Fun Fact: in the game Flight Simulator X from 2006 there is a mission that let's you fly a learjet45 from miami to the Bahamas, if you fly to your left off course you will stumble upon a group of Ghost TBM avengers flying for eternity into the sunset.

My uncle was career Navy, a pilot and a flight instructor for a while. His opinions on Flight 19 were: navigation over open water is very challenging under the best of conditions - one small miscalculation and you're in deep shit, and two, Lt Taylor wasn't really The Guy to be leading an open-water navigation exercise (don't think my uncle knew Taylor personally, but he knew some men who did). Have to wonder why he didn't return to base when he found the compasses on his plane weren't working, especially in light of his not really wanting to take the mission anyway. Since nobody really knows 100% where they went into the water, it's not surprising the wreckage hasn't been found. If they ever do find anything, it will probably be while looking for something else.

My friend's father was flying a B-24 in that area on that day, Mccoy to Bermuda, and he said they hit bad clear icing conditions. Iced up their pitot tubes and antennas. He said they were lucky to turn on the heaters in time.

Just a small correction: in the Speilberg movie "Close Encounters", the aliens are not shown abducting the flight, but are in fact returning the missing air crews.

Moral of the story is, nothing about flying is routine. Always be on guard, always stick to your training.. this incident is THE Bermuda Triangle story that brought it onto every living room.

“Lieutenant’s mother claimed her son couldn’t be found guilty as no evidence had been uncovered” Except that he didn’t follow protocol. That’s enough

I've always been fascinated by flight 19, thanks for making a vid on it!

Most Mysterious Disappearance of WW2 December 1945, 3 months after the war ended

I remember hearing these stories way back in the '70s, always in the context of a Bermuda Triangle phenomenon. However, when stripped of its dramatic elements, it becomes just a routine story of poor navigation and/or leadership. Occams razor.

You need more docs like these all through the month of October!

FYI there is statistical proof that you are no more likely to disappear in the triangle than you are anywhere else off a coast.

Terrible shame and tragedy, can only imagine what the loved ones have had to go through. Fascinating story for sure but damn sad.

I've always believed it was just a simple but tragic case of getting lost. The commander even stated over the radio that they were disoriented. They likely flew farther and farther from shore until they ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean. The wingmen, being good subordinates, flew alongside their commander because that's all they knew. The chances of finding traces of any of the planes in a place like the ocean is next to none, and that's even if there was anything left after an unpowered ditch/crash. The search aircraft was almost certainly a total coincidence, since that model of plane was a known hazard.

The book, "The Disappearance of Flight 19" by Larry Kusche (Barnes & Noble, 1981) answers pretty much all of the questions about Flight 19, at least to my satisfaction. In summary, these are the points Kusche arrived at: 1. Taylor may have been hung over. He ran his car off the road the night before the flight and it's speculated he may have wanted to spend the day recovering it. As he was hung over, he knew he was unfit to fly. His request to be excused was denied, as there was no replacement available and he couldn't/wouldn't give a satisfactory reason why he wanted to stay on the ground that day. Local authorities recovered Taylor's car from a roadside ditch a couple of days later. 2. Taylor was recently arrived at Naval Air Station Ft. Lauderdale, having been stationed at NAS Miami since returning from the Pacific at war's end. It's speculated that in his hung-over condition, he may psychologically have still been operating on "Miami settings", which could account for his disorientation during the exercise. 3. Taylor was a known risk-taker, a 'seat-of-the-pants' flyer. Kusche cites some of Taylor's wartime squadron-mates on this. 4. The weather deteriorated during the exercise. It was never good (unlike what the legend will have you believe). It started choppy and, as night fell, became increasingly stormy. 5. Taylor refused to switch to the stronger emergency radio channel, which would have allowed Lauderdale, Banana River and the other stations pinpoint the Flight's location because he had to "leave his planes intact". This is presumed to mean that, with night having fallen, the sky overcast and rain falling steadily, the planes could no longer see each other. If Taylor switched frequencies, he risked losing contact with the other planes. 6. Why didn't the planes just head west? Kusche likewise cites military discipline. Taylor was in command. Even though Powers and the others suspected he was going the wrong way (flying north instead of west), although breaking formation and flying west would have saved a crew, to do so would have been to commit mutiny. 7. Why did Taylor fly north instead of west? In one of Taylor's transmissions he said they were flying over "broken land" that he decided were the Florida Keys. Had he been flying from Miami, this would make sense. If you're over the Keys, fly north and you'll hit land. This circles back to the theory that the hung-over Taylor was psychologically operating on "Miami settings" rather than those of someone flying from NAS Lauderdale. 8. The Avenger was known for having unfavourable ditching characteristics. Generally it only floated for about a minute - just enough time to get out and throw the life raft into the water. In heavy, stormy seas, this was not going to be long enough to evacuate. Also, ditching in stormy seas, in the dark, was considered an absolute last-resort option for any flyer, as the chances of surviving it were so low. 9. The fact no wreckage from either Flight 19 or the Mariner was found isn't surprising. There was a storm raging when the planes crashed. By the time the sun came up, any floating debris and oil would gave been dispersed far and wide. The chances of finding any of the pieces - which would have been comparatively tiny - are remote and would have been a case of pure chance. 10. The airmen at NAS Lauderdale accepted the Navy's initial report. When the amended report absolving Taylor of blame was released, Kusche states that many of the men who'd known Taylor were astonished. The second report was felt to be a whitewash intended to assuage the feelings of Taylor's mother who, by then, was leading an increasingly vituperative campaign to not only exonerate Taylor, but blame the Navy for his loss. It was felt in some circles that it was just easier to give her what she wanted, to shut her up.

