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- [00:00]
A
Tired of juggling sales tools or spending hours on prospecting just to book a few meetings? Meet Apollo, the go to market platform for finding leads, connecting with buyers and closing deals all in one place. Apollo gives you access to over 210 million contacts and AI that handles all your busy work, finding leads, drafting emails, and even prioritizing your day. So stop paying for five different sales tools when one does it all. Visit Apollo I.O. and sign up free today.
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B
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matter. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Hi, I'm Juliet Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the true crime podcast the Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to the consult wherever you get your podcasts. It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
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A
I'm brett. And I'm alice and we are the prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we continue our look at the disappearance of Flight 19. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my Lost in a Fog off course co host, Alice.
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B
Of course, I feel so on course, so on course that it's like I'm aiming towards true north when in fact I'm going somewhere else.
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A
Well, Daniel thought you were lost in a fog, so I'm gonna go with that. I trust him.
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B
I would go with that as well. You know, I will take any descriptor that these students throw our way because they're so smart and they're probably going to take all of our jobs really sooner rather than later before we if
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A
AI doesn't do it first, if AI,
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B
they maybe are the AI. You know, I don't even know the things they come up with these kids.
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A
And obviously, as Alice is alluding to, we're back with our case on Flight 19 that we did with the students at Liditz elementary in Pennsylvania. Had a great time with them. Learned so much about this case and about all sorts of things. So we're very excited to be talking about this. It's our second episode. If you haven't heard the first one, you probably should go back and listen. But I'll recap for you briefly. Flight 19 is a training flight doing a very basic training run off the east coast of Florida in the Bermuda Triangle. And some people think that that's the reason that despite the fact this was a very basic, very straightforward training flight, they were lost and never seen again. And as we left off last episode, we were actually at that point where final transmissions are being heard by the pilots of these planes. It is now dark, a moonless night. They are going to try and ditch in the ocean because they can't find home and they're running out of fuel. And that happens at around 7:04pm on December 5, 1945. And at this point, the search is on.
- [04:36]
B
Yes, the search is on. And here's what's amazing, right? Like it's in real time. They, they're tracking them for all intents and purposes. And I would hate to be lost at sea. It really actually that in space. Getting lost in space and getting lost in like wide open ocean are two of my greatest fears. Because it seems like it's impossible to find you.
- [04:54]
A
Like I found the ocean to be terrifying.
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B
The, the ocean is terrifying. I mean, it is, it's an entire world, but you are not fit for it. You're literally. It's the opposite of the fish out of the water. Like you are in their domain.
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A
Space is a really good comparison actually, because you're right. I mean, it's an alien atmosphere here on Earth. It's, you know, we're not.
- [05:15]
B
And one in which your body was not meant to survive fully in. Right. Like space. You would immediately die, of course, because of the pressure and the oxygen. But you, you also can't dog paddle forever. You will fatigue.
- [05:27]
A
And you can only imagine the terror that all of these men were experiencing when they make this decision to ditch in the ocean. And it gives a sense of real impetus like emergency to the folks who are still in Florida who are thinking, we gotta find these guys, we gotta find them now. Because up to this point, remember, there's been a real issue with where they are. The leader of the flight, Lieutenant Taylor, he is thought for most of the flight that they were in fact over the Florida Keys. So they're essentially south and west of Florida of the peninsula. And the Navy's thinking you are supposed to be east of Florida. So they're very hesitant to send out any search planes because they're afraid they'll send them to the wrong place. They'll be flying around looking for them, running out of fuel. They'll have to come back and refuel. They'll lose valuable time. They find out, hey, we think we can get a trace on them. We can figure out where these guys are. We can get a fix on their position using the radio. And when that comes in, it turns out they're exactly where we'd expect them to be. A little further north than they should be, a little further east than they should be, because that's the direction they've been flying, but generally where they should be. And so at this point, there are a number of rescue planes that go up at 7:27 that night. A Navy pilot, Lieutenant Walter G. Jeffrey, volunteers to fly one of two Martin PBM5 Mariners that were sent out to look for Flight 19. Now a Martin PBM Mariner. It's one of those planes that. It's a larger plane. It sort of has the wing on top of the fuselage. If you guys have ever seen. I tried this out with the kids at Liditz, and they all looked at me like, I have no idea what you're talking about. But some of you guys may remember the cartoon tailspin, which was like, it had blue, basically. But he flew a plane. It was kind of weird. I don't know. Anyways, great show, though. And he flies a plane that kind of looks like a Martin PBM5 mariner. So if you've seen that, you can imagine a plane sort of like that. They take off, they're going to look for flight 19. At around this time they take off from Naval Air Station Banana river, which is roughly 150 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. And this is a really good place to be taken off from because we know that the flight is well north of Fort Lauderdale. So if you're taking off of Fort Lauderdale, you have to catch up. This one should have an advantage. Three minutes later, they radio a routine message, essentially saying, hey, we're in the air. We're on our way to find these lost pilots.
- [08:07]
B
And so this routine flight that Flight 19 is on, of course, would have a routine rescue plane, right? But just 17 minutes later, at 7:47 after that first routine radio contact, this Martin PBM5 disappeared from the radar, was never heard from again. So we're not talking about Flight 19. We're talking about one of the rescue flights that went out to actually look for Flight 19. Just 20 minutes after they take off. They are Never heard from again. It's like they disappear off the face of the planet. Now, later that evening, a ship called the SS Gaines Mills reported seeing a burst of flames that was roughly 100ft tall at about 7:30pm so that would have been what, three minutes after they had taken off. So they report seeing this massive flame. Remember what has a lot of oil gas, in order to cause a massive flame? A plane. And so searchers would dispatch to where the SS Gaines Mills saw this massive flame. But there was no sign of the lost Mariner or its 13 crew members. Usually we've talked about how you'll look for, like an oil slick. You'll look for debris, some sign that there's been an explosion there. But they go there and there's nothing. Now, it is believed that the Mariner exploded shortly after it took off for this rescue flight. An oil slick was found in the water, so it supported this theory. But unfortunately, this wasn't uncommon at the time because planes were being dubbed flying gas tanks due to their high fuel capacity and. And their tendency to set fire mid air, which is like the last thing you want to hear when you're flying in a metal tank in the air is please buckle up. We just want to remind you that if you see flames around you, it's completely normal because we are flying gas tanks. And because we are flying gas tanks, what are you going to do except cause fires midair sometimes? So take in the view it might be your last.
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A
You know, you think about the way we are these days, and I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing, but we are so safety conscience about
- [10:17]
B
we are soft everything, right?
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A
I mean, you got to have backup cameras mandated on vehicles just to make it a little less likely you run over somebody when you're backing up, right?
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B
We used to parallel park, by the way, without the little. Little physics graphics that tell you you're about to hit a curb. Like, did we. Were we all just better physicists back then?
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A
We were. Necessity made it such. Because now you don't have to. I mean, this is an aside, but we now have two cars that have very advanced navigation systems. They'll drive themselves, they'll park themselves, they do all that fancy stuff. And then we have a car that doesn't have any of that. And when I drive that car, the number of times I almost run into something because I'm backing up and it's not beeping at me, so I must not be that close. And then I look back and it's like, oh, shoot, There's a tree right there. Right. Because you actually have to pay attention in these older cars. But anyways. So, yeah, like, imagine if today there was an aircraft in regular use with the United States Navy that blew up so often that people just knew, like, this is an accepted risk when you take off in this plane. Might blow up. Not might lose an engine, might require some sort of emergency landing, Literally might blow up in midair. And look, it's designed to have a ton of gas. And the reason for that is probably pretty obvious. It's a search plane. You want it to be able to be out there as long as possible. And the more gas it has, the longer it can stay out there. So that's an advantage. Right. The problem was the fuel valves, connectors, whatever were loose on it. It would often leak. And so when you flew the plane, apparently you just got used to the fact it smelled like gasoline the whole time, which probably also, if the plane doesn't even blow up, probably not great to be flying around in a plane with gas fumes all the time. But apparently that's what they did. And it was so bad. This should tell you, because it's 1945, it was so bad, you weren't allowed to smoke in or around this plane. That was like, absolutely the rule. You cannot smoke in this plane. And everybody smoked back then all the time. But you couldn't do it if you're flying this plane, because if you did, chances were the plane to blow up. Right? So I got to say, this is often presented as more proof of the Bermuda Triangle. Not only did Flight 19 disappear, but the rescue plane sent to find it disappeared, too. What are the chances? It must be the Bermuda Triangle, or it's the plane that they call the flying gas tank and blows up. And then someone actually saw a massive explosion in the sky. Could be that. Could be a coincidence. Could be the Bermuda Triangle. We'll let you guys decide what is more likely when it comes to this flight. So this was obviously a pretty negative thing that happened with this flight. You have the situation where you lose contact in the middle. And so they end up having to send out search flights for the search flight. The some of the Navy ships are also looking for it. They also lost contact with another rescue plane. Things are really getting bad. But that plane actually lost contact because the weather had gotten so bad. The temperature had dropped so much that the radio antenna froze on that plane. It was caked in ice, and it froze, and it couldn't send or receive any transmissions until the ice actually Broke off, and then all of a sudden, it was back in contact. But this is such a. The night has quickly gotten terrible. They have a storm. It was the worst storm of the winter. Apparently, it was so bad that it is likely that the disappearance of Flight 19 saved lives. Because these searchers who are out looking for them are finding people in boats, in capsized, having to rescue people. At one point, they find some people in a life raft, and they think, wow, we found some survivors. Well, they are survivors of a shipwreck that happened because of the storm. So it's a really bad situation. And you can only imagine you've got these guys who are landing, they're ditching in the water with this plane. They have at most a minute to get out of the plane, to open up the back, to pull out the raft, to cut the rope that attaches the raft to the plane, get the raft inflated, get in the raft before the plane will sink. And they're doing that in the middle of a storm.
