The temperature was 67 degrees. The PBM air…
The 27-year-old had just transferred to Fort Lauderdale from Miami, and many have since speculated that he may have confused some of the islands of the Bahamas for the Keys.
Some of his pilots seemed to have recognized that he was making a mistake. Under normal circumstances, pilots lost in the Atlantic were supposed to point their planes toward the setting sun and fly west toward the mainland, but Taylor had become convinced that he might be over the Gulf of Mexico. Flying boats were notoriously accident-prone, and were even nicknamed “flying gas tanks” for their propensity for catching fire. Around 18:20, Taylor's last message was received.
What followed was a series of serious conversations between Taylor, his team and the control tower.
In the 1960s and 70s, pulp magazines and writers such as Vincent Gaddis and Charles Berlitz helped popularize the idea that Flight 19 had been … “They just vanished,” Navy Lieutenant David White later recalled.
Taylor and his pilots buzzed over Hens and Chickens Shoals around 2:30 p.m. and dropped their practice bombs without incident. When fuel began to run low, Taylor was heard prepping his men for a potential crash landing in the ocean. If Taylor stayed this course he would have reached land before running out of fuel. "FT-74 informed the NAS that aircraft were lost, then advised Taylor to put the sun on his At 16:56, Taylor was again asked to turn on his transmitter for As the weather deteriorated, radio contact became intermittent, and it was believed that the five aircraft by this point were more than 200 nmi (230 mi; 370 km) out to sea east of the Florida peninsula. A A 500-page Navy board of investigation report published a few months later made several observations:
The pilots were told to switch the devices on, but they either didn’t hear the message or didn’t acknowledge it. I am over land but it's broken. Flight 19 Disappearance: 5 December 1945, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
By that time, the weather had deteriorated even more and the sun had since set. “We’ll have to ditch unless landfall…when the first plane drops below ten gallons, we all go down together.” A few minutes later, the Avengers’ last radio communications were replaced by an eerie buzz of static. However, a later reconstruction of the incident showed that the islands visible to Taylor were probably the Bahamas, well northeast of the Keys, and that Flight 19 was exactly where it should have been.
However, at some point Taylor decided that he had tried going west enough. But shortly after the patrol turned north for the second leg of its journey, something very strange happened. Also unexplained is why none of the members of Flight 19 made use of the rescue radio frequency or their planes’ ZBX receivers, which could have helped lead them toward Navy radio towers on land. Just why Taylor tried to get out of flying remains a mystery, but it has led many to suggest that he may have not been fit for duty. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Even if the “Lost Patrol” didn’t fall victim to the supernatural, there’s no denying that its disappearance was accompanied by many oddities and unanswered questions. Each was a 3-seater plane, very robust, safe and US Navy's best bombing planes to destroy enemy submarines. "FT-28, this is FT-74, what is your trouble?" Powers replied: "I don't know where we are.
“We had hundreds of planes out looking, and we searched over land and water for days, and nobody ever found the bodies or any debris.” A Navy board of investigation was also left scratching its head. First gig Flight 19 played was in front of 400 at the ‘Rocks Revenge’ in Halifax with Satanic Rites, Rhabstallion, and Cyka.
Perhaps the strangest of all concerns Lieutenant Taylor. In the 1960s and 70s, pulp magazines and writers such as Vincent Gaddis and Charles Berlitz helped popularize the idea that Flight 19 had been gobbled up by the “Bermuda Triangle,” a section of the Atlantic supposedly known for its high volume of freak disappearances and mechanical failures. Cox then transmitted; "This is FT-74, plane or boat calling 'Powers' please identify yourself so someone can help you." 1,"Radio conversations between the pilots were overheard by base and other aircraft in the area.
Suspicions that the seaplane may have gone up in flames were all but confirmed by a passing merchant ship, which spotted a fireball and found evidence of an oil slick in the ocean.
Flight 19 became hopelessly disoriented.
At first light the next day, the Navy dispatched more than 300 boats and aircraft to look for Flight 19 and the missing Mariner.
)As it became obvious the flight was lost, air bases, aircraft, and merchant ships were alerted. Taylor was not sure whether he was near Bahama or Key West, and he was not sure which direction was which due to compass malfunction.
A warm day with billowing clouds soaring overhead in the current of a gusting southwest trade wind.
“All planes close up tight,” he said.
“I don’t know where we are,” one of the pilots said over the radio. “Both my compasses are out and I’m trying to find Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,” Taylor said, his voice sounding anxious. We must have got lost after that last turn." “If we would just fly west, we would get home.” Taylor was eventually persuaded to turn around and head west, but shortly after 6 p.m., he seems to have cancelled the order and once again changed direction. Other books and fictional portrayals have suggested that magnetic anomalies, parallel dimensions and alien abductions might have all played a role in the tragedy. (It has also been reported that Taylor's last message was received at 19:04.
He’d made his scheduled pass over Hens and Chicken Shoals in the Bahamas less than an hour earlier, but he now believed his planes had somehow drifted hundreds of miles off course and ended up in the Florida Keys.