I think I remember watching about this on Unsolved Mysteries back in the day.

After Malaysia Air 370 this has much less impact on me than it did when I was a kid. Damn ocean, you huge.

There's no mystery here. The captain refused to admit his mistake and wouldn't allow anyone to turn on the emergency frequency. That's the detail that damns him.

What's worse is during an exposition to try to find flight 19, the exposition thought they found flight 19. 5 tbm avenger torpedo bombers, configured to ditch in the ocean, relatively close to each other looking like they all ditched together. But. After running the aircrafts buno numbers, all 5 came from separate flights. None flew together and none were from flight 19.

Mystery for me is why Avenger patrol flies F6 Hellcats most of the times.

They likely followed Taylor to their doom..."The follow the leader" effect, ....Taylor had history of getting lost while flying,...F19 got lost, ran out of fuel, still the most likely cause of the loss.

Iv heard about this mystery many times ... but never herd it in such exquisite detail.... i appreciate you pumping out so much great content ... long time fan

Factual, to the point, interesting & clear. I love this channel

Atlast someone covers disappearance of flight 19 been searching for it.....also please cover mysterious babushka lady at JFK shooting and that "wow" signal along with rosswell alien craft crash ...very hard to find videos about all these topic

Love the episodes you produce! Keep them coming (which I’m sure you will)

Thanks very much...!

I've heard this story many times over the years and it still gets to me every time I hear about it. Hopefully one day we'll find them.

They say "experienced pilots," but this was a training flight.

My flight instructor a B 17 pilot in WW II said that LT Taylor had gotten really drunk the night before and went out and got his crews lost disoriented and killed. There is no validity to the Bermuda triangle myth. Yes I'm old, I trained with him in 1980 , Joe Rickson RIP.

An officer who was in the tower that day told the History Channel that nothing was wrong with Taylor's compass. He was, purely and simply, lost. Taylor had gotten disoriented and lost before; my feeling is Taylor feared being disciplined for getting lost a second time, and concerned about loss of face tried to figure his way out of it. I do not believe all the compasses on all the planes could have gone haywire; as someone noted below, the junior officers were afraid to challenge Taylor because it would make him look bad. Add to it, the transcripts show Taylor was not listening to his fellows or the tower, and his "We can't be sure of anything" tells me he was panicking. They flat out ran out of fuel and ditched, and the planes are likely on the floor of the Atlantic. I don't think they made it to the mainland, because they would have reported they saw land.

Good work bruddah...keep it up.👍

Nice to see he has gone back to doing some spooky stuff.

There was a crash in Portland in 1978. United Airlines Flight 173 from New York to Portland ran into a problem as they made their approach. When they lowered their landing gear, a part failed and the right gear dropped into place, rather than being lowered smoothly, damaging the "gear locked" sensor. The crew felt the abnormal deployment of the gear and the lack of a "locked" indication, and believed that that starboard gear had not locked into place. The captain aborted the landing, and the crew spent the next _hour_ flying in a holding pattern, with gear and flaps lowered, trying to work out why they weren't seeing that indicator light. They kept flying that way until they ran out of fuel and crashed into a suburb, killing ten people. The accident report indicated two key problems. Firstly, the captain became fixated on the gear problem, and kept pushing the rest of the crew to work that problem. He became so concerned with this gear problem that he completely ignored the fuel situation. Secondly, none of the crew felt able to challenge the captain and insist upon landing. The other two crew members were aware of the fuel issue, and tried to bring it up, but the captain ignored them and neither of them had the authority or confidence to press the matter. It seems that something similar happened to Flight 19. The compasses on the other four aircraft were working normally, but because they were showing different readings from Taylor's compass, he came to believe that none of the compasses were working. Adding to this confusion, he mistook islands in the Bahamas for the Florida Keys, which should have been impossible if they'd been flying with correct compass headings. He became totally disoriented, didn't trust any instruments or anything he was being told, and started trying to fly by guesswork and dead reckoning. He had that same fixation on the wrong problem that the captain of UA173 suffered. The rest of the crews, being Navy aviators, were trained to follow orders. They were trained never to try to overrule their commander; they suffered the same inability to challenge their leader as the crew of UA173. A disoriented commander and crews who couldn't overrule their leader. A deadly combination.

