:00 PM to search for Flight 19 and help guide them back if found. After dark, two Martin PBM Mariner flying boats, which were originally planned for training flights, were sent instead to search in a square pattern west of 29°N 79°W. A US Navy Squadron Training No. 49 PBM-5 with identification number 59225 left Naval Air Station Banana River at 7:27 PM. It sent a regular radio message at 7:30 PM and was never heard from again.
At 9:15 PM, the tanker ship SS Gaines Mills reported seeing flames from what looked like an explosion that rose 100 feet (30 meters) high and burned for 10 minutes at position 28°35′N 80°15′W. Captain Shonna Stanley searched for survivors in an area covered with oil and aviation gasoline but did not find anyone. The escort carrier USS Solomons also reported losing radar contact with an aircraft at the same location and time.
The PBM could carry 9.83 tonnes of aviation gasoline. Its fuel lines were known to loosen easily in rough weather, causing gasoline to leak. The most likely explanation is that the PBM had a mid-air explosion.
Investigation
A Navy report with 500 pages was published later and included several findings. The Navy later changed the report without explaining why, after Taylor's mother said the Navy was unfairly blaming her son. If Flight 19 had been where Taylor thought, it would have reached the Florida coast in about 20 minutes. Later studies suggested the islands Taylor saw were likely the Bahamas, not the Florida Keys. The investigation found that Taylor's belief he was heading toward Florida made him steer the plane farther northeast instead.
At NAS Fort Lauderdale, pilots were taught to fly west if lost, and to turn around with the sun on their left if going south. By the time they turned west, they were too far from land, and their fuel was likely gone. This, plus bad weather and the plane's design, made rescue unlikely.
Taylor might have passed Gorda Cay and reached another island in the southern Abaco Islands. He then flew northwest, expecting to see Grand Bahama Island. Instead, he saw the northern part of Abaco Island. Believing this was Grand Bahama and that his compass was broken, he set a course southwest, but this actually took him farther northwest.
He saw islands that looked like the Key West Islands. The control tower told him to fly west toward Florida. But he headed northwest instead. After flying northwest without seeing land, Taylor thought he was near Key West. He and his crew debated with the control tower, unsure if they were near the Bahamas or Key West. The tower said they couldn't be in Key West because of the wind. Some thought the compass was working, but others didn't. Taylor tried flying northeast and then west based on the compass, but neither worked. Eventually, they ran out of fuel and may have crashed north of Abaco Island and east of Florida.
Avenger wreckage mistaken for Flight 19 and other searches
In 1986, a damaged Avenger plane was found off the Florida coast during a search for the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. In 1990, aviation archaeologist Jon Myhre brought the plane up from the ocean floor. He believed it was one of the missing planes from Flight 19, but this was incorrect.
In 1991, a treasure-hunting team led by Graham Hawkes claimed to have found five Avengers off the Florida coast. However, the planes’ tail numbers showed they were not part of Flight 19. In 2004, a BBC documentary showed Hawkes returning with a new submersible 12 years later. He identified one plane by its bureau number (23990) as a flight that was lost at sea on October 9, 1943, over two years before Flight 19. The crew of that plane survived. Hawkes could not confirm the other planes, and the documentary stated that “Despite the odds, they are just a random collection of accidents that came to rest in the same place 12 miles [19 km] from home.”
In March 2012, Hawkes said it was beneficial for him, his investors, and the Pentagon to let the story fade because it was costly and time-consuming. While he admitted no proof was found, a statistician he consulted suggested the planes might be from Flight 19.
Records showed that between 1942 and 1945, training accidents at NAS Fort Lauderdale resulted in the loss of 95 aviation personnel. In 1992, another search found scattered debris on the ocean floor, but nothing could be identified. In the 2000s, searchers expanded their area farther east into the Atlantic Ocean, but Flight 19’s wreckage has not been confirmed.
A 2015 newspaper report claimed that a World War II-era warplane with Navy markings and two bodies inside was retrieved by the Navy in the mid-1960s after being found by a hunter near Sebastian, Florida. The Navy first said it was from Flight 19 but later changed its statement. Despite Freedom of Information Act requests in 2013, the names of the bodies remain unknown because the Navy lacks enough information to identify them.
A plane found in the Everglades in Broward County was incorrectly thought to be from Flight 19. However, it was later confirmed to be a TBM-3E that crashed on March 16, 1947. The crash occurred because the pilot, Ensign Ralph N. Wachob, experienced vertigo. Wachob died in the crash.
As of the 2020s, no evidence of the five TBM Avengers or the PBM Mariner and the 27 missing aviators has been found. The most likely conclusion is that the Avengers ran out of fuel and crashed at sea, while the PBM Mariner had a mid-air explosion.
In fiction
Flight 19 appears in the 1977 science-fiction movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At the beginning of the film, the aircraft are found in the Sonoran Desert, in perfect condition with full fuel tanks. This is one of several unexplained events that suggest that aliens are involved. In the film's final scene, several men wearing World War II-era U.S. naval aviator uniforms are among the people returned to Earth from an alien spaceship. It is suggested that these men may be the crews of the planes from Flight 19 that were discovered in the Sonoran Desert earlier in the movie, appearing to be the same age as when they disappeared. However, the names these men give do not match the names of the real-life crews of historical Flight 19.
Flight 19 also appears in the 2006 direct-to-DVD movie Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy!.