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Bermuda Triangle

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Bermuda Triangle

Case File: Bermuda Triangle
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Date: December 5, 1945
Description: The Bermuda Triangle is a area of the Mid-Atlantic incorporating the islands of Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the tip of Florida generally and loosely depicted as a triangle. The area and surroundings have long had a reputation as being an area where ships and planes semi-regularly vanish.

Case

History: The Bermuda Triangle is a 400,000 square mile area in the Western Atlantic that extends from the south of Florida, northeast to Bermuda, and southeast to Puerto Rico. According to aficionados of the area, since the late 1800s to the early 1900s, over 200 ships and planes have reportedly disappeared in this region. Among the disappearances are the Mary Celeste, U.S.S. Cyclops, which vanished on March 4, 1918 with 306 people aboard, the Carroll A. Deering, which was found abandoned on January 31, 1921 with no trace of its twelve-person crew; a Douglas DC-3, which vanished on December 28, 1948 with 32 people aboard, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, which vanished on February 4, 1963 with 39 people aboard; and a C-119 Transport plane, which vanished on June 4, 1965 with 10 people aboard. Due to its reputation, the area has also been dubbed "The Devil's Sea," “The Triangle of Death,” "The “Hoodoo Sea” and the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Though at least 1,000 lives have reportedly been lost, the Triangle’s most famous victims were five Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. On December 5, 1945, they took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a routine training flight. There were fourteen men, both Navy and Marines, on board. The mission was known as “Flight 19”. Five hours after they took off, the entire squadron vanished without a trace. Their disappearance became the linchpin of this modern legend of the supernatural.
For decades, the disappearance of Flight 19 has been used by many as proof that the Bermuda Triangle does exist. The five planes were said to have vanished inside some supernatural vortex and then whisked away to another world. But recently, a former helicopter pilot, Vietnam veteran, and aviation investigator named Jon Myhre has come up with a more down-to-Earth explanation. He is certain that he has found one of the missing aircraft just thirty miles off the Florida coast. If he is correct, then one of the most intriguing unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century may finally be explained.
In 1982, Myhre founded a corporation dedicated to finding Flight 19. For years, he has scrutinized its flight plan, radio transmissions, and the weather on the day of the disappearance. He believed that he could use this information to find one of the airplanes. In Summer 1990, using the latest in modern technology, he mounted his fourth underwater expedition looking for one of the lost planes. In order to pinpoint its final resting place, he has carefully reconstructed the last flight of the lost Avengers.
It all began at the Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on the afternoon of December 5, 1945. Twenty-eight-year-old Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor was assigned to command Flight 19. Known as a cool, capable pilot, he had logged over 2,500 hours as a naval aviator. He had previously fought in the Pacific Theater during World War II. However, he was also known to have run into issues while flying before. On two occasions, while flying in the Pacific, he had gotten lost and was forced to ditch in the ocean.
Before takeoff, a senior operations officer briefed the crewmen of Flight 19 on their routine training exercise, called “Navigation Problem #1.” Lt. Taylor arrived late to the briefing. Just before takeoff, he made an unusual request. He asked to be replaced on the flight, saying that he was not feeling up to it. When asked why, he said he just did not feel right and would rather not be in the air that day.
However, the senior operations officer told Lt. Taylor that he had to fly because all of the other instructors were off the base. Some people later speculated that Lt. Taylor was a “party animal” and had been out drinking the night before. Myhre does not believe that; he believes there could have been a number of reasons, such as an ear infection or the flu, that could have led Lt. Taylor to feel that way. He says it was Lt. Taylor’s duty as a pilot to say that he did not want to fly for whatever reason.
The five planes used for Flight 19 were reliable and in good condition. Each was fully fueled before takeoff. During pre-flight checks, it was discovered that they were all missing clocks. However, that was not considered an issue because all of the pilots were supposed to have watches (as it turned out, Lt. Taylor did not have one). At 2:10pm, they left the runway and headed east.
Leaving Fort Lauderdale, the planes were scheduled to head 56 nautical miles southeast to the Hens and Chickens Shoals in the Bahamas. They planned to make a practice bomb run there and then fly a further 67 miles southeast. After that, they were scheduled to turn and fly 73 miles northwest, passing Grand Bahama Island along the way. Finally, they were scheduled to turn again and head 120 miles southwest back to Fort Lauderdale.
Flight 19 researcher Dianne Lawes says that the flight consisted of four student pilots who were qualified naval aviators. They each had more hours in the air than the FAA requires now for a commercial license. They had gone through all of their training except for this one flight. It was their last one before graduation. The student pilots were not following Lt. Taylor; he was the instructor pilot and was trailing behind the rest of the flight. He was grading their performance. He was not doing any of the navigating; the other pilots were doing their own navigation.
