Discover The mysterious disappearance of Flight 19

     In 1945, December 5, a training squadron called Flight 19 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, disappeared into a body of ocean between Florida and the Bermudas, called the Bermuda Triangle (McElhiney1). Research has shown that a rescue plane was dispatched with thirteen men to find the missing squadron, but they also disappeared (1). Many people believe they were abducted by aliens, while researchers believed they flew into an electromagnetic disturbance in the storm (1). Let’s explore the mysteries and conspiracies of the Bermuda Triangle and find the most plausible solution.

     Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor was born on October 25, 1917, in Nueces County, Texas. He was an intelligent man as he had graduated from the Naval Air Station (NAS) in Corpus Christi, Texas, in February 1942, as well as becoming a qualified flight instructor that same year and had over 2500 hours flying planes and flying with other military convoys all while at the age of twenty-eight and having extensive combat experience (Zingheim 1). Taylor also piloted a torpedo plane in squadron 7 and was aboard the U.S.S. Hancock as part of Task Force 38 (McElhiney 1).

Although smart, he was also very unreliable. What caused him to be unreliable and irresponsible could be due to him having an overprotective mom and a female relative take care of him when his dad ran away when he was a baby (Charles Carroll Taylor 1917-1945 1). His childhood carried over to his adulthood when he became a pilot. He easily got lost while out on training or on other missions, not bringing the essentials like a watch and a basic navigational instrument. He was late to briefings, saying he did not want to take this flight out and caused confusion and fear to the other rookies by leading them away from land, as stated by many officers in the military. Sources say that he had at least two episodes of getting lost and being rescued and had to ditch his planes on both occasions (“Charles Carroll Taylor” Longitudes 1). While out training with the crew of Flight 19, Charles Taylor said “I don’t know where we are” (1). More evidence pointing to him being unreliable and irresponsible was during the training missions for Flight 19. Taylor was supposed to activate his Identification, friend or foe (IFF transmitter), which could triangulate his position, multiple times, but it was not acknowledged (Wilkes 1).

     Charles Carroll Taylor would be unreliable in practice by deliberately disorientating a pilot just by doing a few turns to see how quickly he could reorient himself (Kreidler 1). One of Taylor’s crew members, a gunner named George Francis Devlin, reported that during one of Taylor’s missions where he ditched his plane, Devlin said that he “lost his bearings” (1). In another mission, Taylor ran out of gas and decided to ditch his plane again, leaving him on a raft overnight (1). People believed that these small, seemingly irrelevant events of him getting lost in the past are what caused the mysterious disappearance of Flight 19 as he was at the center of it. The military held a trial to see if Charles Carroll Taylor was found “guilty of mental aberration,” but his mother, Katherine Taylor, succeeded in exonerating him of any wrongdoing by filing her own investigation. Charles Carroll Taylor was later put in regard for “responsibility for loss of lives and naval aircraft” (McElhiney 1).

     Many mysteries and disappearances of ships and planes surround the Bermuda Triangle, but one mystery has made the Bermuda Triangle famous for what it is. The disappearance of the “Lost Patrol,” commonly known as Flight 19, has been shrouded in mystery sparking many conspiracy theories from aliens and giant sea monsters living in a lost city to more logical answers like human error and the small misfortunes of a single pilot (Wood 1).

      The first and most popular conspiracy theory revolves around aliens and UFO abductions. After news of the disappearance, many people speculated that aliens had abducted the crew of fourteen pilots since the Navy did not find any remains or crash site during their search. These ideas of aliens abducting the crew were so popular that Steven Spielberg made a movie out of it called Close Encounters of the Third Kind (“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle...” 1). During an interview, one of the reporters asked Steven Spielberg why he made the movie, to which he said “I wanted to make close encounters a very accessible story about the everyday individual who has a sighting that overturns his life” (“Close encounters of the third kind” 1) Although the idea of aliens abducting the crew was popular, there is no evidence towards alien involvement, but just movie producers and random people getting in on the latest trend (1).

The second theory is a giant sea monster from the lost city of Atlantis dragged the Flight 19 crew to the depths below never to been seen again. Some people believed this due to old records of scientists discovering weird formations on the ocean floor, claiming they were the lost city itself (“Did I Find the Lost Underwater Civilization of Atlantis?” 1). Reports also said that a group of fishermen saw something bright in the sky that could only be described as “a great ball of fire,” further increasing the theory of a sea monster protecting its territory. This theory was later debunked as nobody found evidence of the so-called underwater city or any sightings of a giant sea monster (“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle...” 1).