- [14:45]
B
And it's in just about freezing temperatures, not to mention the shock. And it's getting dark, almost pitch black at this point.
- [14:52]
A
So there's not a whole lot they can do that night. They try. But at daybreak, despite the fact there's still an ongoing storm, the Navy dispatches more than 300 boats and aircraft in the hopes of locating Flight 19 and the missing Mariner. Now they're looking for both. The search continues for five days. It spans 300,000 square miles. It is one of the most extensive searches ever undertaken in the Atlantic. But despite this, no sign of the aircraft or the 27 men. Because now we've got the men on the flight 19 and the men from the Mariner who are lost. No trace of them is located. And within days of the disappearance, the Navy had convened an investigation to look into what happened to Flight 19, what could have caused this, and what things could be learned about this moving forward. So in the following month, January 1946, the investigation releases their initial findings. Though they acknowledge, quote, that elements of the search protocol could have been improved, including coordination between units and rescuers, ability to get a bearing on the flights. They put the blame almost entirely on Lieutenant Taylor. So essentially, this search, if it happened now, would have been very different. Communication is much better, would have been much easier to coordinate. There's a lot of information that we know. We know all the information. We know all the different things that pilots in the air and pilots on the ground at various bases are hearing over radios. We know all that information. But at the time. Each of these isolated naval air stations don't necessarily know that. They only know what they're hearing, what's communicated to them via teletype or maybe a telephone call, so they don't have all the information. And so coordinating the search and communicating with Taylor and his flight, particularly because he won't change his radio frequency, the delay in getting the fix. They get the fix just as they lose contact with him and they can't deliver it to him. These are all issues that if they could have been corrected, and some of them were just technological limitations or errors on Taylor's part himself, if you could have corrected any of those, then maybe you can save the flight. But the Navy is saying, look, that's all great, but that's all sort of, yeah, we can do better to rescue you, but why did we get in this situation in the first place? Why was there the need for extraordinary action by these folks? And Taylor is who they point to. They point out his disorientation. They point out that the area was new to him, that he had just relocated from Miami the month before the fateful flight. They talk about Taylor's belief that he was over the Keys versus the Bahamas, where they likely actually were and based on the fix, almost certainly were. And that these were the biggest factors in the disappearance. And they lean heavily on the fact that although he was an excellent combat pilot, Taylor tended to fly by the seat of his pants. And in fact, he had twice gotten lost in the Pacific and had to be rescued. He had actually ditched his plane three separate times and been rescued before this one, twice because he'd been lost. Now, we've talked about this. This wasn't even really considered a mark of shame to get lost because finding the aircraft carrier was so difficult. So there was some notation for pilots who had ditched and survived. I can't remember what it was, but it was like some silly thing they called him. And he had two stars next to his name because he had done it three times. So once you get your name on the board and then two stars for each time that it happens. But it was something that happened to him, and he had been known to get lost. And so maybe it wasn't that surprising that he got lost that day. But Lieutenant Taylor's mother, Catherine, would not let this fly. She was adamant that it was the Navy, not her son, who was responsible for this. She pointed out he was a seasoned aviator and that she believed there were holes in the Navy's initial report, including a failure to speak to the weather to the indications that this was going to be a problematic flight and that they reached many of these conclusions without any physical evidence. There's no actual evidence of where they disappeared or when they disappeared. They're really focusing on the testimony of rescuers and Taylor's commanders, all of whom had something to lose in this investigation if they were found to be liable either for sending that flight out or how they conducted the investigation.
- [19:27]
B
This is like the Lieutenant Taylor can't defend himself, obviously, right. He has disappeared. He is likely dead. But his mother isn't going to let this go without a rebuttal, essentially. And she points out that there are flaws in this response. She says that the squadron was not properly instructed to go west and that a rescue plane which was waiting at NAS should have been sent. So after she made this stink and basically would not stop beating down the Navy's door about this report and said, look, this isn't a fulsome report. You can't just blame this and peg this on my son who is gone now, so he can't defend himself. And in any event, this is not a full report, not just for the honor of my son, but for future situations. You do investigations like this so that it doesn't repeat itself. Right. And so the Navy said, okay, you're right on everything. We've heard what you said. So we're going to change the report. And what they did was they added this line in their report. It is believed that Mrs. Taylor is emotionally unstable as a result of this disaster. Ouch.
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A
You can, I mean, look, I mean, probably true, right? But you can imagine.
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B
But ma', am, dragging his mother into this report.
- [20:43]
A
Now and the problem was, I mean, she was like relentless and she, she knew people and she had people reach out to everybody they knew, including, you know, a congressman named Lyndon Johnson. He was from the area of Texas where she was from. And this got all the way to. I forget what it's called. I mean whoever's in charge of the Navy, the Joint chief of the Navy. Right. Like, and what ends up happening is they release this report, this initial report, and there's so much pushback that they are actually directed to do it again to look into it some more.
- [21:18]
B
So look, I'm just saying Mama Bear was Mama bearing over here, right? I mean this is obviously she is incredibly grief stricken here, but there's like wanting to fight for her son's honor here. Now ultimately, the Navy amended their 500 page report to list the cause as unknown after Katherine Taylor's immense pushback calling in everyone that she knows. But despite this, really, the navigational error did play a large role in the disappearance. And the report read, quote, had Flight 19 actually been where Taylor believed it to be, landfall with the Florida coastline would have been reached in a matter of 10 to 20 minutes or less, depending on how far down they were. However, a later reconstruction of the incident showed that the islands visible to Taylor were probably the Bahamas, well northeast of the Keys, and that Flight 19 was exactly where it should have been. The Board of Investigation found that because of his belief that he was on a base course toward Florida, Lieutenant Taylor actually guided the flight further northeast and out to sea. Further. It was general knowledge at NAS Fort Lauderdale that if a pilot ever became lost in the area to fly a heading of 270 degrees west or in the evening hours towards the sunset, if the compass had failed by the time the flight actually turned west, they were likely so far out to sea, they had already passed their aircraft's fuel endurance. This meant that there was little hope of rescue, even if they had managed to stay afloat. So basically, this is a classic case of, fine, we'll change the conclusion. But the entire report, essentially, I mean, this reasoning is, we know what the cause of the failure was. It was navigational, even if we've changed the cause to be unknown.