Radio traffic indicated that the men successfully completed the practice bomb run at 3pm. But at approximately 3:10pm, on the second leg of the mission, Lt. Taylor’s compass began to malfunction. The student pilot who was acting as the flight leader said that he was unsure of their location and believed that they had gotten lost after their last turn. Lt. Taylor asked another airman what his compass reading was. The airman reported 330 degrees. Myhre believes the information given by the students was accurate. For some reason, Lt. Taylor was convinced that they were lost.
At the Fort Lauderdale Air Station, the communications center monitoring the flight became concerned about Lt. Taylor’s defective compasses. At 3:45pm, he told the center that he was over land that was “broken” that he believed was the Florida Keys. He was not sure at what part of the Keys he was over, nor did he know how to get back to Fort Lauderdale. A senior flight instructor flying with a different squadron overheard Flight 19’s communications and asked Lt. Taylor if he needed help. The instructor said he would fly to Lt. Taylor and help him. Lt. Taylor, however, then said, “I know where I am now…Don't come after me."
Unknowingly, Lt. Taylor had made a critical error. He thought that Flight 19 was in the Gulf of Mexico, flying over the Florida Keys. Navy investigators and Myhre believe that, in actuality, the flight was 300 miles northeast of Lt. Taylor’s estimated location, flying over the Abaco Islands (part of the Bahamas) in the Western Atlantic. From the air, the two island chains look remarkably similar. Shortly after saying he was over the Keys, Lt. Taylor said he was over an island and no other land was visible. Myhre believes that island was Walker’s Cay, also in the Bahamas.
Lt. Taylor took the lead of the flight, ordering northeasterly, then due east headings. Had they been over the Keys, this route would have taken them safely home. Instead, according to Myhre, it took them further out to sea. He believes that the students, who had flown through the area before, knew that Lt. Taylor was wrong. However, Myhre notes that if an instructor pilot tells them to do something, they will do it.
At 4:45pm, the base asked Lt. Taylor to switch his radio to the “search and rescue” frequency. He refused, saying, “I cannot switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact.” He was afraid that he would lose communication with the other planes if he did so. For reasons unknown, he and the other pilots never turned on their ZBX receivers, which could have helped lead them toward Navy radio towers on land.
By 5pm, the short winter day had darkened and the weather and sea conditions were deteriorating. Flight 19 was heading east, away from their base, and they were beginning to lose radio contact. The base did monitor one of the squadron’s last pilot-to-pilot communications: “If we just headed west, we’d get home. Damn it, if we’d just head west, we’d get home.” Fuel was low and time was running out. Navy investigators and Myhre believe that, at 5:15pm, Lt. Taylor finally listened to his student pilots and headed west towards the Florida coast. At 5:24pm, he radioed, “We'll fly 270 degrees west until landfall or running out of gas.”
By 5:50pm, Flight 19’s last known location was determined, based on radio triangulation, to be about 150 miles east of Daytona Beach, Florida. For reasons unknown, this information was not relayed to the flight. Myhre believes they flew due west for forty-nine minutes until the first airplane ran out of fuel and crashed at around 6:04pm. Around that time, an unidentified voice said over the radio, "We may have to ditch any minute," followed by Lt. Taylor anxiously saying, "Do you read? Do you read?"
A few minutes later, Lt. Taylor said to the other pilots, “Holding 270. We didn't fly far enough east; we may as well just turn around and fly east again.” In Myhre’s reconstruction, the surviving four pilots then made a fatal error. Although they were only seven minutes away from the Florida coast, they still had not spotted land. They began to believe that they must be flying over the Gulf of Mexico. For this reason, they again reversed their course and headed east.
But instead of going towards Florida, their new course took them back out to sea. At 6:20pm, Lt. Taylor’s last message was received: “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.” By 8pm, the other four planes had disappeared beneath the waves. The legend of Flight 19 had begun.
Over the next five days, the Navy mounted the largest air-sea search ever conducted up to that time. Hundreds of ships and planes, including units of the Army and Coast Guard, were involved. They covered more than 200,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. No trace of Flight 19’s planes or its fourteen men was ever found. Former Avenger pilots believe that if the planes tried to ditch in the water, the pilots almost certainly would not have survived it. However, Myhre believes that some of the men did initially survive and were drifting at sea, slowly running out of food and water.
