Flight 19 Vanishes: Five Planes Lost in Bermuda Triangle

Five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers lifted off from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on December 5, 1945, for a routine training flight over the Bahamas and never returned. Flight 19, carrying fourteen airmen, became disoriented over the Atlantic, flew in circles as their compasses malfunctioned, and eventually ran out of fuel somewhere over open ocean. A Martin Mariner flying boat sent to search for them also vanished with thirteen crew aboard. Twenty-seven men disappeared in a single afternoon. The flight was designated Navigation Problem Number One, a standard overwater exercise. Lieutenant Charles Taylor, an experienced combat pilot with over 2,500 flight hours, led the formation. Approximately 90 minutes into the flight, Taylor radioed that both his compasses had failed and he could not determine his position. He believed the formation had drifted over the Florida Keys and ordered a northeast heading to reach Fort Lauderdale, but post-incident analysis suggests they were actually over the Bahamas, meaning the northeast course took them farther out to sea. Radio transmissions grew increasingly desperate over the next several hours. Taylor's voice was heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right." Other pilots in the formation urged Taylor to fly west toward the Florida coast, but as flight leader, he overruled them. Ground stations received fragmented transmissions until approximately 7:04 p.m., after which all contact ceased. The Mariner search plane likely exploded in midair, as a merchant ship reported seeing a fireball. The Navy's official investigation blamed Taylor's navigational errors but later amended the finding to "causes unknown" after his family protested. The disappearance of Flight 19 became the foundational legend of the Bermuda Triangle, a term coined by writer Vincent Gaddis in 1964. While the most likely explanation is straightforward navigational failure compounded by fuel exhaustion, the mystery has spawned decades of speculation about the stretch of ocean between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.