- [23:12]
A
Yeah. And just as a story of how the government works, this is an interesting story because basically they release this initial report, as we said, there are these additional attempts to get them to do another investigation. A lot of political pressure is coming out. And at this point, they have something that's called like the Board of Corrections. Right. And essentially how this all went down. Imagine World War II has just occurred. Hundreds of thousands of people are involved in that war. All sorts of stuff is going on. Many of them are killed. Many of them are killed in somewhat difficult to pinpoint circumstances. And so you have a lot of people who are saying, hey, my son was killed in battle. He was on a ship that sank, he should have received a medal. He never received a medal. You can't give me my son back, but you could at least give him the medals he deserves. Right. And so they set up this Board of Corrections to essentially be able to look at all these different claims and adjudicate them so that they could correct naval records to make them more accurate. So what she ends up doing is she presents this whole case to this Board of Corrections and they hire a lawyer and they go up and they present their case. Weirdly, the Navy doesn't really have A role in this. So the people who were part of the board that had considered all the facts that had done the investigation, they don't testify, they don't present. There's really nothing from them other than the 500 page report, which probably this board, six months after the end of World War II, a year after the end of World War II, whenever exactly the timing was, probably doesn't have a whole lot of time. And they issue this quote, unquote correction where they change the cause from being primarily Lt. Taylor and his mistakes to unknown, unknown. We don't really know what happened. It's a, you know, it's a combination of things. Who can say for certain, right? Who can know we didn't find the wreck or anything. And the thought was, and there's actually some letters from some high ranking naval officials that we have this family who is absolutely devastated by this. We'll say it's unknown. What does it hurt? It'll make her feel better. We can't say for certain. Not a big deal. Okay, Not a big deal. Now the problem is what they could never have known is that by saying this disappearance was caused by unknown circumstances, that they were setting the stage for one of the great supernatural mysteries in history. This amending this report goes a long way to setting the stage for the Bermuda Triangle. So they amend this report mid-40s. Sometimes after this happens. In 1950, the Associated Press publishes an article written by EvW Jones about a series of plane and ship disappearances in the southeast portion of the Atlantic Ocean which cannot be explained, which have unknown causes. And among those mentioned was flight 19. The article which was entitled Disappearances recalled Atlantic is still a deep mystery. Suggested that much was unknown about the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean and for the first time suggested that there were mysteries in the waters that we cannot understand.
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B
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A
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- [29:25]
B
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- [30:12]
A
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- [30:48]
B
That one change can set off the domino effect. I Love this. You know why I love this? This is like you just untangle all the mysteries of my childhood, like how Mothman started, how the trick or treating poison candy started. Who knew that true crime is actually so ingrained in our culture? All these things I thought were just part of my life. No, no, they all started from somewhere. So this is fascinating that they picked up on. And you can imagine some researcher who's wanting to write an article, search for all reports that say the disappearance is unknown in this area. It would pull this up, right?
- [31:26]
A
And so what happens is it takes a little while because, you know, a. A seed has to germinate and grow. So you have this Associated Press, very well respected wire service has this article. You've got this report by the Navy that says it's unknown causes. And in April 1962, somebody who writes for the American Legion magazine is looking for something cool to write about that'll attract people that has a military angle and that author Alan W. Eckert finds Flight 19 and puts all this together and is the first person to outright suggest that there is some sort of supernatural connection with the disappearance of Flight 19. He discussed a popular theory among pilots that flights were somehow being pulled into space or into another time or dimension and they couldn't get out. He also claimed that the Navy stated in their inquiry that Taylor's plane flew off to Mars. And this is based on something someone said one another that wasn't in the report. But someone said something along the lines of they might as well have been on Mars, like that far out in the ocean, there was no way to find them. And that becomes they're on Mars. That's what you're saying. How do they get to Mars? Something crazy must be going on here. And now you have the AP and the American Legion and the report all starting to indicate something unusual is happening here.
- [32:49]
B
So now this little seed that started to germinate in 1950, you get a little bit starting to snowball effect here, right? Like things are sprouting. Now we have all of this conspiracy, or at least mystery surrounding Flight 19, but we have to give a name to this phenomenon, right? So In February of 1964, this comes from a men's magazine. I just have to say, of course it does. Not a bad thing. I'm just saying, of course. It was a men's magazine called the Argosy. It published an article that they knew the men reading this magazine would absolutely grip onto. And not just the men, I will say, really, an entire generation gripped onto this and the article was by Vincent Gaddis, and it was called the Deadly Bermuda Triangle. Now, this piece was the first to popularize this term, the Bermuda Triangle, which refers to the roughly 500,000 to 1.5 million square mile area of the North Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Florida's east coast to Bermuda, the Greater Antilles. So now we've given a name to this mystery. And, you know, names matter once you have a name now, that entire story is really going to take root because people begin to whisper and you hear it over and over, what is the Bermuda Triangle? Now this Gaddis article, which again mentions Flight 19, among other Vanished ships and planes, popularized the theory of atmospheric aberrations. Basically that there's a hole in the sky which was causing these disappearances. So this article was crucial in developing the lure that still is heard today around the Bermuda Triangle and cementing Flight 19's reputation for having a supernatural cause for its vanishing.
- [34:42]
A
So here you go. Now you see where this came from and how this all connected together. And Flight 19 is the cornerstone of the Bermuda Triangle. There's other Bermuda Triangle cases. We did the Cyclops, which is another one, but this is the main one. It's the one that it's hard to figure out because you basically have this flight of seasoned pilots led by combat veteran flying on a very simple navigational problem at a time when it wasn't stormy, it got stormy later. But essentially it's always described as like a clear blue sky day, which that's not quite accurate, but nevertheless. And somehow they become so hopelessly lost that they can't find Florida. And it's right there, it's like this massive landmass. How is that possible? There must be something paranormal going on in this part of the ocean. And look, even the Navy says they're unknown causes for this. Right? And so government support.
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B
You can trust everything in it.
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A
And everybody loves triangles, right triangles, you know, pyramids. Everybody loves triangles. They're the best. The Pythagorean theorem, just great. The dollar bill. The dollar bill, yeah. They're pointy and they have three points. They're great. And. And now you got a catchy name for it, the Bermuda Triangle. And now most of you know there are triangles all over the place. You probably live in a triangle and don't even know it. Like, there's the Alaskan Triangle, and there's some triangle in Arkansas and some triangle up in Vermont. There's just triangles everywhere. And people theorize that these are areas of some sort of unusual things going on. And that's what people now say about the Bermuda Triangle. But there are a lot of people who are still trying to figure out what happened to these guys. Even if the Bermuda Triangle got them, where are they? So in 1986, following the tragedy of the Challenger space shuttle explosion, remember Challenger exploded in midair upon launch. There's this huge search. Four pieces of the shuttle. Because they want to figure out what happened. They essentially find all the pieces and put it back together and discover there was this tiny little O ring failed and that's what caused the disaster. But this is a huge search. Divers going down to get these pieces of debris. And where is all that debris? Off the east coast of Florida. And So during this six month search, they find 187 pieces of the shuttle. But they also find 13 shipwrecks, 13 debris fields from other rocket launches, and two downed aircraft, including a Grundman TBF Avenger. And initially people thought, this is it. We found one of the lost flights. But all of these planes have serial numbers. They were able to identify the serial number and check it. And wouldn't you know it, it was not one of the the planes.
- [37:28]
B
But can we talk about how much they found? This is kind of like, unfortunately, when we do a wide scale effort to search for a missing person and you find a lot of other missing people, that is a byproduct of searching and also shows you how difficult it is to find things. There's probably something going on here with the currents. I'll just say like pulling things together or lack of currents for pushing them out in a triangle or it's just the triangle. Let's be honest. People are now gonna give us one star reviews for being Illuminati. I wish I were Illuminati. We're not that cool. So this has now become bigger than just Flight 19. But Flight 19, of course, being the cornerstone of this deadly Bermuda Triangle theory. In May of 1991, hope was renewed though, when the remains of five Avengers were discovered off the Florida coast. What are the odds? We lost five planes in Flight 19. Here we find five Avengers off the coast, but when they gather the debris, they look at the serial numbers and they determine that none of these planes were part of the long lost flight 19. The planes which were all within a 1.2 mile radius of each other, they weren't even a squadron. They had all either been lost or disposed of at sea on different days. They weren't together. I don't know, I don't know about you, Brett, but really is Starting to sound like that Bermuda Triangle. There's something to it.
