THE LOST PATROL
©Lee Paul

Editor's Note: Be sure to visit the web page for the NAS Fort Lauderdale Museum for more information on the Lost Patrol, including some fantastic photos and actual communication transcripts. The link was sent to use 8 Oct 2010.  Very impressive site.

On 5 December 1945, five Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off on a routine training flight from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, Florida. Their mission was to take them on a 320-mile navigational exercise that should have taken them southeast, then north over Grand Bahama Island, then southwest back to their base. By all accounts, everything was normal. Yet fifteen minutes before the flight was due to end, Fort Lauderdale's radio tower picked up a frantic voice, "We seem to be off course. We cannot see land." Five hours later, the entire squadron vanished without a trace.

What makes the disappearance of Flight 19 so unusual is that over the years it has been embellished and exaggerated to the extent of becoming legendary. There have been hints of UFO's and alleged radio messages such as "Even the ocean doesn't look as it should" and "Don't come after me....It looks like...." Although no one knows for sure what happened, a recent discovery indicates that the truth, although complex, is far simpler than most people are willing to believe.

The disappearance of Flight 19 has become the linchpin of a modern legend of the supernatural. That legend has assumed many names: Triangle of Death, the Voodoo Sea, the Devil's Triangle, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic. This 400,000 square mile area in the western Atlantic extends from Miami in south Florida, northeast to Bermuda and southeast to Puerto Rico. According to legend, hundreds of ships and airplanes have vanished in this sinister marine graveyard, and the number of disappearances far exceeds the laws of chance. Today, thanks to an article written by Vincent H. Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964, we simply call the area the "Bermuda Triangle."

The Triangle's most famous victims are the fourteen men of Flight 19. In command of Flight 19 was Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, a cool, capable instructor-pilot with over 2,500 hours as a naval aviator. On board the other planes were pilots, radiomen, and gunners...all students in training. Even though they were in training, the four student pilots were all qualified naval aviators. Each had more hours in the air than the FAA now requires for a commercial license. They had gone through all their training---except that one flight.

Just before takeoff, Lieutenant Taylor made an unusual request. He asked to be taken off the roster because he didn't feel right about flying that day. He could have been feeling ill with an ear ache, or felt like he was coming down with a virus, or any number of physical afflictions. He did not, however, have a supposition of impending disaster as some would like to believe. Unfortunately for him, he was told all the other instructor-pilots were off base, and there was no one to take his place. Like it or not, he had to go.

At 2:10 p.m., the five planes left the runway and headed southeast. The surface winds were twenty knots, the skies were clear, and visibility was unlimited. Leaving Fort Lauderdale, the planes were to head on course 091 degrees southeast for fifty-six miles to Hens and Chicken Shoals (nicknamed "Chicken Rocks"), spend thirty minutes on low-level practice bomb runs, continue on 091 degrees for sixty-seven miles, and then turn to a course of 346 degrees northwest for a distance of seventy-three miles. They then would change to a course heading of 241 degrees and fly 120 miles southwest back to Fort Lauderdale. The estimated time aloft was three hours and thirteen minutes, including the practice bomb runs. They carried enough fuel for five-and-one-half hours of flying time.

Radio traffic indicated that the men successfully completed the practice bomb run. But at 3:10 p.m. on the second leg of the exercise, Lieutenant Taylor's compasses malfunctioned. He was heard to radio, "I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn." He then asked one of the students for his compass reading and the student radioed back, "We're at 330 degrees."

The communication center monitoring the flight was concerned about Lieutenant Taylor's defective compasses. His plane had two compasses, and both checked out perfectly during the preflight inspection. He also had a directional gyro, called a "DG." The DG, however, was normally set with the runway heading just prior to takeoff. The DG was also notorious for drifting and often had to be corrected to the magnetic compass settings. So if the magnetic compass suddenly became unreadable....

A short time later, Taylor radioed, "I am over small islands. Believed to be Florida Keys. I'm in the Keys, but I don't know how far down, and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale. I am over land, but it's broken. I'm going to swing down and take another look."

Lieutenant Taylor thought that Flight 19 was now in the Gulf of Mexico, flying over the Florida Keys. The reason he thought this can only be attributed to his faulty compass readings. It was also his first training flight in the area of the Bahamas, having served the previous six months at NAS Miami, with flights conducted over the Florida Keys. Believing he was in the Gulf of Mexico, Taylor ordered northeasterly and then due east headings. If they were in the Florida Keys, this heading would take them safely home.

At 3:40 p.m., a senior instructor pilot from NAS Fort Lauderdale, flying forty miles south of the base, heard Flight 19's plane-to-plane transmissions. He radioed, "FT-28, this FT-74. What is your trouble?"

Lieutenant Taylor, whose call sign was FT-28, heard the transmission and responded, "Both my compasses are out, and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land, but it's broken. I am sure I'm in the Keys, but I don't know how far down, and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale."

