Three months after World War II ended, five US Navy torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine training mission and never returned — their disappearance helping to spawn the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
At 1:30 p.m. on Monday [Dec.5], 66 years later, aviation buffs and military personnel will gather at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to honour the memories of the 14 servicemen who vanished along with Flight 19.
“We need to keep their memory alive,” Allan McElhiney, president of the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum, told a Florida newspaper.
The remembrance is to feature war veterans who participated in the search for the planes lost in the triangular area of the Atlantic bounded by Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, where hundreds of aircraft and boats have supposedly disappeared.
Flight 19 – also known as the “Lost Patrol” — remains one of the great aviation mysteries because the planes have never been discovered. The bombers took off from the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, heading to the Bahamas to conduct a practice bomb run on December 5, 1945.
About 90 minutes after takeoff, flight leader Lt. Charles Taylor radioed that his compasses were malfunctioning. “I don’t know where we are,” he called to a fellow pilot.
With night and bad weather adding to the planes’ predicament, many aviation experts think the squadron crashed in the Atlantic east of Daytona Beach.
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