Flight 19 Found: Bermuda’s 1945 Mystery Unraveled

Perhaps the most notorious disappearance in the Triangle, the fate of Flight 19 and the PBM Mariner has left even the brightest minds searching for answers. When Flight 19, a group of five Avenger torpedo bombers, took off from Fort Lauderdale on December 5, 1945, they expected their three-hour bombing trip to be as uneventful as the flights they had made countless times before.

Shortly after dropping their load of replica bombs, the patrol began having problems. Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor, an experienced pilot, believed that his compass had begun to malfunction and that Flight 19 had been flying in the wrong direction. Concerned, Taylor contacted another Navy flight instructor who was flying off the coast of Florida. As the weather grew worse and worse, Taylor objected to the protocol of pointing a stray plane toward the setting sun. Believing they were somewhere over the Florida Keys, Taylor adjusted course in an attempt to navigate the Gulf of Mexico.

Sensing Taylor’s mistake, some of his men questioned his decision to continue northeast and convinced him to turn around and return west. However, for unknown reasons, he turned the flight around again, still worried that they were somewhere over the Gulf. As the flight moved further from the ground, its transmissions became weaker and weaker.

Having flown more than their allotted, the crew began to worry that they would not be able to correct their navigation before running out of fuel. In his last broadcast, Taylor told his men that once the first plane fell below ten liters of fuel, they would all ditch together for a better chance of rescue. A few minutes later, the transmissions ended.

Convinced that the flight had ditched in the ocean, the Navy immediately launched a search and rescue operation. Two Mariner seaplanes were sent to search for the missing Flight 19. However, 20 minutes after taking off, one of the Mariners disappeared from radar. The 13 crew members, the five pilots of Flight 19, and the remains of any of the aircraft were never recovered.