How the Disappearance of Flight 19 Fueled the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle

Summary

How the Disappearance of Flight 19, a Navy Squadron Lost in 1945, Fueled the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle Eighty years ago, five planes vanished during a training run off the Florida coast. A patrol plane sent to search for the men went missing, too, giving rise to a host of conspiracy theories Walter Reed Parpart Jr. (right), the radioman on one of the missing planes, poses in front of a Fort Lauderdale sign in 1945. Courtesy of Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum “I don’t know where we are,” a voice on the radio said. “We must have got lost after that last turn.” This message was the first inkling that something was amiss with Flight 19, a routine United States Navy training run off the coast of Florida on December 5, 1945. In the confusing hours that followed, the five torpedo bombers’ radio transmissions grew fainter as their fuel supply dwindled. Soon, the men—a mix of Marines and naval aviators—were no longer able to communicate with land, and two naval patrol bombers were dispatched to search for them. A short time later, one of the rescue planes abruptly dropped off radio contact and disappeared, too. In total, six aircraft carrying 27 men (14 from Flight 19 and 13 from the patrol bomber) vanished over the so-called Bermuda Triangle that day. No confirmed trace of them has ever been found. Eighty years later, Flight 19 remains one of aviation’s most notable mysteries—and where answers are elusive, legions of theories have emerged to fill in the blanks. Five Avenger torpedo bombers flying in formation over Norfolk, Virginia, in September 1942 Public domain via Wikimedia Commons From alien abductions to the lost continent of Atlantis, magnetic anomalies, methane eruptions and time travel, highly improbable explanations for the disappearances of planes and ships lost in the Bermuda Triangle have gripped the public’s imagination. Flight 19 has even appeared in both a Steven Spielberg film and a Scooby-Doo mystery. Yet the real postwar tragedy that inspire...