On December 5, 1945, five United States Navy TBM Avenger bombers left Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale for a routine navigation and practice-bombing exercise over the Bahamas. Fourteen men were aboard. The flight reached its target, completed its bombing run, and then became lost during the return portion of the mission.

Its leader, Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, reported that both compasses in his aircraft had failed. He believed the formation was over the Florida Keys. But the planned route, the islands below, and later shore-based radio bearings suggested the aircraft may instead have been east of Florida, near or north of the Bahamas. Other pilots in the formation argued that flying west would take them home. Taylor’s interpretation pointed in another direction.

For hours, Navy stations tried to guide the five aircraft through weakening radio contact, worsening weather, darkness, and dwindling fuel. The last clear messages included an instruction for the planes to close formation and prepare to ditch together. None returned.

A PBM Mariner launched to search for Flight 19 also disappeared with thirteen men aboard, probably after an airborne explosion seen from a merchant vessel. The Navy’s initial reconstruction blamed navigational confusion, but its formal finding was later amended to cause unknown. No confirmed wreckage from Flight 19 has ever been recovered. The unanswered question is not whether the flight was in trouble. It is where five aircraft, still communicating until late in the evening, finally entered the sea.

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