Cold Open

It’s 6:30 PM on December 5th, 1945, 60 miles off the coast of Florida.

As rain batters his Avenger torpedo bomber, US Navy pilot Lieutenant Charles Taylor stares at his navigation equipment in confusion. The compasses spin wildly. The fuel gauge drops lower and lower. And he can’t see anything familiar out the window. Lieutenant Taylor is completely lost.

Just over three hours ago, Taylor took command of Flight 19, a five-plane training mission out of Fort Lauderdale. It was supposed to be a routine three-hour flight in mild weather. But it’s turned out to be anything but.

A clap of thunder shakes the aircraft. Lieutenant Taylor peers out the window again. He can see the four other planes he’s flying with, but little else.

He attempts to reach his base on the radio again. He last had contact 30 minutes ago. But now all Lieutenant Taylor can pick up is a high-pitched static.

While Lieutenant Taylor can’t hear his base over the radio, he can hear the voices of the other four pilots. Part of him wishes he couldn’t though. He knows they don’t trust him. But Lieutenant Taylor is sure he can guide them all back to base - he’s convinced that if they continue on their heading just a little longer, they’re sure to see land.

But then the needle on his fuel gauge hits zero, and his torpedo bomber’s engine begins to sputter. Lieutenant Taylor tells his crew to brace for impact, before giving one last order over the radio to the other pilots. When the first plane hits the water, the rest should ditch in the ocean with it. If they’re going down, they should go down together.

Despite the launch of a large-scale rescue mission, Lieutenant Charles Taylor and the other aviators of Flight 19 will never be heard from again. The loss of the five bombers will become more than just a tragedy, though. It will be the beginning of a mystery that will endure for decades. The Bermuda Triangle will be the subject of fevered speculation and countless conspiracy theories, after experts find it impossible to fully explain what happened to Flight 19 and its doomed crew on December 5th, 1945.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is December 5th, 1945: Flight 19 Disappears in the Bermuda Triangle.

Act One: Navigation Problem No. 1

It’s just after 1 PM at Fort Lauderdale Navy base in Florida, five hours before the last contact with Flight 19.

Lieutenant Charles Taylor glances at his watch as he hurries toward the briefing room. He exchanges greetings with a few airmen walking the other way, but then Lieutenant Taylor pauses in confusion. He’s sure he’s already passed these buildings. And in the distance he even recognizes the barracks he just left. Somehow, Lieutenant Taylor has ended up walking in a circle, coming back to where he started. With another panicked glance at his watch, he turns around and breaks into a jog, realizing he’s going to be late.

A few minutes later, Lieutenant Taylor bursts through the door of the briefing room apologizing profusely. Fifteen unimpressed faces stare back at him, including that of his superior officer, who coldly indicates for Lieutenant Taylor to take a seat, and then continues with the briefing.

Two weeks earlier, Lieutenant Taylor transferred to Fort Lauderdale with an assignment to train new pilots. With over 2,500 flight hours, Lieutenant Taylor is a well-respected and experienced pilot. He served aboard the USS Hancock, flying missions against the Japanese in World War Two. But recently, something’s been troubling Lieutenant Taylor. Ever since his arrival in Fort Lauderdale, he’s felt somehow off. He’s found it difficult to find his way around base, and he can’t shake an anxious feeling something’s going to go wrong.

Today, he’s meant to be leading the young men in this briefing room on a training flight. But it’s already got off to the worst possible start. Lieutenant Taylor’s face burns as he waits for a chance to speak and explain why he’s late. But when the officer finally turns to him, he doesn’t have any interest in excuses. Instead, he simply informs Taylor that he’ll be an airman down for this mission, as one of the trainees won’t be flying today. But the mission can otherwise continue as normal. Then he hands Lieutenant Taylor the briefing notes and leaves. 