- [38:52]
A
I actually remember maybe not when this was found, but subsequent reporting on it as a kid. Because at the time they really thought this was it, that this was the flight. I mean, what are the chances, right? And it took years. I mean, it took like, I think like over a decade to be able to get those serial numbers and compare them and realize, no, this is not them at all. So that pretty much ends the timeline. But one thing we wanted to do, just go through with you, the people who were a part of this flight, who they were, where they were from, talk a little bit about them in ways that might inform the disappearance, but also just to let you know, you know who these guys were. And we got these from the Navy's website, which gives us a background on them. So we'll run through this. The first is bert Edward Bollock Jr. He was in the Naval Reserves. He was born in 1926 in Bloomfield, New Jersey. He graduated from Bloomsfield High School and entered service soon after in 1943. He was a radio man. Remember, we had radio men. We had the pilot and we had sort of the gunner and the bomber, and he was a radio man. And he was only 19 years old when the planes disappeared. There was in George Francis Devlin, the United States Navy. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928. He was eager to help in the war effort and couldn't wait to be of age. So he decided to enlist in the United States Naval Reserve at the age of 15 under the alias of Robert F. Harmon. He trained at Barbers Point in Hawaii in 1944, and by 1945 he was deployed to Guam and the fleet anchorage at Ulithi Hillithe. I don't know if that is where he reported on board the USS Enterprise. The war ended and he made his way to Florida, where he trained at Fort Lauderdale. He was seen flying as a gunner on the Avenger torpedo bombers. At 17, he's now 17 years old. He was in the process of having his alias change back to his birth name because he's now old enough to actually be in the Navy. When he disappeared with Flight 19, I think he was the youngest person who was part of this.
- [41:08]
B
I can also imagine the Navy and military at this time were like, yeah, we're not going to check your id. If you want to come fight, come on over. But you'll notice these are all such young men really in their prime. So another person who was on Flight 19, Second Lieutenant Forrest James Gerber also, he was born in 1921 in New Ulm, Minnesota, and he served in the Marine Corps during World War II. He had enlisted in January of 1942, becoming a ground Marine first and later an officer in training. He became an air cadet in 1944, and he had 360.6 hours of flight time and 61.8 on the Avengers alone. He had received his gold wings just four months earlier, and he was a pilot of the FT81. He was 24 years old when Flight 19 disappeared. Then there was Captain Edward Joseph Powers of the Marine Corps. He was born in 1919 in Mount Vernon, New York. He graduated from Princeton in 1941, and in that same year, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon graduating, he was assigned as a training instructor at Quantico, Virginia. And later on, in 1944, he would actually request a transfer to become a cadet in the Naval Air Forces. He gave up his commanding position because he had this immense desire to fly on the Avenger torpedo bombers. So this is kind of a huge deal. You work for your rank. And he was, like, turning it all in because his dream is to fly one of these Avenger bombers. Though he was a Fort Lauderdale student, he was senior officer on Flight 19. He was the only married man aboard and the only one who was a father. It's noted that Captain Powers, his wife, felt a premonition, and before she had heard any news, she had called the base many hours before this disappearance. Also noted is that two months prior, when Powers was stationed at NAS Miami, it was reported that his gunner, Michael Belvido, was missing from the tbm. They were flying. The gunner's door and parachute were gone and. And a search and rescue was launched, but nobody found anything. The cause of that gunner's disappearance is still unknown.
- [43:22]
A
Lot to say about Captain Powers. I think we need to take a moment to talk about him. So couple things you may recall all the way back at the beginning of the timeline. The first communication we heard that alerted anyone to there being a problem was a communication. Two Powers. Remember you had Lieutenant Cox. He's flying his plane. He hears a transmission that's a male voice he didn't know, asking Powers, what is compass red? And then he heard, I don't know where we are. And it turns out that in Lieutenant Cox, he radios in, he's asking for somebody to respond, and he gets Lieutenant Taylor. Now, this is significant for a couple reasons. First of all, as Alice noted, technically, the senior officer on this flight is Powers, not Taylor. Taylor's the instructor so he's in charge, but Powers ranks higher than he does. He is a captain in the Marines, which is technically the same rank as Taylor is in the Navy. But he had been an officer longer. His enlistment was first. And so theoretically he's in charge. And theoretically he could have taken charge at some point. A little bit of discussion about this and sort of back and forth amongst military folks, I'm sure we'll get some of that. But generally speaking, it's the instructor's in charge until he's not is what I understand it to be. So there is a world in which Powers could have taken charged. Now, he had nowhere near as much experience as Taylor did. That's why Taylor's the instructor. I mean, Taylor did the thing that he wanted to do. But recall, do you remember the communication where someone said, if we just fly west, we'll get home. Why aren't we just flying west? I think it's highly unlikely that one of the lower ranked people would have said that even if they were really stressed out. I don't know that they would have said that over the airways to Taylor. I think that would have to be somebody. He was more highly ranked. I think that was Powers. I don't really have much of a doubt that it was Powers who was expressing as he probably felt comfortable doing, given his rank, his thought that, look, we should be going west. And remember for some period they did turn west. Didn't go anywhere near long enough. But I don't think Lieutenant Taylor would have just done that for anybody just because somebody said we should go west. I think there's some deference there to Powers. And that's what led that to happen then. And this just tells you how much mystery there is in the world. We don't talk about this gunner disappearing. I mean, essentially what had to have happened is they were flying. So the bomber, everybody has their own little compartment. So you've got the pilot who's in the pilot compartment. The radio man's like down below running the radios. The gunner is behind the pilot, he's in the turret. I think he can go down and do the bombing as well. And all of them have a door that opens so they can get out. For instance, they have to ditch and they all have their parachutes. So it seems like unbeknownst to anyone at the time, this guy just opened the door and jumped out. And we don't know why he did that. And apparently no one noticed until they landed. They landed and they just, Mike's gone. We don't know what happened, the doors open and he's gone. I mean essentially that's what happened. And they were never able to figure that out. Just very strange thing, but something that happened.
- [46:58]
B
It's one way, one way to run away and start a new life.
- [47:01]
A
I know, seriously, right?
- [47:02]
B
Jump out and start a new life.
- [47:03]
A
And he had a parachute, so he might have made it for all we know. All right, so that brings us to Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, who we've talked about a lot. He was known as C.C. to his friend. C.C. taylor, United States Navy born 10-25-1917 in Nueces County, Texas. Taylor was the United States Naval Officer. As we've said, he served in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. He graduated from Corpus Christi, Texas in 1942. He became a flight instructor October of that year. In 43 he flew with Scouting Squadron 62 and later that year he became a torpedo plane pilot with Squadron 7. From April to December 1944 he was aboard the USS Hancock as part of Task Force 38, also part of ACORN 36 at NAS Miami, Opalaka and Squadron 79. He had recently been transferred to Fort Lauderdale. He arrived there November 21, 1945. Remember, they disappear on December 5th. So he had not been there for very long at all where he would serve as a flight instructor. He had 2,500 flight hours. That's a ton 616 in the Avenger torpedo bomber. He was the commanding officer and he was 28 years old.
- [48:21]
B
There was also Sergeant Howell Oren Thompson. He was born in 1925 in Chicago, Illinois and he became a Marine Corps staff Sergeant in May of 1944. He worked as a mechanic at San Diego. March 19th, 1945, he was aboard the USS Franklin CV13 which was also called the Big Ben doing ordinance when the ship was attacked by a Japanese dive bomber dropping 2 semi armor piercing bombs. But he survived which is incredible. And In November of 1945 he was transferred to Fort Lauderdale to continue training. He was a gunner on FT36 and he was only 20 years old. Truly they're built differently, right? Like these 19 year olds are surviving. These really could be life ending situations. And then for them to all disappear on this navigation problem.
- [49:14]
A
One that's what's sad about it. As they survive the war, you know, they got through the hard part and then this happened.
- [49:21]
B
There was also Joseph Tipton Bossie who was born December 25, 1924 in Arkansas City, Kansas City. He attended the University of Kansas and he passed up a discharge so that he could stay in the Navy. He had 373 hours of flight time, 65.9 hours on the Avengers alone. And he was a pilot of the FT3. And he was 20 years old.
- [49:46]
A
Then we had Sergeant Robert Francis Galavin, United States Marine Corps. Born 3rd of July, 1924 in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was a Marine staff sergeant and a veteran of Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Tarawa. So this guy had seen some really horrible things. From December 15, 1942, he was attached to Marine Squadron VMSB143 as an airplane armorer and torpedo repairman. Like repairing torpedoes, like pretty cool. Like, I mean, once they go boom,
- [50:20]
B
shellings go back in.
- [50:22]
A
I'm not really sure what that means to be a torpedo repairman or hey, your torpedo gets damaged that you need
- [50:27]
B
to dented a little bit, I guess so.
- [50:29]
A
He served at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, in 1943, 44, after the Battle of Tarawa, he made his way to Fort Lauderdale, where he would train as a gunner in the Avenger torpedo bombers. You know, it's like every movie cliche, he always has somebody like this. He was going to be discharged and released the following day, December 6, 1945. Before his disappearance. He was 25 years old. Should have taken that flight off, you
- [51:00]
B
know, I know it's like celebrate. Go.
