Flight 19
Five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers vanished on a training flight from Fort Lauderdale on 5 December 1945, and a flying boat sent to search for them was also lost.
1945 CE · 26.12, -80.14 · status: explained
The account
All 14 airmen of the flight and 13 crew of the PBM Mariner died. The Navy's investigators concluded that the leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, mistook islands for the Florida Keys after his compasses failed and led the flight out to sea; the report was later amended to 'cause unknown' to avoid blaming him. The Mariner was thought to have exploded in mid-air. The loss became the founding story of the Bermuda Triangle.
The sceptical view
Disorientation, bad weather, fuel exhaustion and night ditching in the open Atlantic explain the loss; the Navy attributed the Mariner's loss to a mid-air explosion.
Connections in the atlas
- SS Cotopaxi
- The Bermuda Triangle
- ? Is the Bermuda Triangle really dangerous?
- Airborne Transport DC-3 disappearance
- The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved
- Disappearance of the Witchcraft
- "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" (Argosy)
- C-119 Flying Boxcar lost near Grand Turk
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- BSAA Star Tiger
- USS Cyclops
- The Bermuda Triangle