Flight 19: The 1945 Disappearance That Fueled the Bermuda Triangle Legend

Flight 19: The 1945 Disappearance That Fueled the Bermuda Triangle Legend

The phrase 'Bermuda Triangle' needs little introduction: it denotes a roughly 500,000-square-mile patch of the Atlantic bounded by San Juan (Puerto Rico), Miami (Florida) and Bermuda. Over decades the name has become shorthand for dramatic tales of vanished ships and aircraft, but most incidents in the area are explicable by weather, heavy traffic and human error.

What Happened on 5 December 1945

On 5 December 1945 five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers—Flight 19—took off from the US Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale for a routine training sortie and dead-reckoning navigation exercise. Fourteen men were aboard the formation; Lieutenant Charles Taylor, 28, an experienced pilot who had served in the Pacific, led the flight. Weather was reported as good and the aircraft were fully fuelled.

The planned route took the Avengers east to Hen and Chickens Shoals, then on a prescribed series of headings intended to return them to Fort Lauderdale. After the bombing run, radio transmissions show mounting confusion. At 15:40 one trainee, Edward Powers, said: 'I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.' Taylor reported 'both of my compasses are out' and later radioed that he believed they were 'in the Keys,' a mistaken position that would prove pivotal.

'I am over land... I am sure I am in the Keys, but I don't know how far down. I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.'

In reality the Avengers were likely over the Bahamas. Misreading their position led to a series of course changes that, if followed, would have taken the planes farther out to sea rather than toward Florida. As daylight faded and weather conditions worsened, fuel ran low. Taylor's final message, at about 18:20, was stark: 'All planes close up tight… We'll have to ditch unless [we make] landfall… When the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.' No wreckage or bodies from Flight 19 were recovered at the time.

Search Efforts and Further Losses

As night fell three flying boats were launched to search for Flight 19: a Consolidated PBY Catalina and two Martin PBM Mariners. One Mariner, PBM-5 BuNo 59225, left Banana River with 13 crew and called in its last message minutes after takeoff; it later exploded or sank, evidently due to fuel-vapour buildup a known hazard with that type. At about 21:15 the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported seeing large flames on the water near 28°N 80°W that burned for roughly ten minutes, but no confirmed survivors or identifiable wreckage from Flight 19 were found.

Official Findings and Continuing Mystery

The initial naval inquiry placed primary blame on navigation error by Lieutenant Taylor, concluding he had mistaken islands in the Bahamas for the Florida Keys. However, the report also noted reported compass failures. After public complaints, including from Taylor's mother, the formal record was amended to list the cause as 'unknown.' Objectively, Flight 19 fits the pattern of wartime training losses—Fort Lauderdale's naval training program claimed many lives between 1942 and 1945—but the lack of recovered aircraft or crew left room for enduring speculation.

The 1991 Seabed Discovery

In May 1991 marine engineer Graham Hawkes reported finding five Avenger airframes clustered upright about 750 ft below the surface. The announcement generated excitement, but experts could not conclusively read serial numbers and some airframe details suggested an earlier model than the 1945 TBM Avengers. With limited official follow-up at the time and competing priorities—Hawkes was funded to hunt treasure—the find faded from public attention.

By 2012 Hawkes said he had revisited the evidence and, after consulting a statistician about the improbability of five similar aircraft sitting together in the likely area where Flight 19 would have ditched, he believed his discovery might indeed be Flight 19. Because serials remain unverified and some technical questions persist, the claim has not achieved universal acceptance.

Why the Story Endures

Flight 19 is not necessarily an extraordinary accident in isolation, but its missing aircraft and crew, the additional loss of a rescue Mariner, and the later ambiguous seabed discovery have combined to make it the single aviation incident most associated with the Bermuda Triangle myth. The human fact remains central: 27 men were lost and never recovered, and that absence continues to invite speculation.

This article was first published in December 2020 and has been revised and updated.