- [51:02]
A
Yeah, let somebody else go.
- [51:03]
B
No, especially if it's such a routine one.
- [51:05]
A
I know. Private Robert Grubel. He was born in 1927 in Long Island. He joined the Marines in 1944, trained at Marine Corps Air Station Eagle Mountain Lake, Texas. He was part of the Marine scout Bombing Squadron 931 with Marine Aircraft Group 34. In October of 1945, he trained at Miami. And what's also interesting, several of these people had been at Miami were Charles Taylor, remember he was at Miami too, and then went to Fort Lauderdale. A lot of them did the same, including Powers. And by December at NAS Fort Lauderdale, he was training as a radioman bombardier aboard the Avenger torpedo bombers. He was a radio man and he was 18 years old.
- [51:48]
B
Then there's Private First Class William Earl Lightfoot. He was in the Marine Corps. He was born December of 1926 in Clayton, Union County, New Mexico, and he entered the United States Marine Corps reserve June of 1943. He trained in Lexington, Illinois, and he was the only crewman besides the pilot on FT 81. And he was 19 years old. The Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, museum exhibits, the logbook he left behind. It was Donated by his family along with several original artifacts and and photographs. Then there's Walter Reed Par Jr. He was in the Navy and he was born 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. Now the NAS Fort Lauderdale Museum exhibits the logbook that he left behind. It was donated by his family along with original photos of Walter in uniform. Also a Presidential citation which was hand signed by President Truman and family correspondence between the mother of Charles Taylor, remember the lead pilot, and Walter's parents. He was the radio man on FT28 and he was 18 years old. Then there's Captain George William Stivers Jr. He was born in April 1920 in Piedmont, Missouri. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. And in 1942 as a fresh second lieutenant he was part of the Marine platoon in the 1st Raider Battalion which was then part of the 3rd Raider Battalion in 1943. Then during the Battle of Tarawa in 1943, George was General J.C. smith's aide de camp in the 2nd Marine Division. He was cited for gallantry twice on Guadalcanal and once on Tarawa. In 1944 he became an air cadet. That same year he received his wings from NAS Corpus Christi and he then transferred to Fort Lauderdale to train in the Avenger torpedo bombers. He had 374.7 flight hours and he was a pilot and he was only 25 years old. And he's one of those who, you know, was so, I mean he had survived so much in the war and he was this incredible combat man.
- [53:55]
A
If it wasn't Powers that sent that message, it was Stivers, because Stivers has a couple things going for him. Number one, he is also a captain in the Marine Corps. So he's at least equal rank with Taylor. Unclear exactly who would be higher ranking? Because like I said, it has a lot to do with when you received your commission. But he's not only a captain of the Marine Corps, he's a US Naval Academy graduate. I think he's the first one of those we've seen. He is a highly decorated Marine. This is a war hero in the truest sense of the word. I mean, he would have been somebody that people really looked up to. And you know, I'll say this one thing that's really interesting about this, we talked about this a lot with the kids, is the fact that despite everything that happened, no one ever broke rank. No one ever took off on their own. And people always ask about that, why didn't they? And we say it's because military discipline was so strong and it's kind of a testament to that that these two men in particular Powers and Stivers, who really had no reason to respect Taylor other than the fact he was the instructor, particularly given their positions, probably could have done whatever they wanted and been fine, nevertheless seem to have stuck with Taylor to the very end. All right, so that brings us to Herman Arthur Thielander. He was in The Navy, Specialist First Class, born in 1926 in Kinbrae, Minnesota. There are as of 2010, 12 people who live in Kinbrae, Minnesota. So Herman joined the United States Naval Reserve September 1, 1944. He transferred for training several times. He was in Jacksonville for a while and then he was in Fort Lauderdale for a while. And then he came back to Fort Lauderdale where he ended up in December. He was a gunner and he was 19 years old. So we're going to end this roll call of people with the. Probably the most interesting. I mean, the two Marine captains and obviously Lieutenant Taylor are very interesting, but this one has something very unusual about it. So. Sergeant George Richard Bayoness, U.S. marine Corps. Born 1917 in Mamaroneck, New York. He was the third of eight children to Italian immigrants. In 1944, he saw duty as an aerial gunner in Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands. Upon his return, he was assigned training as a radioman bombardier on the TBM TBF Avenger torpedo bombers at Fort Lauderdale. He was on Powers plane, as a matter of fact, after his disappearance of Flight 19 and Powers, apparently, you know, there's one plane that only had two people. Apparently that was Powers. So it was Powers and Peoneza who were in that plane. After his disappearance with Flight 19, Pans's family would receive a telegram days later. And here's what it said. You have been misinformed about me. Am very much alive. Signed with the nickname Georgie. Now, this obviously has been considered a hoax, but there's a few things that are really interesting about this. The first is where it's from. So this Western Union telegram, which we have a copy of. So this is not a hoax. This is not a story that just grew up later on. This is a real Telegram. And number one, it was sent from Jacksonville to D.C. it was sent to a Corporal Joseph Pionessa, who was a Marine stationed at Marine Barracks 8th and I Southeast in Washington D.C. this is a pretty famous Marine Barracks in Washington D.C. if you've ever been to Barracks Row, you've seen it. That's where it is.
- [57:51]
B
They play like percussion and trumpets every night.
- [57:54]
A
Every night? Yeah.
- [57:55]
B
It's a Very fun, festive event. But it's still there.
- [57:58]
A
Yeah, still there to this day. Very famous place. So there is a naval air station in Jacksonville. So not unusual that this would come from Jacksonville. Jacksonville's in North Florida, and we know the flight was headed towards North Florida. This is a telegram that was sent. This wasn't. You just fire up ProtonMail, create a fake account and send it. Someone went into the telegraph office in Jacksonville and had this sent out. And it was someone who knew enough about Panessa to know he had a brother whose name was Joseph, who was a corporal in the Marine Corps stationed at this Marine barracks in Washington, D.C. which is all correct. It also wouldn't have been a cheap telegram necessarily to send, because as some of you know, if you've ever seen the Three Amigos, this actually factors into the Three Amigos. Every character cost more money. So a lot of times you would try and keep your telegram as short as possible. No extra words, nothing extraneous, because you're having to pay for every letter you type out. And you have been misinformed about me, which I can think of all sorts of words to use other than misinformed. If I was friends sending a hoax one, I'm alive, I'm alive. He then says that. But he doesn't just say, I'm alive. Am very much alive. Right. I mean, you're wrong. Alive. Georgie, if you just wanted to send the hoax telegram, that is probably the kind of telegram you would send. But this is a much longer one. And there's another thing about it. It's not signed George. It's signed Georgie, which was not a name that George ever used in the military. The only people who called him Georgie were his family members. So this is really strange because the most obvious answer to this, of course, is that this is a hoax. And that has been the assumption that it's the hoax. And if you read about it, it will say it's a hoax. But the only reason we think it's a hoax is because we have a pretty strong feeling that George died somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle 12 days before this or whatever. Right? And so it must be a host, because obviously he didn't send it. There's no evidence, it's never been proven who sent it. We have no idea. The family keeps it to this day. And the family has always been really perplexed by this telegram because of the familiarity it shows both with his family and the fact that it uses his nickname. Very, very, very strange occurrence.
- [60:51]
B
Very strange.
- [60:53]
A
Oh, you have a theory oh, wait. Okay. Do you want to give it now or do you want to wait?
- [60:57]
B
Yeah, I can. I can give it now.
- [60:58]
A
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- [62:16]
B
I think looking at it right now is helpful. So all the things you say are true, right? They have to know intimately. This almost has to be like a close friend. But what close friend would cause such suffering to the Peonessa family? Because obviously when the family gets this, the roller coaster of emotions, is he really alive? And then of course, never have him appear is as if their son has died yet again. Right. The fact that they keep this to this day, I mean, shows the emotional turmoil it has caused on them. So if it seems like it's someone so close, why would they cause such harm to the family? And why so many words when you pay every letter, right? If this were actually Georgie, first of all, stumble into any station and they will broadcast it for you for free. Right? You don't need to send a telegram if you're really alive. Crawl into literally any place and they will call. You'll be on the news. It'll be great. But it's written pretty poetically. It's written as if it's a headline. My theory is, obviously this was all over the news. This was a huge deal. Every reporter was, was reporting on this, finding out about each of these people. Just like we read you that roll call. We read you when they were born, you know, how they were decorated, where they fought, where they came from, how they lied about their identities to join the military earlier to fight for their country, because this is massively human interest. And so in the process of learning about all these people, journalists probably were able to find all this information about peonessa. Not just peonessa, probably others as well. But the extra oomph here, because it's another corporal, they're able to send it from here. This was unfortunately meant it was someone who'd been reporting on this, learned a lot about peonesa. I don't think it was actually probably someone close to him and sent this, wanting to be the first one to grab a headline, knowing what it was, because I think this is written exactly like a headline, which is horrendous. So a hoax, but a hoax for the purpose of being the first to break a story.
