prize crew is pure fiction made up by Berlitz to enhance the mystery.
Ships are not the only things at risk in the Bermuda Triangle. Aircraft of all sorts, we are told by the mythmongers, run the risk of mysteriously winking out of existence if they dare fly in or near the triangle. The reports of aircraft disappearances in the triangle are of the same low reliability as reports of disappearing ships. Relevant facts are withheld from readers and fictional details are added. It is largely because of such fictional additions that one of the missing aircraft stories has become the most famous of all the Bermuda Triangle legends. This is the case of Flight 19.
Flight 19 consisted of five U.S. Army Air Corps Avenger aircraft. These were designed as carrier-based torpedo planes and carried a crew of three. The flight was under the command of Lt. Charles C. Taylor. It left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Naval Air Station on December 5, 1945, at about 2 P.M. The flight plan called for a course eastward, then a turn to the north, followed about seventy miles later by a turn to the southwest to bring the flight back to base.
The version of the Flight 19 story presented to the public by such unreliable writers as Gaddis and Berlitz has it that the pilots and crew were all “experienced airmen” (Berlitz 1974, p. 13). As the flight progressed, these experienced flyers became mysteriously lost, in spite of the “ideal flight conditions” (Gaddis 1965, p. 191). Radio communications between the pilots and the base revealed something strange going on: “Everything is wrong… strange. Even the ocean doesn’t look as it should,” Gaddis (p. 191) and Berlitz (p. 14) quote one of the pilots as reporting. Gaddis adds, “Apparently not only the sea looked strange, but
As before, investigation of what actually happened to Flight 19 explodes the fictionalized stories that are foisted on the reading public as nonfiction. Kusche has devoted an entire book,
Flight 19, it turns out, was not manned by group of experienced aviators. It was a navigational training flight. With the exception of Taylor, the leader, the other pilots were not experienced, they were students. The “excellent flight conditions” are another fiction. For one thing, Taylor’s two compasses malfunctioned after he was airborne. The weather was only “average to undesirable for a training flight” (Kusche 1980, p. 7) with gusty winds up to thirty-one knots and a moderate to rough sea. The forecast called for scattered showers until about 6 P.M. On December 5, 1945, the sun set at 5:29 P.M. It is important to understand that aircraft in 1945 had none of the sophisticated navigational gear that is now carried even by some light private aircraft. The pilots of Flight 19 were navigating with compasses and air speed indicators. To make matters worse, air speed is not equal to ground speed. It can be greater than, equal to, or less than ground speed, depending on the strength and direction of the wind. Further, the compasses of the only experienced pilot in the flight were broken, so he couldn’t navigate. He had to depend on the students for correct navigation. The flight was over water, which obviously has very few landmarks. These factors alone would lead any experienced pilot to predict trouble of some sort, but another factor is important: Taylor had been flying out of Fort Lauderdale for only two weeks. His previous flying assignment in Florida, after transferring stateside from the Pacific Theater, had consisted of eight months of flying from a base in Miami. Thus, when he led Flight 19 he was unfamiliar with the area into which he was flying. In particular, if he were flying out of Miami, he would be nearer to the Florida Keys than when flying from Fort Lauderdale.
As could be predicted on the basis of the poor conditions—meteoro—logical, instrumentational, and experiential—about one hour and twenty minutes after takeoff, Taylor was unsure of his location. The Naval Board of Investigation quoted him as asking for directions and saying, “I’m sure I’m in the Keys” (Kusche 1980, p. 4). As the afternoon wore on, the flight became more lost and confused. Radio messages among the five pilots that were monitored on shore and printed in the transcript of the Naval Board of Investigation or associated documents, reveal considerable confusion as to their location. Taylor ordered several changes of direction during the next few hours, including 180-degree changes. Importantly, the statements attributed to the flight that appear in the Gaddis and Berlitz volumes, and that were noted above, do not appear in the official record. They, like so much else in this manufactured mystery, were made up after the fact to spice the story.
By the time the sun set at 5:29 P.M., Flight 19 had been flying around lost for about two hours. Being lost, especially over the ocean with no landmarks (and no airports!), is a terrifying experience for any pilot, especially a student pilot. Fear does not lead to clearheaded, rational behavior, and even experienced individuals’ decision- making abilities are severely impaired in stressful situations. This fear probably contributed to the several unhelpful course changes ordered by Taylor.
All during this time, radio communication between the planes and shore bases had been weak. Taylor did not switch from the static-filled training frequency to another frequency, perhaps, Kusche (1980) speculates, out of fear that switching radio frequency would put the five planes out of radio contact if it were not carried out correctly by all the students. As sunset approached, and as the planes flew farther and farther away from Fort Lauderdale, communication became even worse.
Where were the planes going? Contrary to the usual report of the incident, an approximate position for the lost flight was calculated from different directional bearings. These bearings revealed that the flight was much farther north than had been suspected, about three hundred miles north of Fort Lauderdale and about two hundred miles east of the Florida coast. At 6:04 P.M., thirty-five minutes after sundown, when the flight was flying in the dark, Taylor was heard to order the flight, “Holding west course. Didn’t go far enough east. Turn around again. We may just as well turn around and go east” (Kusche 1980, p. 36). Of course, flying east would take them away from land, not toward it. Taylor was obviously very confused about his position. At 6:06 P.M. Taylor ordered, “Turn around and fly east until we run out of gas” (p. 36). Unfortunately, the flight’s position as calculated by the radio bearings was never radioed to the flight due to failure of the teletype communication system used and radio problems.
The flight had fuel to last until about 7:00 P.M. Then they would have to ditch their aircraft in the sea. While Taylor had ditched twice before in the Pacific, the conditions there were quite different from those he now faced. His previous two ditches had been in daylight with rescue ships standing by. Now he had to ditch at night in rough seas. Of course, none of the students had ever ditched before. Landing an aircraft on the water is never an easy task, even in the best of conditions. When an Avenger ditched, it usually hit the water at about eighty miles an hour. Such an impact can produce everything from a dazed state to unconsciousness. The best “ditch” is one where the plane’s tail hits the water first and pulls the rest of the plane down. Flying headfirst into the water will cause much greater injury to the crew. To be able to land tail down in the water, one needs first to be able to see the water, which is difficult at night, and second, experience, which only Taylor had. Rough seas, like those running that night, make ditching even more dangerous.
Contrary to the usual version of the story, the Avenger is a very unseaworthy craft. It sinks like a “lead banana” (Kusche 1980, p. 28) within thirty seconds to a minute and a half. Nor is it easy to climb out of the aircraft and get out the emergency life raft. The pilot and the two crew members must get out of the plane, stand on the wing (in this case at night in rough seas), pull out and inflate the life raft, and get in it. On top of this, many of the crew were probably stunned and relatively helpless due to the impact of the crash. All this had to be accomplished by frightened men who had never had any such experience before. And it had to be done in the rolling seas in the dark in the ninety seconds before the planes sank.
Tragically, the task was not accomplished. That no bodies and no trace of life rafts or the aircraft themselves were ever found shows that no one was successful in freeing the rafts from the planes. Perhaps a few crew members got out of the planes and in panic jumped into the sea and drowned. In that vast expanse of ocean there would be almost no chance of finding a body. Probably most of the fourteen crew members, stunned by the impact and unsure of what to do, drowned when their planes sank. Their deaths, although tragic and unnecessary, are not
