Anomaly•Registry
AR-0115

Flight 19

Partially explained
Date 5 December 1945
Location Western Atlantic, off the east coast of Florida and the northern Bahamas. The flight took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, now Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport; the coordinates are the air station, because no position of the loss is known.
Coordinates 26.0725, -80.1528
Category Disappearances and Unsolved Deaths

Summary

On 5 December 1945 five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers with 14 men left Fort Lauderdale on a training flight and were never found. A flying boat sent to search for them, with 13 men aboard, was lost the same evening, and a tanker reported an explosion at sea.

The Navy's board of investigation found that the flight leader had mistaken his position and led the flight out over the Atlantic, where the aircraft ran out of fuel after dark in worsening weather. After his mother appealed, the finding was amended so that it no longer blamed him, and the cause was recorded as unknown. That amendment later became evidence for the Bermuda Triangle.

The Navy's account fits the radio record. It remains a partial explanation because none of the six aircraft, and none of the 27 men, has ever been found.

what the record says, against what the legend added THE RECORD 5 December 1945 "Both of my compasses are out" sure he was "in the Keys" worsening weather, night search plane: explosion, oil slick THE LEGEND from 1962 "the ocean doesn't look as it should" calm, clear skies vanished without trace the rescue plane too, unexplained THE AMENDED FINDING WAS ABOUT BLAME. the 1945 board blamed the flight leader's navigation. it was amended after his mother's appeal: no aircraft, no bodies, no finding against him. it named no cause. it did not report a mystery.
Figure Drawn by Anomaly Registry from the Navy board's findings and the flight's radio transmissions as published, the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum's account, and Allan W. Eckert's 1962 article in The American Legion Magazine. The left box is the 1945 record; the right box is the version that took hold from 1962.

What is documented

The flight. Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avengers from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale. The flight leader was Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor, USNR, an instructor with about 2,500 flying hours, most of them in Avengers. The other four aircraft were flown by student pilots, two Marine Corps captains, a Marine second lieutenant and a Navy ensign, with their crews: 14 men in all, one aircraft being a man short because a crewman had asked to be excused. The flight took off at about 2.10 pm on a navigation exercise: east to Hens and Chickens Shoals in the Bahamas for practice bombing, on to the east, north over Grand Bahama, and then south-west back to Florida.

Lost. About an hour and a half after take-off, Lieutenant Robert F. Cox, another instructor, airborne in a different aircraft, heard the flight on the radio. Captain Edward Powers, one of the students, was heard saying "I don't know where we are." Taylor told Cox: "Both of my compasses are out", and said he was over land and sure he was "in the Keys", the islands that run south-west from the tip of Florida. The flight had in fact been over the Bahamas, to the east. At one point a pilot was heard urging that if they flew west they would get home. Taylor remained in command and the flight stayed together.

Weather and night. The Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum's account records that conditions at the start were judged average for training flights, and that the weather worsened through the afternoon as a storm system moved down from the north, with squalls and strong winds reported. Radio contact became intermittent, and the sun set with the flight still out. Taylor told the other pilots that they would all ditch together when the first aircraft was down to ten gallons of fuel. The last transmissions from the flight were heard in the early evening; accounts put the last one at between about 6.20 pm and 7.04 pm.

The Mariner. Among the aircraft sent to search was a PBM-5 Mariner flying boat, Bureau Number 59225, from Naval Air Station Banana River, with a crew of 13. It took off at about 7.27 pm, sent a routine message, and was not heard from again. That evening the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported seeing an explosion and flames at sea off New Smyrna Beach, and then an oil slick. The escort carrier USS Solomons reported losing a radar contact in the same area. Mariners had a record of fuel vapour leaks when heavily loaded, and the Navy's investigators judged an explosion in the air the most likely cause.

The search. According to the museum's account, 248 aircraft and 18 surface vessels, including Solomons, searched more than 200,000 square miles of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. No trace of the five Avengers or the Mariner was found.

The finding and its amendment. The Navy's board of investigation concluded that Taylor had mistaken the islands he passed over for the Florida Keys, so that his attempts to steer for the mainland took the flight north-east, over the open Atlantic. It also noted his decision not to change radio frequency. Taylor's mother, Katherine Taylor, argued that the Navy was blaming her son without the bodies or the aircraft as evidence. The finding was amended to record the cause as unknown; the museum dates the change to 1947 and attributes it to the Board for Correction of Naval Records, which cleared Taylor of responsibility for the loss of lives and aircraft.