Well done. Love the lightning over effect.

Your content is really good and learned

love your content👍

They are lost east of Florida, but Taylor somehow thought they were hundreds of miles south at the Florida keys. I understand getting lost, but what made him think he was 200+ miles south of where they were. Then they fly north for over an hour, didn't find land, so they would have had to have been 300 or 400 miles further south than they actually were. It would be like getting lost over the English channel and deciding you are over the Mediterranean so flying northeast to find Italy. Then the base told him to fly west twice. The rest of the pilots wanted to fly west. So he was kind of an arrogant asshole to think "Everyone else is wrong, I am right. Somehow we teleported 300 miles and are southwest of Florida."

I remember one of the most prevailing realistic theories on what happened to Flight 19 was that they experienced a specific weather phenomenon indicative of the the area they were flying in that disoriented them, causing them to fly off course for miles and eventually crash. The weather phenomenon would cause the sky and the ocean to "blend together" in a reflective haze, making it difficult to discern the horizon line, direction, or orientation. I believe there's a KZfaq presentation about it somewhere, but I may be mistaken. Personally, I think the Flight simply experienced a series of basic navigational failures, both from equipment and the pilot's personal skills. That, in addition to the environment they were flying in, ultimately had fatal results. As for the PBM, well, that Onboard Fire theory is as good as any I've heard.

fun fact : one of the corners of the Bermuda Rectangle mysteriously disappeared.

That marine that didn't go with became an art teacher and I had him in elementary school, and he had videos he played in class about the event

Don’t know who does you’re research but they’re spot on. I know a few details of most of the docs but man do you learn a lot.

I've been watching your videos for quite a while and I think there are very well done and interesting but every time I end up with a thought: why so fast? 😉

Great video! I like the potentially unintended coincidence that it's October so we hit some spooky stories.

i like the fact that you do not ask people to sub. also i have nothing to say because i've never heard of it except a couple years ago

Love the channel!

Dude, you changed titles twice since I put this in my watch later today.

Thank you for an honest and realistic assessment of Flight 19.

Lemmino has an awesome video that discusses this exact incident.

Could swear a Dark Docs on this already existed, but I guess that's just from the length of time this story's been out there and the amount of other videos about it.

This is the story of how the incompetence of one guy lead to the death of an entire squadron

Love the work

Love your work Dark Doc! Keep it up. I'm especially interested in Canadian darkness (My home)

good video!!! As a kid growing up in the 1970s, this was my favorite subject to give book reports and/or presentations about. Also, in a cemetery in the city of Arkansas City, KS, the parents of one of the pilots are buried there. On their joint tombstone is the name of their son with the words, "Lost At Sea". At least he is them in spirit/thoughts.

I've heard of people say they might have ended up in the okefenokee swamp but I don't know if that's true or a story one of my grandparents told me.

A PBM Mariner flying boat had a known design defect had been known to catch fire and blow up with out much notice

Great mini shows... follow your podcast too! 🤩

I've always been fascinated by this disappearance.

This story has intrigued me for years

Not 14 "pilots" 14 aircrew including 5 pilots. Each Avenger had a pilot and two crewmen except for one aircraft where a crewman booked off sick at the last moment.

Wierd how all the pilots ignored orders and their training. Also even weirder that a flight went missing in the area 2 years before.

IMC Conditions easily lead to disorientation, I’ve experienced spatial disorientation it’s frightening how quick thing fall apart once you no longer can trust your eyes...throw in malfunctioning instruments and you’re doomed

Incredible Mystery

Lemmino also has a video on flight 19, I would greatly recommend it as it comes to a rather logical and reasonable explanation of the instructor's disorientation.

This is the infographics show but like 100x better

Nice and mysterious talking about Parmoda squares thanks for sending

Bravo.