FT-74 offered instructions to FT-28 to guide him back home: "Put the sun on your port wing if you are in the Keys and fly up the coast until you get to Miami. Fort Lauderdale is twenty miles further, your first port after Miami. The air station is directly on your left from the port." He further radioed that he would fly south and meet them, believing Taylor's estimation that Flight 19 was, indeed, over the Florida Keys. By flying south FT-74 would intercept FT-28, only as FT-74 flew south, the radio transmissions became weaker and weaker instead of stronger.

Realizing that something was definitely wrong, FT-74 returned to NAS Fort Lauderdale and hurried to the operations room. "As his transmissions were fading, he must have been going north as I headed south," he related, realizing that FT-28 and Flight 19 could not possibly have been in the Florida Keys. Suspecting Flight 19 was over Bimini or the Bahamas, FT-74 earnestly requested to take another aircraft out and search for the Avengers in the area he was convinced they had to be, but his plea was turned down due to incoming inclement weather.

At 4:00 p.m., Lieutenant Taylor's voice was frantic when he talked to the commuication center. "We seem to be off course. We cannot see land. We're not sure of our position. We seem to be lost. We don't know which way is west. Everything is wrong. We can't be sure of any direction. We're completely lost...."

By 5:00 p.m., the short winter day was darkening, and the weather was deteriorating. Flight 19 was heading east and beginning to lose radio contact with their base. The communication's tower, however, did manage to monitor one last pilot-to-pilot communication: "If we'd just head west, we'd get home, damn it! If we'd just head west, we'd get home!"

A thirteen-man Martin Mariner PBM flying boat was dispatched from Miami to search for the missing airmen. It was a huge craft loaded with electronic tracking gear and carried enough fuel to remain airborne for twenty-four hours, but it had to turn back when its antenna iced over. A second flying boat took off from the Banana River Naval Air Station. By 7:47 p.m., after a few routine transmissions, it too fell silent. In a few short hours, the Triangle had literally swallowed up six planes and twenty-seven trained men.

By dawn the following day, the greatest air/sea rescue search ever launched was under way. The search lasted five days and involved 242 aircraft and eighteen ships. No trace was found...not an oil slick, not a piece of wreckage, not a life raft, not anything.

For the last fifty years, the disappearance of Flight 19 has been used by many as proof that the Bermuda Triangle does exist. The planes are said to have vanished inside some supernatural vortex and been whisked away to another world. Physicists have suggested the planes fell victims to a mysterious magnetic phenomenon that disrupts radio communications and causes flight instruments to malfunction, but there is no conclusive evidence of any of this.

In the early 1980's, aviation investigator, Jon F. Myhre, came up with a down-to-earth explanation. He was certain that he could find one of the missing aircraft just thirty miles off the Florida coast in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral. Myhre had scrutinized Flight 19's flight plan, radio transmissions, and the weather on the day of the disappearance for years. He reached the conclusion that if one fact was true, and another fact could be proved true, then he could find one of the missing planes.

Myhre knew that the flight was not following Lieutenant Taylor. As the instructor-pilot, Taylor would be trailing behind the rest of the flight, grading their performance. He was not, therefore, the navigator. The other pilots were doing their own navigating. But Taylor was in charge of the flight. If he said to do something, no matter how much the student pilots thought it to be wrong, the student pilots would do it.

Myhre also knew that the student pilots were familiar with the area, having flown it time and again. Lieutenant Taylor was not, as he had recently arrived at Fort Lauderdale. It would have been easy for Taylor to confuse the Abaco Islands in the Atlantic with the Florida Keys, since both island chains look remarkably similar from the air. Furthermore, after takeoff, the weather deteriorated, and it was no longer possible to distinguish directions because the area was under dense cloud cover. No one could see the sun, and they had to rely on their compass settings.

Knowing the above to be true, Myhre assumed another statement to be true---the student pilot's transmission that the compass reading was 330 degrees. If this was true and the flight really was on course, then Taylor's order to fly northeast in what he thought was the direction he should take to reach Florida, was a critical error. His instructions would have taken them further out to sea.

According to Myhre, Lieutenant Taylor finally listened to his student pilots and headed west toward the Florida coast. After the first plane crashed from lack of fuel, Myhre believes the patrol then turned back east, thinking they were really in the Gulf of Mexico. They were, by Myhre's estimation, only seven minutes from sighting land, but so confused about their position that they flew east and into oblivion, crashing one by one into the sea.

It is also possible that there were survivors from Flight 19. Within five hours of each other, two ships sighted flares, but everyone in the investigation believed the flares were search aircraft. Three days later, another ship spotted blinking lights---distress lights---on the water and discounted the lights as being from another ship. In Myhre's estimation, these signals were from the survivors of Flight 19, but since the search operation was concentrated on Lieutenant Taylor's estimated position that he was flying over the Florida Keys and then east into the Atlantic, these signals were not properly followed up. They were outside the area of search.

