"Flight 19" The secret of the disappearance of 5 US military planes in the Bermuda Triangle 76 years ago

On December 5, 1945, a group of five bombers on a training flight, called Flight 19, mysteriously disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle, after losing contact with the US Navy. The incident caused the world to start taking the myth of the Bermuda Triangle seriously.

"Flight 19" is a designation for a group of 5 US Navy bombers, which took off on a training flight on December 5, 1945 from a US Navy base in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the eastern United States.

The planes disappeared while flying on a routine training mission, none of their crew was mysteriously found, and a rescue plane sent to search for them disappeared and never returned, with a total of six planes and 27 men, they went and disappeared without a trace. The incident caused the world to begin to take the "Myth of the Bermuda Triangle" seriously.

The "Bermuda Triangle" is a mysterious region located in the Atlantic Ocean between the islands of Bermuda and Puerto Rico on the one hand, and on the other hand, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, and extends about one million square kilometers in the form of an equilateral triangle.

This area has puzzled scientists for many years, as it does not appear on maps, and has caused the mysterious disappearance of more than 70 ships and aircraft with their crews over the years.

Some believe that the disappearances were linked to supernatural causes, while scientists insist that there is a logical reason that may be related to the climate in that region, but some mysteries still puzzle them without a satisfactory answer to this day.

Routine training trip

Flight 19 conducted a routine navigation and combat training exercise with TBM-1Cs, and the mission was a mixture of bombing and navigation. On planes of the same model, each of the four trainee pilots earned about 300 total flying hours.

All planes were fully refueled, and pre-flight checks did not reveal any technical malfunctions, while the weather was "appropriate", and the sea condition was "moderate to harsh." The flight took off at about 2:10 p.m., Florida local time.

The training mission was going well, and the base operating base and other aircraft overheard normal routine conversations between pilots in the area during the training bombing, and at about three o'clock one of the pilots requested and received permission to drop his last bomb, and successfully dropped his bomb.

Loss of the compass or a supernatural mystery?

Transmitters and crew communication recordings indicate that, about an hour and a half after takeoff, an unidentified crew member asked a fellow crew member, Powers, to read his compass, and Powers replied, "I don't know where we are, we must have lost after that last turn." .

Basic Operations asked the pilot, Charles Taylor, if his plane was equipped with a standard "YG" device, which could be used to stabilize the flight site, but Taylor did not answer.

At 4:45, Taylor told the base, "We're going 030 degrees for 45 minutes, and then we're going to fly north to make sure we're not over the Gulf of Mexico."

At around 5, Taylor advised his flight to "change course to 090 degrees [East] for 10 minutes," and about the same time a crew member said, "Damn, if we can fly west, we'll go back to Florida; go west, damn it."

This difference of opinion later led to questions being asked during the investigation as to why the students were not heading west on their own, with the view that this could be attributed to military discipline.

'Unknown cause'

The wandering continued until the weather worsened and the sun set, and the radio became intermittent, and at this point the five planes were believed to be some 230 miles/370 kilometers in the sea east of the Florida peninsula. degrees west until we land or run out of fuel.”

When the loss of contact with "Flight 19" became apparent, the air bases, planes and commercial ships were informed of the incident, and a rescue plane set out to search for the flight and guide them back if they were still alive, but that plane also disappeared, which increased the matter of astonishment and ambiguity.

A 500-page report published a few months after the incident by US Navy investigators concluded that the flight commander, Lieutenant Taylor, erred after his compasses failed, causing the flight over the open sea to head away from land. The report was later modified by the Navy. to avoid blaming Taylor, while the same report attributed the loss of the rescue plane to an explosion in mid-air during the search for Flight 19.