      The third theory is one made up of three answers that scientists said could explain the disappearance. The first is the pilots flew into an electrical storm and got hit by lightning, resulting in a crash. This was later discarded as the weather at that time was not particularly favorable, but there was no sign of a storm approaching (“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle...” 1). The second answer is methane gas buildups on the seafloor, which creates a sort of whirlpool with enough force to pull in ships and planes and collapse in on itself. Just like the first answer, it was later debunked as the crew of Flight 19 could have crashed into one of these methane bubbles, but nobody has even seen or heard of methane gas bubbles. (1). The third answer is rogue waves. These waves can be three to four times larger than regular waves, which could have hit the planes out of the sky (1). A scientist by the name of Simon Boxall, an oceanographer, stated, “Theoretically, it could be happening, but there are lots of places in the world where this could happen, not just the Bermuda Triangle” (Saplakoglu 1). Although rogue waves exist, this theory was again debunked since the planes were thousands of feet in the air and nowhere near the surface of the water (“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle...” 1).

Seventy-five years after the disappearance of Flight 19, records and documents from the U.S. military and scientists from around the world have shed some light on what could have happened. Researchers have found that the leader of Flight 19, Charles Carroll Taylor, had many “small and insignificant” misfortunes happen during his time in the Air Force (Zingheim 1). For example, Charles Carroll Taylor got lost at sea twice, having to be rescued both times (1). Other pilots and even his own squadron at the time said that Taylor was a “seat-of-the-pants"(saying he improvised a lot) flier and was not adept enough to train the new students (1). Pair Taylor’s “insignificant” misfortunes with a group of student fliers, and anyone with common sense would say that it spells disaster waiting to happen, but the U.S. Navy still regarded him as proficient enough to train the student pilots (1). Other evidence has shown that the geography of the ocean near Florida and the Bahamas along with the tiny islands and the many coral shoals sometimes leads to misinterpretations of where one would be, paired with a rapid change in weather over a span of a few minutes, can confuse a rookie pilot (1). As for the great ball of fire in the sky, it was later found to be one of the two rescue planes that never made it back to the Naval base. The explosion was caused due to that specific model of the plane having a long history of gas leaks, which gave it the name of “flying gas tank,” and people have concluded that someone lit a cigarette while on board near a gas leak (1).

After many years of researchers and scientists trying to find out what happened seventy-five years ago, people have concluded that basic human error is what caused the disappearance of the famous Flight 19 and not some giant sea monster or UFO abduction. Although people say that the mystery has been solved, some still believe that something supernatural has happened to the crew as there are many disappearances that have gone unexplained in the Bermuda Triangle. But we will never know, after all, the Bermuda Triangle never gives up its secrets (“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle...” 1).

Works Cited

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“Charles Carroll Taylor” Aviators Database, https://www.aviatorsdatabase.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Flight-19

Charles Carroll Taylor (1917-1945) - Find A Grave... https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7071436/charles-carroll-taylor.

“Charles Carroll Taylor.” Longitudes, https://peterkurtz.com/tag/charles-carroll-taylor/.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind | SBIFF. https://sbiff.org/close-encounters-of-the-third-kind/.

“Did I Find the Lost Underwater Civilization of Atlantis?” US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/atlantis.html.

“Flight 19 – The Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, Alien Abduction, Time Warps, or Just a Case of Getting Lost?” YouTube, uploaded by Historic Wings, 24 Apr 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXQYI6j7SeA83.

Kreidler, Marc. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Delusion: Looking Back after Forty Years | Skeptical Inquirer. 1 Nov. 2015, https://skepticalinquirer.org/2015/11/the-bermuda-triangle-mystery-delusion/.

McElhiney, Allan. “Taylor.” Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum, https://www.nasflmuseum.com/taylor.html.

Saplakoglu, Yasemin. “The Bermuda Triangle: A Breeding Ground for Rogue Waves or a Pit of Human Mistakes?” Livescience.Com, 2 Aug. 2018, https://www.livescience.com/63242-bermuda-triangle-rogue-waves.html.

The Disappearance of Flight 19 ‹ HistoricWings.Com :: A Magazine for Aviators, Pilots and Adventurers. http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/12/the-disappearance-of-flight-19/.

Wood, Richard. “Bermuda Triangle mystery: Australian expert tries to solve fate of 'lost flight' after 75 years.” https://www.9news.com.au/world/bermuda-triangle-mystery-of-flight-19-anniversary/9419c956-b342-4c7d-ac4b-cd82783b9c83.

Wilkes, Donald E. Jr., "In 1945 Flight 19 Flew To Its Doom Through a Large Cloud of Mystery" (1987). Popular Media. 19. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/fac_pm/19

Zingheim, Karl. “The Mysterious Disappearance of Navy Flight 19.” USS Midway Museum, 22 Dec. 2020, https://www.midway.org/blog/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-navy-flight-19/.