The infamous “Bermuda Triangle” where many ships and planes are said to have been lost is a 270,000 square mile stretch of ocean between Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Florida.
There are many legends about the area. But most were born after the disappearance, on December 5, 1945, of a squadron of five American Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo planes carrying 14 airmen and a PBM-5 Mariner aircraft, with a crew of 13 men, that was searching for them. Of the six aircraft and 27 men, no trace was ever found.
The fatal mission
The five Avengers took off from the US Naval Air Station in Lauderdale, Florida for a training flight. It was led by Lt. Charles Taylor, an experienced pilot with over 2,500 flight hours in total and over 600 in the Avengers he had fought with.
The four aircraft took off with their normal crew of three. Exception was the FT-81 that a member of his crew declared stuck and did not fly that fateful day. After taking off, the aircraft were directed to the specific point provided for in the exercise and fired at their targets. Immediately after that the weather started to change abruptly.
The aircraft suddenly found themselves in the midst of a storm with torrential rain and extremely strong wind. Taylor saw or believed that his compass was out of order. "I don't know where we are," said one of the pilots. "We must have gotten lost after the last turn we made," answered another on the radio.
Chief Taylor's voice had become intense betraying his great anxiety. He reported that he was flying over land thinking he was flying over the Florida Keys. Taylor then made the fatal mistake of steering the formation not west, as would have been logical so that in any case it would be over the American or even the Mexican ground, but to the northeast, as he thought he was flying into the Gulf of Mexico. So the aircraft flew over the open ocean.
Soon the wireless started to have problems. "When the first plane has less than 10 gallons of fuel left we will all go down together." Those were Taylor's last words. From that moment nothing was heard of Flight 19.
The U.S. Navy, assuming that the planes had crashed into the sea, sent two large Martin PBM-5 Mariner jets to investigate. Just three minutes after takeoff, however, one Mariner also disappeared without a trace.
Frutile researches and theories
Extensive searches followed but to no avail. Not even the wreckage of the six aircraft, nor the bodies of the pilots, nor any of their personal belongings was found. For the loss of the Mariner there is a testimony that it exploded, for some unknown reason, in mid-air. But it's still surprising that nothing was found. The Avengers apparently went down from lack of fuel.
The disappearance of the planes has given rise to a series of conspiracy theories about the "Bermuda Triangle" attributing the incident to whatever the human mind could conceive, from aliens, to sea monsters . The disappearance of Flight 19 was included in a film by the famous director Steven Spielberg that supported the theory of alien abduction.
This was followed by an official investigation by the American which resulted in a 500-page finding. According to this the loss of the Avenger is, in some way, credited to Taylor for the misdirection. However, the conclusion did not condemn him but attributed his mistake to the damage of the compass. The Mariner's loss was attributed to an explosion. After Taylor's mother intervened the navy classified the incident as an "Unknown Case".
The epilogue was written in 1986 when the wreckage of an Avenger was discovered off the coast of Florida during searches for the debris of the exploded space shuttle Challenger. The wreckage of the Avenger was recovered in 1990 by expert archaeologist John Meer, who believed he had found one of the five Flight 19 aircraft.
But the code numbers did not match any of the lost aircraft. The aircraft that was discovered had crashed in the area in 1943. Between 1942-45, 95 airmen flying from Lauderdale were lost in accidents in the area. Other investigators have searched for the Flight 19 aircraft to no avail.
In 2015, the newspaper claimed that the navy had discovered and recovered an aircraft with two bodies on board in the mid-1960s and that the aircraft belonged to Flight 19. The navy admitted that it had found something but said it was impossible to identify the bodies. of bodies.
Avenger jets fly in formation.
Taylor and the four pilots of Flight 19.
Martin PBM-5 Mariner air gun.