Taylor takes the place of the senior officer at the front of the room and outlines the day’s exercise. The mission will see five single-engine Avenger bombers take to the skies above Florida. There should be three men in each plane, although one will now be crewed by just two. Together the fourteen men will fly to a target, conduct a mock bombing run, and then return to Fort Lauderdale. Lieutenant Taylor tells the other pilots he'll fly at the back of the group to assess their skills. And then, with a smile, he explains that once this flight is over, they’ll all have logged enough flying hours to graduate. The trainees grin back at him, and the air of tension caused by Lieutenant Taylor’s late arrival seems to lift.

Still, his tardiness means that the flight takes off 30 minutes late. But once in the air, they fly the first leg in neat formation, making their way to a shallow coral reef and flying low over it as though dropping torpedoes. The weather is clear as they complete their mission objective. And over the radio, Lieutenant Taylor informs his pilots that they’ve done a good job and that when they return, he’ll pass on his recommendation that they pass the course with flying colors.

But as the five aircraft set a course back home, confusion sets in. A sudden rainstorm hits, reducing visibility and forcing Lieutenant Taylor to take the lead. He tries to fly by instruments alone, but his compass begins to behave erratically, preventing him from accurately plotting his way back to base. After a while, one of the trainee pilots comes on the radio to question the direction they’re going—he thinks they’re off course.

Lieutenant Taylor is new to the area, so he allows the pilot’s opinion to change his own. He adjusts his heading. But it makes no difference. Taylor still can’t spot any familiar way markers. And soon, the other airmen in the flight are growing concerned. But Lieutenant Taylor is all too aware that he’s already lost face with the men by turning up late, so he’s unwilling to make things worse by admitting that he’s also lost.

Thanks to the baffling navigation problems they encounter, Flight 19 will soon be forced to ditch in the Atlantic Ocean. Not a trace will be left to indicate where they went down. But the 14 men in the training flight won’t be the only victims of this tragedy. Soon, another plane will go down in the same area—and the legend of the Bermuda Triangle will be born.

Act Two: Further Loss of Life

It’s around 7 PM on December 5th, 1945, at Fort Lauderdale Navy Base, five hours after Flight 19 took off.

Lieutenant Robert Cox taxis his Avenger bomber to the edge of the airfield, unbuckles his harness and jumps out of the plane. He leaves the rest of the crew to stand down the aircraft and runs through the heavy rain to deliver an urgent report to the base’s duty officer.

A few hours ago, Lieutenant Cox led a group of trainee pilots on a similar mission to Flight 19—a mock bombing run off the coast of Florida. But while he was in the air, Lieutenant Cox overheard a transmission from a pilot identifying himself as Lieutenant Charles Taylor. Lieutenant Taylor announced that his navigational equipment was down. He suspected his flight was near the Florida Keys, but didn’t know how to get back to Fort Lauderdale. Keeping his cool, Lieutenant Cox offered to find him and guide them back—but Lieutenant Taylor turned him down, saying it wasn’t necessary. So, Lieutenant Cox advised Taylor to put the setting sun on his left and fly up the Florida coast until he spotted Miami. Then, it should be easy to find his way back to Fort Lauderdale. But Lieutenant Cox’s subsequent attempts to contact Flight 19 failed. So, he decided to return to base and report the unusual exchange to his superiors.

But the base is already on high alert. Flight 19 is late returning, and radio operators haven’t heard from any of its pilots for hours. With the stormy weather making it almost impossible to communicate with planes in the air, senior officers at Fort Lauderdale are now formulating a search and rescue plan to find Flight 19 and hopefully bring the men home alive.

Eager to help, Lieutenant Cox finds the duty officer and tells him about his radio conversation with Lieutenant Taylor, how he was lost, and how Cox tried to guide him to safety.

The duty officer thanks Lieutenant Cox for his help. But Cox doesn’t leave. And when the duty officer gives him a look, Cox reveals that there’s something else. There was something off about his exchange with Lieutenant Taylor. He doesn’t want to get him in trouble, but Cox thinks that Taylor was suspiciously confused. He gave the wrong callsign for his flight, and he seemed evasive when Cox offered to fly to his position and guide him back to base.

