75 Years Of Mystery Disappearance Of 19 US Aircraft In The Bermuda Triangle

Illustration fligh 19 (doc. Wikimedia commons)

JAKARTA - Shortly after 2 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five US Avenger torpedo bombers departed United States (US) Naval Air Base Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a routine navigation training flight. Lt. Charles C. Taylor acted as aviation leader. Taylor is an experienced Navy aviator with approximately 2,500 flight hours and several World War II combat tours.

Quoting the Naval History and Heritage Command, Saturday 5 December, the five planes were dubbed Flight 19. Flight 19 will carry out 'Navigation Problem No. 1 'that is flying east from the Florida coast, bombing a place they call' Hens and Chickens Shoals' then turning north and continuing the flight to Grand Bahama Island. The weather is projected to be relatively normal, but there have been some heavy rains.

On the first flight, everything went according to plan as they dropped their practice bombs without incident. As the group begins to turn north for the second flight, trouble begins. At around 3:45 p.m., Fort Lauderdale's flight tower received a message from Taylor, who reportedly sounded confused and worried.

"Can't see land," said Taylor. "Looks like we got off track."

"Where do you stand," the tower replied.

Then a few moments of silence. Tower personnel peeked outside on a clear day in the direction the planes were supposed to be operating, but there was no sign of them showing up.

"We cannot confirm where we are," the aviation leader announced. He repeated the words: Cannot see land.

Contact was lost for about 10 minutes, but when it resumed, it wasn't the voice of the flight leader that appeared. “We couldn't find the west. Everything is wrong. We can't be sure of any direction. Everything looks strange, even the ocean, ”the voice reported. There was another delay and then tower personnel learned from the transmission that the flight leader had passed his orders to another pilot for unknown reasons.

After 20 minutes of silence, a new leader's voice was sent to the tower, but his voice trembled, almost hysterical. “We didn't know where we were… everyone… couldn't see anything. We thought we might be about 225 miles northeast of the base ... "

For a moment, the pilot babbled incoherently before uttering the last words ever heard of Flight 19. "It looks like we entered white waters ... We are truly lost."

Within minutes, tower personnel dispatched two PBM Mariner flying boats carrying rescue equipment. They headed to the final estimated position of Flight 19 and after 10 minutes on a rescue flight, they sent a confirmation with the tower. However only one rescue plane returned to Fort Lauderdale.

The six planes, one of which was a rescue plane, had completely disappeared. For five days, coast guard, Navy, and naval aviation personnel searched extensively in more than 250,000 square miles of Atlantic and Gulf waters, but none were found. Aircraft wrecks, shipwrecks, lifeboats, or the remains of flights do not exist. The Navy then conducted an investigation into the incident, but nothing was found. A total of 14 people were missing as a result of the tragedy and 13 others were also missing while carrying out rescue efforts.

The bizarre events of December 5, 1945 have since served as food for all kinds of wild theories and speculations. In the 1960s and 70s, magazines and writers such as Vincent Gaddis and Charles Berlitz helped popularize the idea that Flight 19 was being swallowed up by the 'Bermuda Triangle', a part of the Atlantic reputedly notorious for its high volume of missing persons and odd mechanical failures.

Books and other fictional depictions suggest that magnetic anomalies, parallel dimensions, and alien abductions may have played a role in the tragedy. In 1977, the film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' depicts Flight 19 being taken away by flying saucers and then stored in the Mexican desert.

What really happened to Flight 19? The most plausible scenario is the plane ran out of fuel and crashed somewhere off the coast of Florida, everyone didn't survive because of the rough seas and deep water. In 1991, a group of treasure hunters found five World War II era planes near Fort Lauderdale.

Unfortunately, it was later discovered that the plane belonged to a different Navy group because the serial number did not match those that disappeared on December 5, 1945. Many believe the wreckage of Flight 19 and its rescue plane may still be somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.