Flight 19

What was Flight 19?

Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers with 14 airmen that disappeared on December 5, 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The disappearance is attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel.

One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappeared. A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident. According to contemporaneous sources the Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapour leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation.

Conversation

At around 3:45 p.m., Fort Lauderdale's flight tower received a message from Taylor ( Pilot ), who reportedly sounded confused and worried.
"Can't see land," said Taylor. "Looks like we got off track."
"Where do you stand," the tower replied.
Then a few moments of silence. Tower personnel peeked outside on a clear day in the direction the planes were supposed to be operating, but there was no sign of them showing up.
"We cannot confirm where we are," the aviation leader announced. He repeated the words: Cannot see land.

After 20 minutes of silence, a new leader's voice was sent to the tower, but his voice trembled, almost hysterical. “We didn't know where we were... everyone... couldn't see anything. We thought we might be about 225 miles northeast of the base ... "

For a moment, the pilot babbled incoherently before uttering the last words ever heard of Flight 19. "It looks like we entered white waters ... We are truly lost."

Conspiracies

Some people think that the crew just lost contact with the flight tower while others think that UFOs or something else took them away! What do you think?