So, Lieutenant Cox suggests that he gets back in his plane and returns to his last heading in the hope of picking up Flight 19’s signal again, but the duty officer shakes his head. There’s already a plane in the air trying to make contact, and the weather’s getting worse by the minute. Lieutenant Cox can only hope that Taylor followed his instructions, and brings his boys home safe.

So although Lieutenant Cox’s Avenger remains on the ground, two PBM Mariners do take off to join the search. The Mariners are flying boats designed for coastal patrol, and they each have rescue equipment and 13 men aboard. They soon separate and fly to their designated search areas. But after two hours in the air, contact is suddenly lost with one of the planes.

Around the same time that the PBM Mariner goes quiet, the captain of a surface vessel in the search area reports seeing a fireball plunging into the water. A US Navy ship races to the spot and finds gasoline on the surface. It soon becomes clear that the search plane must have suffered a catastrophic malfunction and crashed. The other PBM Mariner returns to base alone having found no sign of Flight 19. By the next morning, with no more word from the vanished planes, it’s clear they must have run out of fuel and gone down in the water too.

Lieutenant Robert Cox and the other Navy pilots at Fort Lauderdale will spend the next five days flying up and down the coast of Florida, searching for any wreckage or sign of life from the missing planes. In total, 300 ships and aircraft will be deployed to cover 300,000 square miles. They’ll find nothing, and the strange loss of six planes will soon provoke a host of conspiracy theories. But the US Navy won’t entertain them. And instead, they’ll find a scapegoat for the disappearance of Flight 19 - the man who should have led his  trainees safely home, Lieutenant Charles Taylor.

Act Three: A Mother’s Answer

It’s the morning of October 28th, 1947, in Corpus Christi, Texas, almost two years after Flight 19 vanished off the coast of Florida.

Katherine Taylor stands on the porch of her home, tearing open a letter that’s just arrived. It’s from the US Navy and contains news that Katherine has been waiting months for.

Ever since her son Lieutenant Charles Taylor disappeared in December 1945, Katherine has been fighting for answers. She was initially told that her son’s plane had been lost on a routine mission when weather worsened over the Atlantic Ocean. Then, months later, an investigation ruled that her son had suffered a “mental aberration” that caused Flight 19 to go down. It seemed that the Navy had concluded that her son alone was responsible for the deaths of the 14 men of Flight 19, and for the 13 rescuers who died when a search plane crashed a few hours later.

But Katherine refused to accept that. In the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, she couldn’t understand how the Navy could assign blame so easily. So, she sent hundreds of letters to the Navy, politicians, and the media arguing that it was unfair to scapegoat her son in this way. She even posted a $1000 reward for any information about what happened to Flight 19. In the end, her pressure campaign paid off, and the Navy agreed to revisit the investigation.

Now, as she reads the letter in her hand, Katherine’s body trembles with relief. The Navy has amended its verdict, and the official judgment into the presumed ditching is now “cause unknown.” Thanks to Katherine’s tireless work, her son Lieutenant Charles Taylor has been exonerated.

But although Katherine is pleased that the investigation has now returned an open verdict, exactly why the five planes disappeared will still remain a mystery. Numerous theories will be suggested. Some will link the tragedy to other planes and ships that disappeared in similar circumstances, creating the legend known as The Bermuda Triangle. In this region of the Atlantic, strange things allegedly occur - alien abductions, supernatural forces, strange magnetic phenomena. All will be blamed for the disappearance of Flight 19.

However, it’s now thought most likely that Lieutenant Taylor’s instruments malfunctioned and that the planes ditched in the ocean after running out of fuel. The PBM Mariner searching for it was then destroyed when a faulty fuel tank ignited in mid-air. It was coincidence and misfortune that lay behind these twin tragedies - not conspiracy or magic. But in the absence of physical evidence, the mystery of what exactly happened to Flight 19 will continue to endure, long after its five planes vanished in the Bermuda Triangle on December 5th, 1945. 

Outro

Next on History Daily. December 6th, 1912. An iconic sculpture of the Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti is discovered beneath the sands of an abandoned city.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.