Wrecks that were not Flight 19. Several Avengers have been found off Florida and in the Everglades. An Avenger wreck found in 1986 during the search for debris from the space shuttle Challenger was raised in 1990 and was not from Flight 19. In 1991 an expedition led by Graham Hawkes announced five Avengers on the seabed off Florida; their tail numbers showed they were not Flight 19, and one was later identified as an aircraft lost in October 1943, whose crew survived. An Avenger crash site found in the Everglades in 1989 had the wrong Bureau Number.

How the legend was built. In 1962 Allan W. Eckert wrote an account of the flight for The American Legion Magazine in which the flight leader is quoted as saying "the ocean doesn't look as it should". In 1964 Vincent Gaddis's Argosy article named the Bermuda Triangle and made Flight 19 part of it, and Charles Berlitz's book of 1974 carried it to a mass audience. In 1977 Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind opened with the Avengers found intact in the desert and ended with their crews stepping out of an alien craft, under invented names.

Leading explanations

Disorientation, fuel exhaustion and ditching at night in a rough sea (the Navy board's reconstruction; accepted, not confirmed by wreckage). Taylor's own transmissions show that he believed he was over the Florida Keys when he was over the Bahamas. On that belief, the course he took to reach the mainland led away from it, north-east over the Atlantic. The board concluded that the flight ran out of fuel over the sea and came down after dark in worsening weather. Every element of this rests on the record except the place where the aircraft came down.

Compass failure (reported by Taylor; not verified). Only Taylor reported compass trouble, and the students' remarks suggest that at least some of them believed the flight should turn west. Whether his compasses failed, or whether he misjudged his position and then distrusted instruments that were working, cannot now be established.

An explosion aboard the Mariner (the most likely cause of its loss; supported by the tanker's report; no wreckage recovered). The Mariner disappeared minutes after take-off, and a ship in its area reported an explosion, flames and an oil slick. Nothing further is needed to account for it.

Anything anomalous (no evidence). Nothing in the record requires it. The region is not a place of unusual losses (see AR-0014).

What the popular version gets wrong

"Flight 19 vanished from calm, clear skies." The weather worsened through the afternoon, the sea was rough, and the flight was still airborne after sunset. The Navy's reconstruction has five aircraft running out of fuel over open water in the dark.

"The flight leader radioed that the ocean looked strange." The line "the ocean doesn't look as it should" comes from Eckert's magazine article of 1962, seventeen years after the flight. The transmissions attributed to Taylor in the Navy's record are ordinary and specific: his compasses were out, and he believed he was over the Keys.

"The Navy admitted it could not explain the loss." The board explained it, as a navigational error by the flight leader. The finding was amended to record the cause as unknown after his mother argued that the Navy had neither the aircraft nor the bodies to support a finding against him. It was a decision about responsibility, not an admission of mystery.

"The rescue plane vanished without explanation too." A tanker reported an explosion, flames and an oil slick in the Mariner's area that evening. Its loss is the better explained of the two.

"The wreckage has been found." Avengers have been found off Florida several times, most prominently in 1991. None has been identified as one of Flight 19's five.

Current status

Partially explained. The Navy's reconstruction, disorientation and fuel exhaustion over the sea at night, is supported by the flight's own radio transmissions and is not seriously contested by anything in the record. The Mariner's loss is best explained by the explosion a tanker reported. The case stays partly open because none of the six aircraft has been located, so the final positions, and whether Taylor's compasses really failed, are unknown. A wreck identified by Bureau Number would close most of what remains.

Sources

  • United States Navy. Board of Investigation into the loss of the five TBM Avengers of Flight 19 and PBM-5 Mariner Bureau Number 59225, December 1945, and the later amendment of its finding.
  • Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum, Fort Lauderdale. "Flight 19": account of the flight, crew list, weather, the Mariner, the search and Lieutenant Taylor's exoneration.
  • Eckert, A. W. (1962). Article on Flight 19 in The American Legion Magazine.
  • Gaddis, V. (1964). "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle." Argosy.
  • Berlitz, C. (1974). The Bermuda Triangle. Doubleday.
  • Spielberg, S., director (1977). Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Columbia Pictures.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.

Related records
AR-0014 The Bermuda Triangle No statistically anomalous rate of disappearance. Retained because the debunking is the record. Popularised 1950s to 1970s Debunked
AR-0054 Amelia Earhart The most searched-for disappearance in aviation. Still no wreck, still no body. 2 July 1937 Unsolved
AR-0122 Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 A Boeing 777 with 239 aboard left radar in 2014, turned back and flew on for hours. Debris has washed ashore; the wreck has never been found. 8 March 2014 Partially explained
AR-0001 Dyatlov Pass Incident Nine hikers cut their way out of their tent from the inside and walked into a night of extreme cold. All nine died. 1959 Partially explained

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