FL The Disappearance of US Navy Flight 19, 5 December 1945, Bermuda Triangle

[Richard]

On 5 December 1945, a flight formation of five Grumman TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers, with crewmembers totaling 14 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, were on a Navigation Training flight from their home base in Florida. They became lost or disoriented over the Atlantic Ocean, and failed to return home.

A large, four engine, PBM-5 Navy patrol aircraft with a crew of 13 was sent on a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission in an attempt to locate the missing flight of Avengers. That plane, too, went missing that same day.

Here are the names of those missing Marines and Navy men:

The men of Flight 19

Aircraft number Pilot Crew Bureau Nr. (BuNo)
FT-28 Charles C. Taylor, lieutenant, USNR
George Devlin, AOM3c, USNR
Walter R. Parpart, ARM3c, USNR 23307
FT-36 E. J. Powers, captain, USMC
Howell O. Thompson, SSgt, USMCR
George R. Paonessa, Sgt, USMC 46094
FT-3 Joseph T. Bossi, ensign, USNR
Herman A. Thelander, S1c, USNR
Burt E. Baluk, JR., S1c, USNR 45714
FT-117 George W. Stivers, captain, USMC
Robert P. Gruebel, Pvt, USMCR
Robert F. Gallivan, Sgt, USMC 73209
FT-81* Forrest J. Gerber, 2ndLt, USMCR
William E. Lightfoot, PFC, USMCR 46325
Note: * This particular plane was one crew member short. The airman in question, Corporal Allan Kosnar, "had asked to be excused from this exercise."

PBM-5 BuNo 59225
Walter G. Jeffery, LTJG, USN (pilot)
Harrie G. Cone, LTJG, USN
Roger M. Allen, ensign, USN
Lloyd A. Eliason, ensign, USN
Charles D. Arceneaux, ensign, USN
Robert C. Cameron, RM3, USN
Wiley D. Cargill, Sr., Seaman 1st, USN
James F. Jordan, ARM3, USN
John T. Menendez, AOM3, USN
Philip B. Neeman, Seaman 1st, USN
James F. Osterheld, AOM3, USN
Donald E. Peterson, AMM1, USN
Alfred J. Zywicki, Seaman 1st, USN 59225

LINKS:

Flight 19 - Wikipedia

The Mysterious Disappearance of Flight 19

Flight 19 Disappearance: Most Likely Cause - Historic Mysteries

Flight 19 the Lost Avengers

 

[Richard]

Lt. Charles Taylor was the instructor pilot of Flight 19, the five Avenger torpedo bombers from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station that disappeared on December 5, 1945.



PBM-5 Mariner like the one sent out to search for Flight 19, and which also went missing.

LINK:

The Bermuda Triangle is it really an area of mysterious & unexplained disappearances

 

[Richard]

Charles Berlitz and his best selling 1974 book.

Charles Berlitz, a well known and published linguist, was considered the “father of the Bermuda Triangle” when he wrote his book The Bermuda Triangle in 1974. He believed that the strange disappearance of Flight 19 was subject to supernatural events and was a promoter of abnormal phenomena occurring in the Bermuda Triangle...

LINK:

Charles Berlitz's The Disappearance Of Flight 19: Analysis | 123 Help Me

 

[jetsfanjohn]

I think this one comes down to bad navigation, rather than anything supernatural. I seem to recall reading that the Flight Leader got disoriented and thought he was west of Florida and was flying over the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact the squadron were still east of Florida.

As a result, they continued to fly in an easterly direction, putting them further out to sea.

 

[Richard]

The loss of Flight 19 probably involved a combination of factors. Certainly they were disoriented and did not know their position, but there seems to have been a great deal of electromagnetic interference with the instruments on all five airplanes.

Communications between them and the ground station were in and out, but the ground station radio operators could hear radio communications among the planes in the flight, and it is from those transmissions that much of the information comes.

 

[Richard]

Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor, USNR
Flight 19 Instructor, FT-28

Charles C. Taylor was born October 25, 1917 in Nueces County, Texas. He was a United States Naval Officer. Taylor served in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. He graduated from NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, February 1942, and became a flight instructor October of that year. In 1943, he flew with Scouting Squadron 62 and later that year, he became a torpedo plane pilot with Squadron 7. From April to December 1944, he was aboard the USS Hancock as part of Task Force 38. Also part of Acorn 36 at NAS Miami Opa Locka, and Squadron 79.

He was recently transferred from NAS Miami to NAS Fort Lauderdale (November 21, 1945), where he served as a flight instructor. He had 2,509.3 flight hours, 616 in the Avenger torpedo bombers. He was the commanding officer of Flight 19. On the fateful day of 5 December 1945 at NAS Fort Lauderdale, Taylor (along with 13 other crewmen), was assigned to a training squadron of 5 Avenger aircraft that would be known as Flight 19.

