The Biggest Mystery, Flight 19

The Myth.
On a clear day five Navy Avengers of flight 19 took off for a routine mission. The experienced crew had a route that would take them 160 miles east, 40 miles north and the 120 miles straight back to base. The planes were suppose to carry three man crews, but one crew member failed to show. Perhaps it was just coincidence, or was it premonition? The planes had done their required preflight test and every thing checked out in good working order. It was a routine two hour mission but the planes were still fully fueled. The planes had extensive radio equipment to include ten different radio channels and homing devices that would show them the way home. The first message that came from the patrol came in at 15:45: "Control tower this is an emergency. We seem to be off course. We seem to be lost. We can't make out where we are." The tower said "Head due west", but the flight did not know which way West was. "Everything looks wrong, even the ocean looks strange". The tower was puzzled; even if the compasses were not working, the crew should have been able to fly west by following the sun (which was several hours from setting). Finally around 16:25, the flight leader announced "We're not certain where we are. We must be 225 North east of base...it looks like we are..." and then silence. A Martin Mariner flight-boat with a crew of 13 took off to look for Flight 19. The Mariner sent several routine messages back to base before it, too, disappeared in the region where Flight 19 was thought to be. At 19:04, the last message from Flight 19 was received at base. It was only a faint message which repeated the letters FT FT, the call letters of Flight 19. The search for the planes continued for weeks, and even today the U.S. Navy has a standing order for crews to keep a look out for Flight 19. The military experts were completely baffled--how could 27 men and six planes just disappear? If the Avengers would have run out of fuel, the planes would have floated long enough for the crews to get out and onto their rafts. The men were well-trained in sea survival. The official Navy report stated that the planes had vanished "as if they had flown to Mars"The truth:Fact 1: Only the Patrol Leader Lt . Charles Taylor was an experienced pilot, and he had only recently been transferred to the US Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale. The other pilots, and all but one crew member were trainees.Fact 2: The patrol was to conduct a low-level bo mbing mission at Hens and Chickens Shoal south of the Grand Bahamas. Lt. Taylor tried to get out of doing the flight, most likely because he was hung over.( He had been at a partythe night before.) No one else in the duty rotation felt like switching with him.Fact 3: Soon after taking off, Taylor's compass went out, but he decided to fly by "dead reckoning" and "Pilotage". Fact 4: Taylor got screwed up because of his dead reckoning flying. He was not wearing a watch (something that has been assumed because he was always asking his crew what time it was). After several minutes of flying in circles, he saw a land mark that he thought he recognized. Taylor lived in the Florida Keys, and he mistakenly identified an island of the Bahamas as the island he lived on. He then issued an order for the flight to fly due North until they hit the mainland of Florida. It was getting late and the weather had been getting progressively worse. After about an hour of flying north and not hitting the mainland, Taylor issued an order to fly east. He assumed that they were now over the Gulf of Mexico.In fact, the flight had been flying north along the Atlantic coastline. When they decided to fly east, they started heading farther out into the Atlantic ocean.Fact 5: Flight 19 was in continuous contact with Base throughout the flight, up to this time, and the tower was aware that Taylor was flying without a compass. They asked Taylor to switch over to the emergency radio channel, but Taylor refused because one of his planes had a faulty receiver and he was afraid that if he changed frequencies he would lose contact with the plane. The weather was now a major storm; visibility was poor.Fact 6: Because of Taylor's refusal to switch to the emergency channel, Fort Lauderdale was picking up a lot of static on the line. It was also hard for the other radio stations along the coast to get a good fix on Flight 19. If Taylor had switched to the emergency channel, a fix could have been made almost immediately.Fact 7: It was raining: the weather was not clear and the sun could not be seen.Fact 8: A fix was made on the planes which put them around three hundred miles east of Jacksonville, Florida. When Taylor had thought he was lost, he was actually on course. If one were to back-track his flight plan from the point of where he thought he was lost, you will end up just South of the Bahamas.Fact 9: Several of the crew members were heard informing Taylor that if they headed West, they'd hit Florida. Because of their adherence to military discipline, they followed their leader. Fact 10: Fort Lauderdale sent vseveral messages to Flight 19. The flight was unable to receive the messages because of their distance from Lauderdale and all the interference from other radio traffic. If Taylor had switched to the emergency channel several other station could have contacted him. The other coastal stations id not have thefrequencies necessary to contact Taylor's group.Fact 11: The Mariner was not the only plane dispatched to search for Flight 19. It was the only one that blew up, almost on take off. The explosion was witnessed by several people and an oil slick and debris were found. The Mariners was notorious for having fuel leaks and were known as "flying gas tanks"; it exploded 23 minutes after takeoff, in the exact location were it should have been. Fact 12: Avengers may float for up to two minutes, if you're lucky, make a perfect water landing, and the sea is calm. You might be able to get out of the plane if the sea is calm, you are uninjured from the crash (you don't land an Avenger like you would a sea-plane) and there is light. Ditching in the sea is dangerous even under ideal conditions. Flight 19 was flying in a rainstorm at night, over rough seas, with pilots who had no experience at ditching a plane; they were students. The planes would have sunk like rocks if they ran out of fuel and had to ditch. It is doubtful from the last fewradio messages, that the planes decided to ditch together.Fact 13: It is common practice, upon the termination of any naval search, to conclude by stating that travelers in the area should remain on the alert. This order is never cancelled because it is part of termination orders. The Navy is not expecting to find Flight 19.Fact 14: The planes had flown far enough out to sea to have placed them off of the Continental Shelf. They were no longer flying over the shallow Caribbean water, but over water thousands instead of hundreds of feet deep. It is difficult to find sunken debris in such deep water.You decide. Is this a good story to tell around the camp fire or this a mystery that remains unsolved?for some reason people are always asking for photos of Flight 19. I don't have any. Here is the stock U.S. Navy photo of Avenger aircraft that appear in almost every book that mentions Flight 19.