After carefully crosschecking all the available information on Flight 19, Myhre calculated the impact point of the first plane was thirty miles off the Florida coast at Cape Canaveral. Finding it would be an overwhelming task.

Then the unexpected happened. The worst national air tragedy in United States history occurred in 1986. On 19 January, Space Shuttle Challanger exploded moments after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. The debris fell into the ocean at about the same area Jon Myhre believed the lost Avenger to be. Quite by accident, the underwater search for the Challanger wreckage uncovered a plane submerged at a depth of 400 feet of water. Believing the wreckage was that of a twin engine DC-3, the Challanger searchers ignored it.

But Jon Myhre didn't, and in July 1990, using a submersible, he dived on the wreckage. He also knew that time might have obliterated any identifying characteristics the plane might have had. The Avenger has several distinctive features to it, and Myhre hoped to be able to spot any or all of them. One was the bomb bay located under the fuselage, another was the wheel well under the wing, and the most unusual feature was a balled turret behind the pilot which protected the gunman. Even though the plane Myhre found was upside down and partially buried in the sand, all three distinctive features were plainly visible. The submerged plane was an Avenger.

Jon Myhre knew he had an Avenger, but he did not know if it was one of the Lost Patrol. The whole eastern coast of Florida was one huge Navy pilot training area, and many Navy Avengers had crashed in the Atlantic. The problem became how to find out.

Using the submersible's mechanical arm, Myhre managed to remove the engine cowling. He hoped to discover a serial number that would match one of Flight 19's planes. But when he got the engine part to the surface, there were no numbers on it. Myhre began making other plans to salvage the wreck.

While Myhre worked on his problem, unexpected---and unwelcome---news arrived. During a routine search of the ocean's floor in May 1991, the treasure-hunting research vessel, Deep Sea, discovered five other Avenger torpedo bombers submerged in the waters off the coast of Florida. The five TBMs were in 700 feet of water, ten miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. Markings on the planes determined that they were from the Fort Lauderdale base, and their discovery ignited widespread rumors that the legendary Flight 19 had been found. Two weeks later, it was officially confirmed that the five planes were not the Avengers from Flight 19. Navy officials further reported that more than 130 aircraft litter the sea bottom in the area of the Bermuda Triangle---the area was a virtual graveyard for TBM Avenger torpedo bombers.

Jon Myhre and his associates then began a massive recovery operation in August of 1991. They called themselves "Project 19." From several previous explorations of the wreck, they knew it was in two pieces. Corrosion and the passage of years had separated the engine and propeller from the main body.

Project 19 first brought up the engine assembly hoping for a quick identification, but that was impossible. The engine was too corroded and covered with ocean debris. Project 19 then tried to bring up the Avenger's wing and fuselage section, but the coral encrusted relic weighed three times more than expected, and the crane's cable snapped. The precious cargo plummeted back to the bottom. After relocating the wreck and spending several hours reinforcing the wings, Project 19 finally hoisted the relic from its watery tomb.

The Avenger was taken to Marineland near St. Augustine, Florida, and numbers were collected from various parts of the plane. Several numbers partially matched those of one of Flight 19's planes, but the salt corrosion was too severe for positive identification.

The recovered plane does pose a possibility, however. It lay exactly where Myhre expected to find it from his painstaking research of the patrol's last flight. All his evidence indicated that by about eight o'clock, in bad weather and the dark of night, the Avengers simply ran out of fuel and crashed.

There is also evidence to explain the disappearance of the Mariner flying boat. Some twenty minutes after the Mariner left the Banana River NAS, observers aboard the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported seeing a plane on fire. It crashed into the sea with a hellish explosion. The captain radioed the following report:

"Observed a burst of flames, apparently an explosion, leaping flames 100 feet high and burning for ten minutes. Position 28 degrees, 25 minutes north, 80 degrees, 25 minutes west. At present, passing through a big pool of oil. Stopped, circled area using searchlights, looking for survivors. None found."

The USS Solomons, which was in the area at the time, sent a report confirming the tanker's observations. "Our air search radar showed a plane after takeoff from Banana River last night joining with another plane, then separating and proceeding on course 045 degrees at the exact time SS Gaines Mills sighted flames and in exact spot the above plane disappeared from the radar screen and never reappeared."

When the ship investigated, it found a patch of oil and debris where the flying boat must have crashed. The Mariner planes had a history of such accidents, and some pilots called them "flying gas tanks."

Although the Lost Patrol incident was certainly bizarre, it does appear that it was not inexplicable. In a 1975 book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery---Solved, author Lawrence D. Kusche said of the Triangle legend, "It began because of careless research, and was elaborated upon and perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning and sensationalism."

Still, why did both of Lt. Taylor's compasses fail so shortly after preflight checkout? And how did the airmen become convinced that the first leg of their flight had taken them so far south rather than east? Even with the most modern technology and suppositions, the evidence does not explain how a planned two-hour training flight became a wandering, five-hour flight to nowhere.