The squadron was to perform a routine navigation exercise, and mock bombing run over the Hen and Chickens shoals in the Bahamas, and then return to the NAS Fort Lauderdale. Flight 19 completed their assigned exercise and on their way back about 90 minutes after takeoff, the squadron commander Lt. Charles C. Taylor reported that he was lost. By this time, the weather and sea conditions got worse, as the evening wore on. Over the next three hours Lt. Taylor mistakenly led Flight 19 far out to sea, where the planes apparently ran out of fuel and crashed.

Lt. Charles Taylor was initially found "guilty of mental aberration." Later on, his mother, Katherine Taylor, was successful in exonerating him of wrong-doing by filing her own investigation. Lt. Charles Taylor was exonerated in 1947, by the Board for Correction of Naval Records, in regard for "responsibility for loss of lives and naval aircraft."

The planes never returned to NAS Fort Lauderdale. Neither did a PBM Mariner rescue seaplane with 13 crewmen aboard that was dispatched to search for their lost colleagues. In total, 6 aircraft and 27 men disappeared that afternoon. A massive search was organized, and nothing was found. Their disappearance launched one of the largest air and sea searches in history, and began the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. To this date, Flight 19 remains one of the great aviation mysteries.

Instructor Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor, USNR was the lead pilot and instructor of Flight 19. His aircraft was a TBM-3D with BuNo 23307. His assigned Gunner was George Francis Devlin, AOM3c, USNR. His Radioman was Walter Reed Parpart, Jr. ARM3c, USNR. Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor was 28 years old...

LINKS:

Taylor
devlin
Flight 19 Crew

 

[Same ol' Karl]

Totally agree it's poor navigation on Taylor's part (point to note, Taylor had forgotten his wristwatch, a crucial component in pre-GPS days if one was to be aware of their position). I fly small planes, getting lost over water is amazingly easy if you can't even rely on such a basic instrument. But it's blind discipline that lost them, other members of the squadron seemed very well aware that they were over the Bahamas, not the Keys. Taylor must have been unusually unfamiliar with the area since the difference is easy to tell based on a variety of factors not the least being the size of the islands, position of the sun and dominant winds. I don't understand that even though Lt. Taylor was nominally squadron leader, another member of the unit held a higher rank (Captain) and could have taken over simply by stating "I have command" once it became clear that heading due West was their only way out, as USNR and USN statutes allow in such situations (deficit of command ability). To me that was always the real mystery.

EDIT: Regarding the TBM it is worth mentioning that this aircraft type was notoriously prone to fuel fumes explosion due to design faults. Its demise on that partiticular mission is likely a tragic coincidence. Debris from that aircraft was recovered, unlike anything from Flight 19.

 

[Same ol' Karl]

Their disappearance launched one of the largest air and sea searches in history, and began the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. To this date, Flight 19 remains one of the great aviation mysteries.

I respectfully do not agree that Flight 19 is "one of the greatest aviation mysteries" when so much evidence of human error surfaces. Don't get me wrong I'm no Triangle-basher, I really think something weird -natural or not- takes place there but I don't believe Flight 19 fits the criteria. Exactly what happened to them is a mystery but one with many possible causes that should supersede the paranormal because they are, simply put, more likely. So is what happened to Amelia Earheart or Antoine de St-Exupery (aviators will know who the legendary French pilot-novelist was). His P41 was found but no one knows how it got there (off Corsica) for he reported no encounter with German fire and there was none in the area. This man crossed the South Atlantic routinely in the 1920's haling mail for the iconic Aeropostale, ancestor of the DHL, UPS and FeDex of today. He was considered one of the best pilots in the world but vanished without a trail and yet, no one claims it was a mystery. To err is human.

 

[Richard]

...I don't understand that even though Lt. Taylor was nominally squadron leader, another member of the unit held a higher rank (Captain) and could have taken over simply by stating "I have command" once it became clear that heading due West was their only way out, as USNR and USN statutes allow in such situations (deficit of command ability). To me that was always the real mystery.

EDIT: Regarding the TBM it is worth mentioning that this aircraft type was notoriously prone to fuel fumes explosion due to design faults. Its demise on that partiticular mission is likely a tragic coincidence. Debris from that aircraft was recovered, unlike anything from Flight 19.

This was a training evolution, and LT Taylor was the designated flight leader. A Marine Corps Captain is the same rank as a Navy full Lieutenant. Regardless of rank, other pilots did have the responsibility of voicing their evaluation of the situation to the flight leader - and this evidently was done according to what ground based radio operators reported. Unfortunately, whatever force or anomaly was affecting the flight leader's instruments affected the instruments of the other planes as well.

All of the aircraft in Flight 19 were TBM's. These aircraft were designed by Grumman and manufactured by General Motors during World War II. The same type planes manufactured by Grumman were designated TBF. They were torpedo bombers and each normally carried a crew of three: pilot, Radio operator, and turret gunner.

 

[Richard]

A US Navy PBM 5 Mariner like this one also went missing that day, on a Search and Rescue mission looking for Flight 19.