Myhre says that two ships sighted flares within five hours of each other. Those involved in the investigation say that the flares were from search aircraft. However, Myhre says that he found out when the search aircraft took off and where they went. He says that the aircraft were not in the area where the flares were sighted. Three days later, another ship spotted some blinking lights, possibly distress lights, on the water. The ship discounted these lights as coming from another ship. Myhre believes they were from Flight 19.
After cross-checking all of the available information on Flight 19, Myhre calculated the impact point of the first plane as being thirty miles off the Florida coast near Cape Canaveral. But finding a single Avenger in the ocean was an overwhelming task, until, ironically, a national tragedy made it possible. On January 19, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded moments after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. Some of the debris fell in the precise location where Myhre believes the first plane had ditched.
Quite by accident, the underwater search for the Challenger wreckage may have uncovered what Myhre was looking for. Just thirty miles from Cape Canaveral, the salvage team located a plane wreck submerged in 400 feet of water. Believing the wreckage was that of a twin engine DC-3, they ignored it. But to Myhre, this discovery appeared to be the vindication of his theory.
In July 1990, Myhre was on board a submersible as it prepared to dive 400 feet to inspect the wreckage. He knew that forty-five years might have obliterated many of the plane’s identifying characteristics. He says they knew they had a wreck, but they did not know what type of airplane it was. He was excited and nervous to go on the dive. As they first approached the location of the wreck, they could see nothing in the murky water. Then, the wing of a plane became visible. But was it the right plane?
One distinctive feature of the Avenger is its bomb bay, located under the fuselage. The submerged plane was upside down. When they inspected it, the bomb bay cavity was clearly visible. Another distinctive feature of the Avenger is its wheel well. While looking at the submerged plane, the well can clearly be seen on the underside of the wing.
Perhaps the Avenger’s most unusual feature is the ball turret, which protected the gunner behind the pilot. Even though the plane that Myhre found was upside down and partially buried in the sand, the unique crosshatch of the turret’s window frame was clearly visible. Myhre was certain that the plane found was an Avenger. He says it was incredible to see the wreckage after all the years of research and searching.
It was obvious that Myhre had found an Avenger, but was it one of the Avengers of the lost Flight 19? Through the manipulation of the submersible’s mechanical arm, he removed the engine cowling. He was hoping that a serial number could be found that would confirm that this Avenger had been part of Flight 19. But after raising the cowling to the surface, he was unable to find any serial numbers. A number on one of the wings seemed to partially match one of the lost Avengers. But more than forty years of coral, barnacle, and sponge growth on the plane made positive identification impossible.
Myhre says that the only way to prove that the Avenger is from Flight 19 is if they can raise it out of the water. He says it will remain a mystery until they can raise it. If it can be identified as belonging to Flight 19, the legend of the Bermuda Triangle will have to be rewritten. It is not as romantic to say that the flight disappeared due to a tragic chain of simple mistakes, but if Myhre is correct, this is precisely what happened. No matter what the explanation, the fourteen men of Flight 19 deserve to be honored, not as victims of the supernatural, but as brave men who died in the service of their country.
Background: The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a 1950 Miami Herald article. Two years later, another article was the first to point out the triangular area where the disappearances took place. It was also the first to suggest that the supernatural was involved in the disappearance of Flight 19. The flight is said to have helped popularize the Triangle’s legend.
The planes used for Flight 19 were TBM Avengers, Grumman-designed torpedo bombers that ranked among the largest single-engine warplanes ever built. With a forty-six-foot fuselage, a fifty-four-foot wingspan and a crew of three, the Avenger has a 1,600-horsepower engine and a top speed of 300 mph.
Along with Lt. Taylor, Flight 19’s crew were: nineteen-year-old Burt Edward Baluk, Jr., twenty-year-old Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi, seventeen-year-old George Francis Devlin, Jr., twenty-five-year-old Sgt. Robert Francis Gallivan, twenty-four-year-old 2nd Lt. Forrest James Gerber, eighteen-year-old Pvt. Robert Peter Gruebel, twenty-six-year-old Capt. Edward Joseph Powers, nineteen-year-old Pfc. William Earl Lightfoot, twenty-eight-year-old Sgt. George Richard Paonessa, eighteen-year-old Walter Reed Parpart, Jr., twenty-year-old ​Sgt. Howell Orrin Thompson, twenty-five-year-old Capt. George William Stivers, Jr., and nineteen-year-old ​Herman Arthur Thelander.