A few years ago I saw a documentary about this, and they discussed a little more in depth about the PBM. They were, according to the documentary, prone to fuel leaks within the air frame. Someone witnessed an explosion off the coast in an area where the PBM could have been at the time. When they dived the area, they did find an airplane engine but they could not specifically say it belonged to the PBM due to damage and encrustation.

Last flight before graduating.....explains a lot of why they did what they did. The last thing in the world any of them wanted to do was call into HQ and tell them they were lost.

I remember reading books about Bermuda triangle and other weird stuff when I was a kid and this story was one of my favorites, hard to believe they could all just vanish like that, bizarre...

I have seen only one documentary that mentioned radar returns of 5 aircraft over the swamp in northern Florida or southern Georgia. I forget which state was mentioned. No one has looked there.

Watched Project Iceworm and now I'm hooked. Gotta watch em all

Cause of Death: Ego

Any information on the one guy that excused himself that morning???

I love this dark docs post more dark history

Even though there are a lot of very likely, reasonable explanations for what happened, this story still spooks me out.

This gave me chills

A small piece of trivia...Phil Manzanera, guitarist with the British group Roxy Music, recorded a song with his side group "801" called "Flight 19" on the album "Listen Now".

*Never heard Again, thought of Bermuda triangle stuck my mind*

Not all experienced pilots, the most qualified aviator was the flight leader who wanted out of the mission and made all the other pilots aware of it at the morning briefing.

Flight 19 - Almost certainly the flight leader having confused what he saw out of the window couldn't believe his compass and flew out to sea. It's a big place so not surprising nothing was found. The PBM? PBM rescue missions were quite dangerous so sadly no great surprise one went missing. Still, a fun video. Thanks.

The sea plane in question was/is frequently, and accurately, described as A) The Flying Gas Tank B) The Flying Molotov. The planes had a reputation for fuel leaks and engine fires. I tend to agree with people who think the plane was the "bright flash" reported later by people on the ground. As for Flight 19 I wager that piss poor navigation AND the fact that the flight leader was relatively new to the area contributed to the deaths of the flight leader and all his men.

Sad

Close Encounters doesn’t show Flight 19 *being* abducted - the crews emerge from the alien mother ship, implying that they were abducted or rescued.

"disappearance of ww2" this happened in December of 45 you say? I thought a very important event relating to Ww2 happened in August. I think it had something to do with its ending.

Sad story it also very intriguing

there were 5 planes that matched the group that vanished but on inspection none of the serial No's matched ? that's just strange as the planes were located in the area where the lost planes would of been in close proximity. odd eh. thanks for the upload D D

I was just watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind last night so now I'm kinda spooped

I remember the Discovery Channel had a 2 or 3 hour program about this.

Grew up with Story, living in Miami & have "crossed" many a times , to dive or Fish in my younger years & the Mistery, still remains.

I don’t want to say it was aliens, but it was aliens

Wasn't flight 19 found though? I thought I saw a show on the History Channel that supposedly found flight 19 by mistake

On Expedition Unknown, he did an episode on the Bermuda Triangle and possibly found some of the search and rescue aircraft in the waters

I always remember hearing about the Bermuda Triangle growing up............. but when was the last time something happened there?

The most mysterious disappearance of WWII was that of Glen Miller. Flight 19 was nowhere near the theaters of combat and disappeared after the war was over. It had nothing at all to do with WWII.

Kind of odd that they said the 5 planes Huck found were from a squadron lost at sea two years prior but no one ever heard of it

Flight 19 has always fascinated me, I found about it when I was reading a comic book on 3 different stories about the Bermuda triangle. The first being flight 19, the second being the mysterious disappearance of the crew onboard the Carrol A. Deering (spelt wrong I think) and a story about a tugboat captain and a mysterious fog that came unexpectedly... I've always wondered if their instruments went haywire and they lost their way, or another way...

You should do a video of “valour road”. It’s a street in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada where 3 soldiers were awarded the VC in 3 different battles in WW1.

How is it possible that 14 experienced airmen all made the same mistake ??...there is a chain of command and if your kit isn't working properly someone else takes over. I refuse to believe that so many experienced people just blindly flew out to sea knowing their fate.

There is a reason why the 4ID patch has also been called "4 LT's pointing north"

I wondered when you would get to this

Seems like mechanical failure lead to pilot error which lead to them having to ditch in a storm. Then one of the rescue aircraft experienced another mechanical failure resulting in a crash. Less of a mystery than an unfortunate series of isolated events.