- [64:23]
A
So as much as I would like to believe he survived and discovered aliens and the government said, we won't kill you, but you can never speak to anyone, you know again. And he sent one last telegram to his family, just let him know he was alive. I think you're probably right. I think there's a few things that support that. This Is sent on December 26, which is even worse. It's like the day after Christmas. But I mean, think about it. This disappearance happens on the 5th. This is 20 days after the search. There's been a lot of stories, but the stories are drying up. You're a reporter who's made a lot of money writing stories about this. You're trying to get one last little bit of story out of it, and then you send something like this and see if maybe you can get one more story. I think that is highly likely. I don't know that we can prove that, but it would make sense, because human interest, you know, you go up, you meet with the family, you learn about all the different people. You learn about George. Oh, we called him Georgie when he was a kid. He hated that. You know, he. He never let anybody know he was called Georgie. Because I was so embarrassed by that. Right. You can imagine, like a proud mother telling the story to a reporter who then turns around and uses it against them. It's like every psychic who comes up with all sorts of things about you, it's like, how could they possibly know that? And it's because they're really good at figuring those little things out and turning it to their advantage. So. And there was a lot of that back then. And, you know, you can imagine a boom in journalism that occurred over World War II. Times are probably getting tough, People are getting cut, People are desperate. End up with something like this. All right, so that's everybody on the flight. Unfortunately, we only have the names of the people in the PBM Mariner, which I kind of hate because those men lost their lives as well. But we do want to at least read them out to you so their names are repeated. These are the guys who were on that plane that probably exploded. Harry G. Cone, Roger Allen, Lloyd Ellison, Charles Arcano, Robert Cameron, Wiley Cargill, James Jordan, John Menendez, Philip Neiman, James Oesterheld, Donald Peterson, and Alfred Zywicki. So those are the guys who lost their lives on the search plane who were just trying to do something to help and unfortunately suffered as well. Okay, there are a few unusual things to talk about with this case. We'll hit these quickly, and then we'll go on to our theories. So weird stuff happened during this search, things that have helped with the Bermuda Triangle lore, and they've never been quite explained. And probably the kind of things that just misinformation spreads in moments like this. You see this a lot with, like, 9 11. So most 911 conspiracies come from the quote, unquote, fog of war. So many things are happening, you're getting misinformation, you're hearing things that are wrong, but then that stuff becomes fodder for conspiracy theories later on. And one of those was other planes. So there were numerous sightings and even radar hits of five unknown planes flying in North Florida or South Georgia well after the Avengers should have run out of fuel. How do we explain this? Well, it's a little unusual because the weather that night, as we said, was rough and getting rougher, and it wasn't the kind of weather you'd expect to have random flights, especially in the middle of the night. What these planes were has never been explained. Probably not the Avengers. One thing I will note, this is always said to be radar hits. And in our mind, we think of modern radar and like, you know, if you see a plane, it must be a plane, unless it's a stealth bomber, in which case it's a few birds, right? Well, just because you had radar hits, quote, unquote hits on five planes in the middle of a storm doesn't necessarily mean there were five planes. I think probably this is some sort of misreading of the radar, given the weather and everything that's going on. And it's just become part of the lore.
- [68:26]
B
And speaking of which, the weather. So the disappearance has sometimes described as inexplicable because these five planes disappeared in clear, calm weather. But that really wasn't the situation at all. Now, the weather already wasn't great when the planes took off. And by the time things really started getting bad and the search began, the weather was atrocious. The disappearance of Flight 19 probably, as Brett said, saved other lives because as the search party spent half their time the next day rescuing ships and sailors who had suffered through the brutal storm the night before. And oftentimes you'll still hear this like, oh, it was a clear day. And part of the mystery is as they're up there, it's like a cinematic event. It starts to just turn 180 degrees. It wasn't good even to begin with. It just got much worse. And then the darkness came and all of these confluence of factors with navigation happened.
- [69:15]
A
The ships that were at sea, the Navy ships, they had waves breaking over the decks, and these were really rough seas. There was an aircraft carrier off the coast that didn't have any planes on it. And there were thoughts of, let's land some planes on that aircraft carrier and use it as a base of operations so that the planes don't have to fly as far for refueling. They'll be able to search better. The weather was so rough, they couldn't land on the aircraft carrier. So, I mean, this was a really bad situation. And frankly, probably once they ditched, they probably didn't have any chance. I mean, the weather was so bad, if they survived hitting the water, they probably did not live much longer. Okay, now this one's weird. There is a plane that was found in 1963. A lawyer named Graham Stick A Leather was hunting in a Florida swamp when he discovered a single Avenger. Inside were two skeletons. Two, not three. Stick A Leather alerted authorities who recovered the plane, but after seeking more information on the matter, he was told to drop it. And the identities of the two people in that plane and where that plane came from have never been revealed. I have filed a freedom of information request about this flight and this plane. We'll see if we get anything in eight or nine years. That the podcast still going. I'll let you know what the Navy says back to us. But apparently up to this point, it's never been explained. I mean, this is a real plane and absolutely was in the Everglades. Never been explained what it was more
- [70:54]
B
than 60 years ago.
- [70:56]
A
Yeah, I know exactly. The theory on this is like, if it's connected to Flight 19, is that perhaps Powers did break away, that at some point he said, I'm going west. He went west, but his flight went down in the Everglades. Crash. And he and his other companion in the flight, which was Mr. Peonessa, both died. And that's the skeletons. That's the theory. Now, we don't know that. And I guess we'll see if we get any information with the Freedom of Information request. Okay, so that brings us to our theories. And we're going to talk extensively about theory number one, which is the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon. And this encompasses so many of all our favorite theories. Aliens, vortexes, some sort of dimensional portals, I mean, whatever, Atlantis, all of it comes together in the Bermuda Triangle theory. So, as we know we've discussed, the Bermuda Triangle refers to this 500,000 to a million and a half square mile section of the Atlantic Ocean right off the coast of Florida, where over 50 ships and 20 aircraft have disappeared. We talked about where it is. It's called the Bermuda Triangle for a reason. That's the northern part of it. It goes down to the Greater Antilles and over to Miami. And these disappearances are unique for several reasons. They often occur with no distress signals leading up to the catastrophe. You may recall the Cyclops disappeared without a trace and without any sign of wreckage or crew, despite extensive searches. And the reason for this is highly debated, with explanations ranging from geophysical to environmental factors to supernatural powers. And those who are looking to solve the mystery using reason will often point to weather patterns in the area, much like occurred in this case. And it is a fact that this is an area in the Atlantic Ocean where storms from multiple directions can converge, sort of coming up from the Gulf Stream and over from the Atlantic and down from Atlantic Ocean, various other places. And maybe we have some particularly bad storms, maybe some rogue waves, which are massive waves that can reach upwards of 100ft, that scientists used to believe did not exist. They thought they were tall tales from sailors. But we now have absolute proof that they do exist, and they are capable of taking down even large ships. Others hypothesize that pilots fail, as we discussed earlier in our coverage, to account for the Agonic line, which is the place where there is no need to compensate for magnetic compass variations and that that could lead you to not knowing where you are. And so these are possibilities for what could be special about the Bermuda Triangle.
- [74:01]
B
So these supernatural theories explaining the Bermuda Triangle also vary. Some claim that the lost city of Atlantis lays on the ocean floor below it. They argue that technology developed there used crystal energies which cause mechanical issues for boats and planes. Now others say, no, it's not these crystals, but rather aliens use the Bermuda Triangle as a portal, gathering people and technology there to experiment on. And then of course there's the ever popular wormhole theory where people suggest that the Bermuda Triangle is a wormhole to another space and time dimension. So whether you believe the explanation is natural or supernatural, many believe the Bermuda Triangle is responsible for the disappearance of Flight 19. But the major problem with this theory is that evidence suggests the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon. I'm sorry to be the cold water pouring. The cold water on this, Brett, is very sad, but unfortunately I think the Bermuda Triangle, not just me, this entire phenomenon is completely false. In fact, the US national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated that, quote, there is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well traveled area of the ocean. And, and that boaters and flyers continue to go through this Bermuda Triangle without an event. I will stop there really quick because I'll say that's the official government position. I also will note that despite denying alien life forever, now they might be taking an about face on that. So all I'm saying is I don't know if it's an official government position. It could change depending on what information they need to maintain peace in this society.
