At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 took off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Led by United States Navy Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, an experienced pilot with approximately 2,500 flying hours, the squad was rounded out by U.S. Marine Captain Edward Joseph Powers, U.S. Marine Captain George William Stivers, U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant Forrest James Gerber, and USN Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi. Each of the trainees had 300 total and 60 flight hours in the Avenger and had recently completed other training missions in the area where the flight was to take place.

The exercise was a routine one, involving four legs. After take off, they were to fly due east for 56 nautical miles until reaching Hens and Chickens Shoals, where the pilots would practice some low level bombing. After that, the flight was to continue east for another 67 nautical miles before turning onto a course of 346° for 73 nautical miles, flying Grand Bahama island. The next scheduled turn was to a heading of 241° to fly 120 nautical miles, then turn left to return to NAS Ft. Lauderdale.

The first few legs of the flight went off without a hitch. But two hours into the exercise, Lt. Taylor reported that both his compass and backup compass had failed; he was unable to ascertain his position. Another flight instructor, Lieutenant Robert F. Co, who was forming up with his group of students for the same mission, received the transmission. “I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida,” Taylor reportedly said. “I am over land but it’s [the compass] broken. I am sure I’m in the Keys but I don’t know how far down and I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.” Co informed base that aircraft were lost, then advised Taylor to put the sun on his port wing and fly north up the coast to Fort Lauderdale. Other aircraft flying with Taylor soon reported similar equipment malfunction. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful.

At 16:45, Taylor radioed: “We are heading 030 degrees for 45 minutes, then we will fly north to make sure we are not over the Gulf of Mexico.” Only ten minutes later, however, he advised his flight to “change course to 090 degrees (due east) for 10 minutes.” By this time, the weather had begun to deteriorate and radio contact became intermittent. Around 17:50, Taylor radioed “We’ll fly 270 degrees west until landfall or running out of gas.” With this transmission, several ground-based radio towers were able to establish the squadron’s location north of the Bahamas and well off the coast of central Florida. At 18:04, Taylor said, “Holding 270. We didn’t fly far enough east; we may as well just turn around and fly east again”. Finally, at around 18:20, Taylor was heard saying, “All planes close up tight … we’ll have to ditch unless landfall … when the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.”

It was the last anyone ever heard from him–or any of his student pilots–again.

Knowing the aircraft had most likely been ditched into the sea, two Martin PBM Mariner flying boats originally scheduled for their own training flights were diverted to perform square pattern searches in the area of last known contact. Taking off with a thirteen-man crew at 19:27, the aircraft radioed the tower at 17:30 to let them know their mission was underway.

They were never heard from again.

The disappearance of Flight 19 as well as the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date; hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found. Naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence.

Conspiracy theorists tell another tell.

For the area in which these aircraft disappeared is one that had long-since been shrouded in mystery, a peculiar section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes were rumored to have already disappeared before that fateful day in 1945.

The Bermuda Triangle.

The official investigation blamed bad weather, instrument malfunction, as well as pilot disorientation and error as the cause of the accident. But, by then, it didn’t really matter. The enigma of the “Lost Squadron” had already help cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, from old wives’ tale to bonafide nautical danger.