In a tragic coincidence, another plane disappeared while trying to search for Flight 19. Shortly after learning of the flight’s predicament, two PBM Mariner flying boats were dispatched from the Naval Air Station in Melbourne, Florida, carrying rescue equipment. Less than a half hour later, one of the flying boats radioed the tower and said they were near Flight 19’s last assumed position. The flying boat and its thirteen men were never heard from again. However, witnesses on a nearby boat reported seeing an explosion and what appeared to be an airplane falling from the sky around that time. Despite a search of the area, only an oil slick was found.
In another bizarre and tragic coincidence, two months before Flight 19’s disappearance, Capt. Powers was flying in a TBM Avenger when his gunner, Michael Belvito, disappeared. When Capt. Powers landed, it was discovered that Belvito’s door and parachute were gone. No trace of him was ever found.
There were some other bizarre stories regarding Flight 19 as well. Several hours before its disappearance, Capt. Powers’ wife had a “premonition” and called the base. It is not known exactly what the premonition was about. A few days later, the family of Sgt. Paonessa received a telegram from the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, stating, “You have been misinformed about me. Am very much alive.” It was signed “Georgie”, his nickname. Although many believed that the telegram was a hoax, it was noted that only close family members knew of his nickname.
Lt. Taylor was initially found guilty of “mental aberration” regarding Flight 19’s disappearance. However, his mother, Katherine, did not believe this. After undergoing her own investigation, she was able to convince the Board for Correction of Naval Records to exonerate him in 1947.
Investigations: There are several theories surrounding the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Some of the more outlandish include: the planes and ships went through some sort of “supernatural vortex” which took them to another world; they were abducted by aliens; or the lost city of Atlantis had some sort of effect on them. More natural explanations include: compass variations, the Gulf Stream, human error, violent weather (such as hurricanes), and methane hydrates.
One theory regarding Flight 19’s disappearance is that the planes flew into a “strong electromagnetic disturbance” that interfered with their compasses. Another, more practical theory, is that Lt. Taylor simply “lost his bearings” after his compass failed, inadvertently leading them out into the Atlantic Ocean. It is believed that they then ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean, about 150 miles east of Daytona Beach.
Myhre has been investigating Flight 19’s disappearance for years. After studying radio communications and other information surrounding the flight, he agrees with the most practical theory: that Lt. Taylor unintentionally led the flight off course and into the open ocean. Based on his calculations, he believes that one of the planes ditched in the water off Cape Canaveral. In 1986, an Avenger was discovered there. In 1990, he and his team went in a submersible to look at the wreck. They hope to raise it and determine whether or not it is from Flight 19.
Author Larry Kusche has investigated many of the claims surrounding the Bermuda Triangle. He concluded that the number of ships and aircraft that have gone missing in the area was not significantly greater than any other region in the ocean and that several “facts” about the Triangle have been either exaggerated or falsified. His research from original newspaper articles, insurance records and Coast Guard files reveals that over time several items such as storms, weather conditions and tidal waves went unreported to perpetuate the legend. His findings also discovered erroneous data passed off as facts, fictional crafts conceived to pad the list of disappearances as well as losses attributed to the Triangle that occurred no where near it. Several other organizations, including the Coast Guard, also do not believe that the area is particularly mysterious or dangerous.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the September 26, 1990 episode. A significant update to it aired on September 11, 1991.
  • The update was not included in the FilmRise release of the Robert Stack episodes.
  • Flight 19 has been mistakenly called “The Lost Patrol” as it was a training flight, not a patrol one. Also, the segment incorrectly states that the Bermuda Triangle is in the Eastern Atlantic.
  • Several books and movies have been made about it or featured it, including: Myhre's 2012 book, The Discovery of Flight 19; Charles Berlitz's 1974 book, The Bermuda Triangle; and the 1977 film, Close Encounters with the Third Kind.
Bermuda triangle5 wreckage

Avenger Wreckage

Results: Unsolved - Shortly after this story aired, five other Avenger torpedo bombers were found submerged in the waters off Fort Lauderdale. Their discovery ignited widespread speculation that Flight 19’s planes had finally been found. But just two weeks later, it was officially confirmed that the five planes were not the Avengers from Flight 19. This came as no surprise to Myhre. In August 1991, he and his partners Larry Schwartz and Dianne Lawes mounted a massive recovery operation known as “Project 19.”
Thirty miles off the Florida coast, a specially equipped four-man submersible was launched to pinpoint the location of the Avenger plane that had previously been discovered in 1986. Previous dives revealed that the engine and propeller had separated from the main body. They planned to bring the wreckage up in two sections, beginning with the engine and propeller assembly.
Myhre says there was a Navy bureau number and engine manufacturer’s number on the engine. There was also a manufacturer’s stamp number on the engine block. He figured that if they could raise the engine, they could make a positive identification. However, he also noted that it was not known how much corrosion occurred to it over time.
