As its an anniversary!!!!
December 5: General Interest
1945 : Aircraft squadron lost in the Bermuda Triangle
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight
19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a
routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take
them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a
final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They
never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had
been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his
compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was
unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions.
Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the
lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of
confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from
the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his
men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack
of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that
Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida
coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off
with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed
to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never
heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off
the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the
Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date,
and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of
the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within
the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever
found.
Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six
aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed
the evidence, the story of the "Lost Squadron" helped cement the
legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where
ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda
Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to
Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Harry in Connecticut
At about 2:10 p.m. on the afternoon of 5 December 1945, Flight 19, consisting of five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers (manufactured by the Eastern Aircraft under license from Grumman) departed from the U. S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on an authorized advanced overwater navigational training flight. They were to execute navigation problem No. 1, which is as follows: depart 26 degrees 03 minutes north and 80 degrees 07 minutes west and fly 091 degrees distance 56 miles to Hen and Chickens Shoals to conduct low level bombing, after bombing continue on course 091 degrees for 67 miles, fly course 346 degrees distance 73 miles and fly course 241 degrees distance 120 miles, then returning to U. S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
We do, to this day, continue to make jokes over the communications systems in regards to this area.
