Mysterious Disappearance Of Flight 19 Remembered
FT. LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – The disappearance of five Navy TBM Avengers on December 5th, 1945 off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale sparked one of the largest air and sea searches in history involving hundreds of ships and planes.
Search and rescue crews covered more than 200,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, while on land they combed Florida's interior in the hopes of solving the puzzle of what became known as Flight 19 and the Lost Patrol.
On Monday, Dec. 5th, a memorial service was held at the small "Navy Park", located on the east side of the FAA control tower of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, to remember the 14 men who lost their lives that day.
The fight was supposed to be a routine navigation exercise and mock bombing run of a concrete shipwreck just south of Bimini, just inside the so-called Bermuda Triangle.
It was a warm day with billowing clouds soaring overhead in the current of a gusting southwest trade wind. The temperature was 67 degrees. The general weather conditions were considered average for training flights of this nature.
The Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers were to fly from the Naval Air Station Ft. Lauderdale (NASFL) to the Hens and Chickens shoals in the Bahamas to practice and then return.
But 90 minutes after takeoff, squadron commander Lt. Charles C. Taylor reported that he was lost and could not see land. The weather and sea conditions got worse as the evening wore on.
Over the next three hours, he mistakenly led Flight 19 far out to sea, where the planes apparently ran out of fuel and crashed.
A search was immediately launched.
Scouring practically every mile of open water off the coast for the next three days, were six planes from the Third Air Force, 120 planes from the Navy Air Advanced Training Command and aircraft from the Air Transport Command, the Boca Raton Army Air Field, the Coast Guard and the RAF in Nassau. In addition, dozens of Navy and Coast Guard surface craft joined in the hunt.
No debris from the planes or bodies of the airmen were every found.
"I cry all the time, I can't help it, they were my friends," said retired Navy pilot Jack Bellow.
Bellow has a special tie to the mission because he was supposed to be flying with the team.
"It hurts me to think about it," Bellow said. "If I had been there, I wouldn't have to worry."
Retired pilot David Epstein said the key is to remember the sacrifice that all of the crew members made that day.
"We were all like brothers, so it was heartbreaking," Epstein said. "They say we were the greatest generation; I guess we were."
The disappearance of Flight 19 remains to this day one of the great aviation mysteries.