The submersible’s robotic arm maneuvered nylon straps around the propeller and engine housing. 400 feet above, a fifty ton crane began slowly raising the wreckage from beneath the sea. Thirty-five minutes later, the propeller and engine assembly was hoisted onboard. The condition of the wreckage quickly dashed hopes for an immediate identification of the plane.
The Project 19 crew then planned the next and most crucial phase: the recovery of the plane’s wing and fuselage section. Schwartz and other crew members went down in the submersible to begin rigging up the fuselage. Three hours later, the rigging was complete. The crew of the submersible attached a primary lift cable to the specially designed harness that cradled the plane. The huge crane then began the delicate task of lifting it 400 feet to the surface.
The coral-encrusted plane weighed approximately three times more than anticipated. The harness and cable strained under the weight. Night began to close in, making the recovery more dangerous. Suddenly, the crane’s steel cable went slack. The cable snapped in two, sending the plane back to its watery grave. Myhre was disappointed, but said they were not giving up.
Just after dawn the next morning, August 13, the submersible was launched to relocate the wreckage. Forty-five minutes later, the plane was found. It was in the same position that it was before (upside down). All of the rigging was still on it. They then re-attached the cable and began to lift the plane to the surface. An hour and a half later, the plane was less than 100 feet from the surface. But there was a problem: the wings began to buckle.
The heave of the boat was causing the wings to flap up and down about two feet. Divers were immediately dispatched. They re-enforced the wings to prevent them from being torn from the fuselage and sent plummeting back to the ocean floor. They placed straps on the outer portions of the wings and tightened them to give it some extra support. Once the rigging was in place, they continued to bring the plane up to the surface.
Two-and-a-half hours later, the plane broke the surface. For Myhre, the successful recovery marks the end of a nine-year quest for the truth. He says it is a good feeling to know that they recovered it, but it is also bittersweet, since it involves people who died many years ago. He wants to make sure that they are not forgotten.
The wreckage of the Avenger was taken to Marine Land, near St. Augustine, Florida. There, members of Project 19 collected numbers from various parts of the recovered aircraft. Several of these numbers partially matched those of one of the lost Avengers from Flight 19. But Myhre and his team were eventually able to determine that the plane was not from Flight 19; in fact, it was another Avenger that had crashed off the Florida coast in January 1945.
Entrepreneur Andy Marocco has also investigated Flight 19’s disappearance. In 2012, after reading Myhre’s book, he contacted Myhre and told him about a new theory: the planes ended up flying over land, and at least one crashed in the Florida Everglades. After reading the Navy’s "Board of Investigation Report on the loss of Flight 19", Morocco discovered that the aircraft carrier USS Solomons picked up a radar signal from four to six unidentified aircraft flying at the edge of its radar range, about 100 miles away, over North Florida at 7pm on the night Flight 19 disappeared. The carrier observed the planes turn to the southeast before they dropped off radar.
Marocco and Myhre believed that an Avenger wreck found in the Florida Everglades in 1989 might have been the one that Lt. Taylor was flying. Marocco says that the wreck lined up with the radar fix and last known course; it was also the right type of aircraft. However, he later discovered that an identification number on a data plate found in the wreckage did not match any of the missing planes. It was later determined that the plane had crashed in 1947.
Marocco and Myhre still believe that at least one of the Flight 19 planes crashed in the Everglades. In the mid-1960s, another Avenger was found in a swamp about eight miles south of Sebastian, Florida, with two dead crewmen inside. Navy authorities initially told the man who found the plane that it was one of the Avengers from Flight 19. However, they later recanted their statement and refused to release the identity of the bodies or the plane.
Myhre believes that the plane was from Flight 19. The planes seen on the USS Solomons’ radar were last seen heading in the direction of Sebastian. Another plane flying over the area reported seeing a red flare not far from the crash site on the day after Flight 19 disappeared. Myhre believes that the flare was fired by someone who survived the plane crash, possibly Sgt. Paonessa. He points to the telegram Sgt. Paonessa’s family received as evidence that he may have survived and went AWOL.
Myhre has repeatedly asked the Navy about the crashed plane and even submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. However, a federal employee told him that the names of the plane’s pilots were redacted from the Navy’s accident report and were thus exempt from the FOIA request. Myhre asked the director of the Naval History and Heritage Command for help. They tried to search for information about the plane and its occupants, but have been unable to identify them.
Sadly, in October 2018, Myhre passed away at the age of seventy-six without seeing the case resolved.
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