Flight 19 Research Paper

The Bemuda Triangle first gained its reputation as a boat and plane devouring abbys in December 1945, when a group of five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo bombers known as Flight 19 disappeared in the Atlantic off the coast of florida. The Avengers were never found as well as the Navy seaplane that was sent to the rescue. The saga of flight 19 still remains as one of the most mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Flight 19 was a training flight with five TBM Avengers (Torpedo Bombers) that were led by Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor, an experienced pilot and veteran of several combat missions in World War II’s Pacific Theatre. Each of the avengers except for one which was carried only two men was crewd by three Navy men or marines, most …show more content…
The weather was reported to be a typical sunny Florida day. Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor and his pilots quickly got through Hens and Chickens Shaols by around 2:30 p.m. and also dropped their practice bombs without a problem. Once the patrol turned north for the second part of its journey, strange things began to happen. Due to reasons still unclear today, Charles C. Taylor became convinced that his Avengers had been flying in the wrong direction. Transcripts from several conversations of Flight 19 which were directly taken from the Official Board of Inquiry record explain that Charles C. Taylor got lost due to a technical difficulty of his compasses failing during his flight “I’m 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” (Williams). Many researchers argue that Flight 19 becamehopelessly disoriented due to Charles C. Taylor’s lack of full concentartion and preparedness which were crucial because “in his confusion he also failed to turn on his IFF signal which would have registered him on the radar screens” which possibly could have prevented the disappearance overall (Williams). A wide range of sources proves that the disappearance of flight 19 was due to explainable causes yet “a six-day search of the South Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico did nto find life rafts, debris, …show more content…
Taylor’s claims did not seem to make sense and still do not to many resaerchers and critics. Lieutnenant Charles C. Taylor was 27 years old at that time and had barely transferred to Fort Lauderdale from Miami which is why many speculated that he may have confusedsome of the islands of the Bahamas for the Keys. “Under normal circumstances, pilots lost in the Atlantic were supposed to point their planes toward the setting sun and fly west toward the mainland, but Taylor had become convinced that he might be over the Gulf of Mexico” which led him and the rest of pilots to get further away from mainland rather than getting cloder to it (Andrews). Taylor was eventually persuaded to turn around and head west, but shortly after 6 p.m., he cancelled the order and again changed direction. When fuel began to run low, Taylor was heard preparing his team for a potential crash in theo ocean and a few minutes later nothing else was heard. The Navy immediately sent search planes to search for Flight 19. Around 7:30 p.m., a pair of PBM Mariner flying boats took off form an air station north of Fort Lauderdale never to be heard fro again. “Planes criss-crossed the area in formation, following a carefully planned pattern of observation” and yet they were not able to find any sort of clue about the location of Flight 19 (Gaddis 28). A search party spent five days looking through more than 30,000 square miles of territory but were not succesful in finding anything