+ bermuda triangle +
WASHINGTON -- The disappearance of Flight 19, a Navy mission that began the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, is still unexplained but not forgotten 60 years later.
The 27 Navy airmen who disappeared somewhere off Florida's coast on Dec. 5, 1945, were honored in a House resolution Thursday. Rep. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.) said he hoped the gesture would help bring closure for surviving families.
What happened is the question that has befuddled, entertained and tormented both skeptics and believers in the Bermuda Triangle, a stretch of ocean between Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami that many believe is an area of supernatural phenomena.
"There's just so many weird things here that experienced pilots would have not acted this way," Shaw said. "Something happened out there."
Compasses failed on lead plane
Five U.S. Navy Avenger airplanes left the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a routine training mission over the Bahamas. The five pilots and nine crewmen, led by instructor Lt. Charles Taylor, were to practice bombing and low-level strafing on small coral shoals 60 miles east of the naval station. They were then to turn north to practice mapping and then southwest to home. The entire flight, which Air Station pilots took three or four times a day, should have lasted three hours.
From radio reports overheard by ground control and other airplanes, the compasses on Taylor's plane apparently malfunctioned 90 minutes into the mission.
With no instruments to guide him over the open ocean, Taylor thought the flight had drifted off-course and was actually south over the Florida Keys. He directed the planes to fly due north to hit land.
"He was not in the Keys, he was out in the end of the Bahama chain," said David White, who at the time was a flight instructor stationed at Fort Lauderdale. "When he went north, he was going out to the wide ocean."
Just about the time the squadron was to have landed back at Fort Lauderdale, a last radio message from Taylor was received: They would keep flying "until we hit the beach or run out of gas." Due to weakening radio signals, no reading could be made on the direct location of the planes.
Radio messages show that some of the students wanted to fly east, said Allan McElhiney, president of the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Historical Association.
Yet military discipline overruled.
"You stay with the leader, that's the Navy way," McElhiney said.
The mystery deepened when a few hours later a Navy rescue airplane, a Martin Mariner with 13 crewmen, also vanished. No evidence of the Mariner was ever found either.
Copyright The Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
WASHINGTON -- The disappearance of Flight 19, a Navy mission that began the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, is still unexplained but not forgotten 60 years later.
The 27 Navy airmen who disappeared somewhere off Florida's coast on Dec. 5, 1945, were honored in a House resolution Thursday. Rep. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.) said he hoped the gesture would help bring closure for surviving families.
What happened is the question that has befuddled, entertained and tormented both skeptics and believers in the Bermuda Triangle, a stretch of ocean between Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami that many believe is an area of supernatural phenomena.
"There's just so many weird things here that experienced pilots would have not acted this way," Shaw said. "Something happened out there."
Compasses failed on lead plane
Five U.S. Navy Avenger airplanes left the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a routine training mission over the Bahamas. The five pilots and nine crewmen, led by instructor Lt. Charles Taylor, were to practice bombing and low-level strafing on small coral shoals 60 miles east of the naval station. They were then to turn north to practice mapping and then southwest to home. The entire flight, which Air Station pilots took three or four times a day, should have lasted three hours.
From radio reports overheard by ground control and other airplanes, the compasses on Taylor's plane apparently malfunctioned 90 minutes into the mission.
With no instruments to guide him over the open ocean, Taylor thought the flight had drifted off-course and was actually south over the Florida Keys. He directed the planes to fly due north to hit land.
"He was not in the Keys, he was out in the end of the Bahama chain," said David White, who at the time was a flight instructor stationed at Fort Lauderdale. "When he went north, he was going out to the wide ocean."
Just about the time the squadron was to have landed back at Fort Lauderdale, a last radio message from Taylor was received: They would keep flying "until we hit the beach or run out of gas." Due to weakening radio signals, no reading could be made on the direct location of the planes.
Radio messages show that some of the students wanted to fly east, said Allan McElhiney, president of the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Historical Association.
Yet military discipline overruled.
"You stay with the leader, that's the Navy way," McElhiney said.
The mystery deepened when a few hours later a Navy rescue airplane, a Martin Mariner with 13 crewmen, also vanished. No evidence of the Mariner was ever found either.
Copyright The Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment