The most famous case of the Bermuda Triangle: the enigmatic disappearance of Flight 19

The famous Bermuda Triangle… nowadays many have heard about it, but it was not always so. It was officially discovered only on December 5, 1945, when five aircraft belonging to the U.S. Navy disappeared as if by magic in this place off the coast of the United States.

They departed from the Florida air base called Fort Lauderdale, but then vanished without a trace.  Let’s see all the details of this mysterious story:

Unusual events

From that moment on, Bermuda Triangle theories began to circulate around the world, making it clear that for some strange reason, anyone transiting these coordinates is at great risk of disappearing without explanation.

“Keep all planes close. We will have to ditch if we don’t find land. When one plane has less than 10 gallons of fuel, we’ll all go down together.” 

This was the last conversation over the radiotelephone that was picked up on December 5, 45, at 18:20 minutes past 18:00. The signal that was emitted by Flight 19 took about 45 minutes to reach its destination.

But it was not just a flight as if it were an airplane, but a whole squadron formed by five of the best bombers of the Air Force, each one manned by 14 expert officers, who were performing training maneuvers over the Bahamas region and from one second to the next, they were completely erased from this reality, giving birth to one of the greatest enigmas of humanity: the Bermuda Triangle.

This team of airplanes was heading towards the Atlantic with the objective of carrying out some tests very frequented by these squadrons. That day the scheduled take-off time was 13:45, but due to the late arrival of the lieutenant leading the operation, named Charles C. Taylor, the maneuvers began at 14:10.

At 15:00 the base was still picking up transmissions of the progress of the tests, but 40 minutes later, everything changed abruptly. Suddenly, at 15:40, an unidentified person was heard on the radio asking about the reading on the pilots’ compasses.

“I don’t know where we are. We must have gotten lost after the last turn.” Then, the Lieutenant came out to help, “This is FT-74, the plane or ship that called ‘Powers’, please identify yourself so someone can help you.”

It was several transmissions of the same nature. Then it sounded like a voice identifying himself as FT-28, warning that his two compasses were broken and he was trying at all costs to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but he was very disoriented and didn’t know what to do.

But the Fort Lauderdale base contacted Lt. Taylor and asked him to activate his IFF transmitter to triangulate his location, but the officer did not respond. After a while, communications came in from the lieutenant reporting that they were heading 030 degrees for a period of 45 minutes and that he was attempting to divert the Gulf of Mexico.

He also said that he had activated his transmitter, but had received no signal. He was therefore asked to change the frequency twice, but when he moved it to 4808 kHz, it was no longer heard. After a few minutes, on the 3000 kHz frequency, Taylor’s voice was picked up saying that it was impossible for him to adjust the frequency and he sounded very disturbed.

The weather became very rough and that made communications even worse. A few more transmissions were heard around 18:04, in which the lieutenant leading the squadrons stated that they were lost, giving some instructions and they were never heard from again.

Immediately, several search teams were sent out, including a Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplane. Its mission was to find the squadron and bring it back to land. Two Martin PBM Mariner arrived in the evening, one of which took off at about 19:30 with 13 crew members on board and was never heard from again.

The wreckage of the bombers has never been found.

Although in 1986, as a result of the intense searches that were deployed, the U.S. government told the world that they had found Flight 19, but four years later it was confirmed that when they took the aircraft out of the ocean, they realized that their serial numbers did not match and therefore, they were not the same. In fact, it became evident that they were aircraft that had been thrown into the sea, as they were no longer functional.

Since then, many aircraft have been lost, as well as ships that dare to pass through those strange coordinates known as the Bermuda Triangle. Have they gone to another dimension? Most probably, theories agree on the matter.

It is said that in this geographical point not only fortuitous disappearances occur, but also all kinds of paranormal phenomena, and they attribute the cause to the fact that it is indeed an energetic point of great importance on the planet.