- [76:00]
A
I mean, here's the thing. I don't know why you trust the government on this. The government's not going to tell you if the Bermuda Triangle is sucking up
- [76:07]
B
boats or ships because guess what would happen? All the cruises to Bermuda, going to the Bahamas, that would all. They would kill all of that industry. I bet you that lobby is real strong on the noaa.
- [76:19]
A
Now the problem is you do have to follow the money. And the far more credible organization than the government is Lloyd's of London. Right now we're in a conflict with Iran. You may have heard of this if you follow the news. And there is this little area called the Strait of Hormuz where a bunch of tanker ships often travel and they're not traveling there right now. And the reason for that is not so much that the Iranians are in any position to really do a lot of damage to most tankers at this point. The reason is that Lloyd's of London, who insures those tankers, has said if you're sailing through a war zone and something does go wrong, we're not paying for it. And that's enough to keep people from doing it. And the fact of the matter is Lloyd's of London does not treat boats going through the Bermuda Triangle any differently than any other area of the ocean. And if boats were disappearing at a higher rate in the Bermuda Triangle, you can bet they would. That, to me, is the most convincing piece of evidence. The fact that the insurers don't charge more money tells me it's probably not more dangerous. And I. It kills my soul to say that because I feel like the Bermuda Triangle, you know, quicksand's been coming back. I've been seeing stories about quicksand lately. It's making me happy seeing people getting rescued from quicksand or warned about quicksand. I'm like, yes, quicksand is back. You know, that was part of my childhood. But I feel like the Bermuda Triangle. It was hot there for a little bit. Big in the 80s. I think we're losing the Bermuda Triangle. I think the Bermuda Triangle is falling apart as a supernatural event. And it makes me sad. But I think we have to conclude it probably wasn't aliens or Atlantis over at Bimini, the Bimini Road.
- [78:10]
B
I really like the Atlantis theory, though.
- [78:12]
A
The Atlantis theory is great.
- [78:12]
B
I mean, I love Atlantis is so compelling. What was that movie from, like the 1990s? Oh, yeah, Atlantis. I was like, that's accidental. What happened. And if it's underneath, you know, we think about all the apparently wires and waves literally that are going through our brain right now. And they. All these people selling these, like, hats and whatnot, being like, you know, make sure your WI fi doesn't go through your brain. Imagine what Atlantis had disrupting all these places in order to. Just because they existed. And they were so much more advanced than us. I don't know. I think there's something to that.
- [78:42]
A
So there was a show,'80s-90s camera, which episode it was. It could have been the Leonard Nimoy Show. He did one that was like a supernatural places. And they talked about the Bermuda Triangle and they had this Atlantis theory. And they had some very sort of basic CGI of like, Atlantis is all destroyed at the bottom of the ocean. And there's like this one sort of laser crystal tower laying on its side. And every now and then it would, like, energize and fire off a laser. And the laser would shoot out of the ocean and, like, hit a plane or hit a boat. And that's what it was. It was the laser hitting one of these. And then down it go. And there you go. Bermuda Triangle. But believe. Believe, maybe. Exactly.
- [79:28]
B
You need a shirt with the Bermuda Triangle that says believe.
- [79:31]
A
And look, y' all should just stop now. Just believe the Bermuda Triangle. You don't need to hear the rest of this episode. Rest of this episode is for Losers. So if you're a winner, just leave here thinking it was a Bermuda Triangle, because unfortunately, it probably isn't that. It's probably that they got lost and ran out of gas and had to ditch in the ocean. And this is the most likely explanation. Squadron was hopelessly lost. They ran out of fuel long before they could find their way home. Taylor is indicating that that's what they're going to do. The waters were choppy. The planes would have sank very quickly. The crew likely wouldn't have survived. It's also likely, you know, we talked about that massive search. Unfortunately, based on what we know now, and honestly, even what we knew then, they probably were searching way too far south. They should have gone farther north and farther east if they wanted to find this. And modern recreations of where they probably are pushes the search area much farther north. So probably all that searching was just a complete waste of time. And, you know, the ocean is vast, plains are small. Not difficult to imagine what happened here. Now, look, there are a couple things that I'm sure you're all asking yourself, and that's number one, how could he have gotten so lost? And number two, what about his compasses? Because he says at one point that his compasses are broken. Let's actually start with the second one. Let's start with the compasses. So you may be wondering why two compasses? Well, the Avenger had two compasses. One of them was a standard compass that you imagine walking through the woods. Very simple, little needle, always points to magnetic north. Right? That was one compass they had. The other one was something called a directional gyro. And what would happen is, when you got in the plane sitting on the ground, you take your little compass and you would set your directional gyro, because you had to set it to magnetic north. And then when you're flying, it's a really cool thing that even if it's bumpy and the wind's blowing you because of the way it's built, it always is consistent. It points towards north. So even if your compass is like walkie, because you're through heavy turbulence, your directional gyro, your DG, would tell you where you were going. The problem was the DG had to be reset every hour or so because it would drift. And so even though it's consistent, it's consistent against the weather, but it will drift. So basically, once you get out of that turbulence, you need to check your compass, make sure it's still good, and correct it. So what do we have here? You have Taylor who was telling the radio station that his compasses aren't working? What does that mean? Okay, now the directional gyro could have just maybe he forgot to set it, whatever. There are lots of different possibilities there. But what about his regular compass? What could happen to a regular compass to make it not work? And that's where all this like magnetic anomalies and aliens and Atlantis comes in. Something is so powerful, it's generating such a powerful magnetic field that it's messing up his compass. But here's the issue. How do we know his compasses didn't work? We know because he's telling us they didn't work. And why does he think they don't work?
- [82:57]
B
Because he says he's over the Florida Keys. And if he had been flying based on his compass, how is it possible that he's over the Florida Keys?
- [83:07]
A
And this is something that. It is so hard for non pilots. I'm not a pilot, but it is so difficult for people who aren't pilots to understand how easy it is when you're in the air to lose your orientation and to have to make a decision. Am I going to trust my eyes and what I think's happening or am I going to trust my instruments? And pilots, it is drilled into their brains. Trust your instruments. But the more familiar you get with flying and the longer you do it, the more likely you are to trust yourself. So as Alice said, he looks down, he sees the Florida Keys, he looks at his compass, it says he's flying north. That's impossible. His compass must be broken. He's out over the Florida Keys and it's saying he's flying north. From that point forward, he can't trust his compass. He can't trust all his instruments that are telling him you are flying north and east. That can't be true. So now he's asking, does anybody else have a good compass? And all their compasses are saying the same thing. So everybody's compasses are broken. You know, this is wild, this is crazy. This must be something unusual is going on here because he is so convinced that he is over the Florida Keys that there is nothing that's going to shake him from that. And the more loss they get, the more disoriented they get, the less he can figure out this very basic mistake he's made. And the fact of the matter is a lot of the land over this area of the ocean, the Bahamas, all of that, he had not spent a lot of time there. But the people who had knew it looks a lot like Keys. If you're just looking down from your airplane, it looks a lot like the keys. So it's not that surprising that he would mistake those areas for the keys.
- [84:56]
B
For what it's worth, when I look on Google Maps, because I wanted to test myself, I am also not a pilot. I'm the most amateur of amateurs. But when I zoom in on Google Earth, I'm like, yeah, I could see how you could mistake that. Right? But I think that's a really great point because up until this point, when you cite the non supernatural causes of the Bermuda Triangle for the, the disappearance, it's that it messed with the compasses. Other than Lieutenant Taylor's word, we don't actually know. Of course, we don't have the compasses. We don't actually know that the compasses were wrong. They actually may have gotten powers. And the other folks who were like, no, remember, they said, damn it, go west and we'll go home. Right? Because they are like, no, no, no, no. I see my compass, I know what's going on. And so that would explain kind of the angst going on among the other pilots.
