Flight 19

[PM2K]

Hey all...

Thought I'd ask the resident experts about this one...

This is, of course, the flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the so-called 'Bermuda Triangle' on December 5, 1945. I understand it has been speculated the flight became disorientated and were flying in the wrong direction than the flight crew thought they were going when they ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

I'm wondering if anything new has been learned about it? I do recall some excitement years ago when wreckage of an Avenger was found off of Florida, but it turned out to have no connection to Flight 19. That was the last I heard about it.

[efs1845]

last time i saw anything was on the history channel and they were thinking the flight passed over florida and may have crashed in the loiseanna swamp and of course they have lots of evidence

[Green Heart]

I always prefer mysteries like that one to remained unsolved.

The Conclusion is always an Anti Climax.

[bbjohn]

This is one of those incidents some people like to use as evidence there's something weird going on in what has become known as the "Bermuda Triangle." From what I understand, much of the story has been embellished over the years.

The speculation I've heard is the commander of the unit got disoriented for some reason and was sending the planes off in different directions, never able to decide which way they should go. It could be he simply didn't believe what his instruments were telling him.

There was another plane that got lost in the search for Flight 19. A Martin Mariner seaplane took off and was never seen or heard from again. The Mariner was known for carrying a lot of fuel, and it was nicknamed the Flying Gas Tank. The most likely scenario is something set that fuel off and there was an explosion out at sea.

Of course, this is just stuff I've heard. I'd like to hear from some of the military experts on this site as to what they think about all this.

From what I hear, the area in question is one of the most heavily trafficked bodies of water in the world. There's a lot of commercial air and sea traffic, as well as a lot of private traffic as well. Given all that, and the sometimes unpredictable weather of the region, maybe it's no surprise so many ships and aircraft have disappeared here.

- Big Bad John

[rickyj]

I remember this famous story. Back in the 70's the bermuda Triangle was the "big rage" and everyone talked about it, wrote books, etc... That squadron of planes that disappeared was unique in that it was many objects all at once that vanished without a trace. I read that no wreckage was found of those planes(one theory is that they sank in QS at the bottom--highly unlikely), and yes there has been some controversary as to whether some wreckage found could have been from one of them, but I have a hard time believing all those planes would get disoriented and all crash with no wreckage found. I don't believe experiences pilots would all crash.Not all of them. Good recap of the incident here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19
Apparently the pilots reported all sorts of strange stuff just before they lost contact--some of you may remember reading that their gyroscopes were malfunctioning (they said they were "spinning around") and it was claimed that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." That quote comes from the official wikipedia article. There was a lot of confusion between the planes, and the weather apparently was getting bad also. The Navy/air Force later contended the commander got confused and led to them South and East, running out of fuel eventually.
The first wierd thing is that after they lost contact, a "search" plane went out and mysteriously crashed like 20 minutes later. No radio call of distress was heard from it. The wreckage was found immediately by a boat. Another wierd thing is that at some point when the squadron were totally lost, they apparently intended to just "fly west" until they hit Florida, but they never did get there--that's the big mystery. They SHOULD have hit land before running out of fuel. THeir last few reports had them somewhere 100-200 Miles East of Florida. Researches believe the "go west until Florida" plan failed because they had also veered too far South and were actually flying over, or even south of the Keys. The Air Force even went as far to speculate that the commander thought he was at some point WEST of Florida alltogether (hard to believe he would be that confused), so he actually went EAST to go back to Florida, when in actuality that was only leading him further East away from Florida. By the time he realized the mistake, they had to ditch (into rough waters) because they had no more fuel.
Bizarre things happened also when they did find wreckage. One Avenger was found in 1986, but it couldn't be positively identified. Then, the article says ALL of the Avengers wreckage WAS found off the coast of Florida, but NONE of them were from flight 19, because the engine serial numbers did not match. Now how can that make sense? Now we've got a paradox.
That's pretty much all we have to go on I guess, and even those reports (as are a lot of Bermuda reports) sketchy and vague. One thing is for sure, that a hell of a lot of things have disapeared in that area, leading some to think perhaps there is some natural/E.T. "portal" to another dimension or something located somwhere in that area. I tend to disbelieve that. Like someone said, it is a heavily-travelled area with a lot of coastline/water interactions that could lead to wierd mirage/meterological anomalies that could be leading to some of these crashes due to disorientation. Didn't JFK's kid die from that? Misjudging his altitutde because of a mirage effect? But the Wiki article goes on to say that the triangle region is not among the top most dangerous areas for travel.
There certainly is some evidence that something strange may be going on down there, but no one really seems interested enough to follow up on it. A lot of the vanishings happened a long time ago. That certainly would suggest natural causes being pretty likely--image if a jet vanished today or sometrhing...they'd never let it go until they knew what happened. In those days though there wasn't much they could do. We never hear about the triangle anymore.