- [85:43]
A
And the other problem is Taylor didn't take this very seriously at all. Now this was, the man's got 25 hours flying. He's been flying combat missions. He could do this in his sleep. And based on the naval report, few things appear to have happened. Number one, there are no clocks in these planes. They're supposed to be a clock, but people would take them. It was a tradition to take the clocks out of planes as a souvenir. So if you'd flown these planes for a while and you're going home, you take a clock, and now you have a clock from a TBM Avenger right with you. So there's no clocks in the plane. That's not a problem. Because as long as you wear a watch, you can still do dead reckoning. Where'd they find Taylor's watch? They found it. Unlike the rest of him, they found his watch and it was actually in his room with his stuff. So he probably didn't even have a watch. Also, he didn't take a navigation board with him. So basically you had these pegboards that you could use to do navigation and that's how you do this dead reckoning. Because maps aren't that useful. We didn't take one with him because he didn't need one. And you know, he didn't even want to fly that day. He wasn't drunk sometimes it said he was drunk. But people who knew him and didn't like him, saw him that day and have said he wasn't drunk, spoke to him, wasn't drunk, but he didn't want to fly. And it's certainly possible he was hungover because he and a lot of the people there were notorious for staying up all night, playing poker and drinking. That's what they did. This just wasn't a very serious assignment. The war was over. Half the time people didn't even fly it. You didn't have to lie if he didn't want to, he didn't want to fly that day, but they didn't really have a replacement, so he had to do it. But some of his own squadron didn't fly with him because they were like, I don't feel like it, right? So it seems like he basically went up, they did the thing, they're flying around, and then at some point he has a panic moment where he doesn't know where he is, and he can't do dead reckoning because he wasn't really paying attention. This whole time, he hadn't been paying attention because he didn't think it was a big deal. But now he's looking down and he's seeing the Florida Keys and he's like, how am I in the Florida Keys? And from that point forward, they were just doomed because he was never going to fly west. And he, again and again and again refuses to take actions that he should have taken. His people are telling him, let's go west. The people at the stations are telling him, change your radio frequency so we can talk to you. He refused to do it. And even if he had good reasons, he still refused to do it. He trusted in himself so much, and he was not going to listen to anyone else. And the fact of the matter is, Charles Taylor, CC Taylor, he's a war hero. He did more than I'll ever do. He deserves commendation for his actions in the war, but the Navy nailed it the first time. This was his fault. He was in command. He had the responsibility for these guys for their lives. Their lives were in his hands to the extent that two Marine captains who were just as decorated as he was, apparently refused to disobey orders and just went with him to their death because that's how strong their belief in the command structure was. This responsibility was on him. And he made mistakes again and again and again. And if he had not made any one of those mistakes, they probably would have made it home. We never would have heard of him. And we might not have ever heard of the Bermuda Triangle. It is possible there is no Bermuda Triangle. If he just took a few small steps that day to get those guys home.
- [89:19]
B
And not to be his mother here, but he was 28 years old. He had ditched three times prior. Not. You know, we see this all the time, actually, when we prosecute cases, like when you're younger, we know this. Your brain is thinking, nothing bad's gonna happen to you. Nothing bad has happened to him. He has been in the war. He's dished into the Pacific Ocean three different times. Not that he finds it as a joke, but, like, he didn't die those other times. They're great stories. And there's incredible bravado from having survived the war. Not just survived it, but, like, done a great job. This is easy, right? And we always say you make the biggest mistakes when you think something is incredibly easy. This is so sad. If he hadn't ditched this three prior times, I don't think he would have felt so much bravado if he hadn't come in late that day. I think it just shows everything. He was late because this was no big deal. He didn't take this seriously. He didn't bring his watch with him, his navigation board. I mean, this was almost doomed from the start. And if this had not happened, it would have happened the next time, because this seems to be the way that he operated.
- [90:21]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think all that came together. I think if they had had a rookie instructor, they'd have been fine. You know, if they'd had somebody who. If his radio had gone out, they'd have been fine. They would have just gone west. They would have just turned into the sun, flown towards the sun.
- [90:37]
B
I really wish they had pulled rank on. On the ground and said, no, Lieutenant, change your signal to 3,000. I wonder. I was like, why didn't they pull rank and just say, do it?
- [90:49]
A
And honestly, it's because of the whole structure of what's going on here. You know, I'm listening to this podcast right now. It's an Amazon exclusive called Shipwreck, and it's about the El Faro, which is a cargo ship that sank in a hurricane, like, 10 years ago. And so many similarities to this. You have a captain who's doing all this stuff, and people are telling him to do something differently, but he. He refuses. And they could have taken matters in their own hands, but they never do. And they sail into the center of this hurricane, and the ship sinks and they all die. And this situation was kind of like that one. He's a captain. He's all powerful like the decisions is. And I think there was probably a feeling even at the base at that time, he's the flight instructor. He's the leader of the flight. We can't tell him what to do. Like he is so in command on the field, as it were, that even if we have a high rank, he's expressed why he's going to do this. There's nothing we can do. And, and if he had changed frequency, they would have been able to tell him, hey, we've got a fix on you. We know exactly where you are. Fly west if he changes frequency. But he refused to do it. So anyway, well, that is the story of Flight 19. Want to thank the kids at Lititz for all your help on this, all the research you did, all the great discussion we had. If you're interested in this case, read this book, Flight 19 the Disappearance of Flight 19 by Larry Kush. He's also the author of the Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved. So interesting guy, very good writer, page turner. If you're interested in this, check it out. Lots of good podcasts have done episodes on this, including Astonishing Legends. Check that out as well. And yeah, we're bringing a close. Another year with Lititz. It is such a blessing for us. We look forward to doing it again. And once again, a shout out to their amazing teachers who continue to take the effort to make this happen. I mean, it's not easy. They put a lot into doing this and I would like to think it's a great benefit to the students there and that they learn a lot about thinking and history and researching and everything else. So we look forward to doing it some more in the future. All right, well, this has been a long episode, so we're going to go ahead and close it off today. Shoot us an email if you have thoughts on this. Prosecutors podmail.com@projectspot for all your social media. If you want these episodes early and ad free, you now have two options. If you're on Apple, you can do Apple subscriptions or you can do patreon. Both are $3 a month. And if you would like to see us record these, you will need to do Patreon. For that. Also just $3 a month go to the Gallery, which is our fan run Facebook page. Join that and you can discuss this case in any other case there. All right, Alice, before we sign off for today, do you have anything else you want to add?
- [93:50]
B
Thank you to the students at Lidditz. It really is a highlight every year to be able to do a case with you guys. I'm sorry I wasn't physically there this year, but I can't wait to see you guys again. And let this be a lesson to all of us. The Lydit students did incredible research on this. They shaped our thinking. They asked good questions. Doesn't matter your age. You can do fantastic work, good research. These types of reasoning skills, analytical skills, will be with them for, you know, the rest of their lives. And I wasn't kidding when I said they're coming for our jobs because the future is bright and we get to see that with the Linux kids every year. So thanks for letting us be a small part of your Hallmark esque community.
- [94:30]
A
It is amazing. All right, guys, we'll be back next week with a new case, but until then, I'm Brett.
- [94:38]
B
And I'm Alice.
- [94:39]
A
And we are the prosecutors.
- [95:06]
B
Come here, bud. We have a.
- [95:07]
A
We have a. I heard the door open.
- [95:09]
B
Yeah, I did too. What do you.
- [95:11]
A
Hello.
- [95:12]
B
It's well past bedtime. You want to say hi? Say hi to Mr. Brett. What are you doing?
- [95:17]
A
Hey, how you doing? Squanto, what are you doing? Squanto, what are you doing?
- [95:24]
B
Do I need to come? Good. Let me go upstairs. Okay, you do it yourself.
- [95:30]
A
So.
- [95:32]
B
I love you. Can you do it now? Yeah. Do I have to stop? Miss you, big boy. Okay. Say bye, Mr. Brett. Love you. Have a good night. See you later, bud. Close the door, please. Thank you all the way.
- [96:16]
A
It's the little things in life that are wonderful, right?
- [96:20]
B
Are they? Yeah. As, by the way, as we talk about all these suns, Right?
- [96:25]
A
I know.
- [96:25]
B
Seriously, I'm like, well, I can't just let him stand over there. Pluto tv has thousands of free movies and tv shows. You swear?
- [97:06]
A
If I'm lying, I'm dying.
- [97:11]
B
This is with movies like titanic, dream girls and gladiator. Why are you not entertained? And tv shows like survivor, spongebob squarepants, the fairly odd parents and ghosts. Pluto tv is always free. Huzzah. Pluto tv stream now pay never.