"The Lost Squadron" by Bob Jenny
“The leader was an experienced combat pilot, these were reliable planes in good condition, and it was a routine training mission. We were alerted to look around the islands and to keep searching the water for debris. They just vanished. We had hundreds of planes out looking, and we searched over land and water for days, and nobody ever found the bodies or any debris.” - Lt. David White, NASFL Flight Instructor, participated in the search for Flight 19.
5 December, 1945: Flight 19 disappears into the Bermuda Triangle
Flight 19 was the designation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945 during a U.S Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a PBM Mariner flying boat assumed to have exploded in mid-air while searching for the flight. It was one of the largest air and sea searches in history. Flight 19 remains one of the great aviation mysteries.
Flight 19 was the designation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945 during a U.S Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a PBM Mariner flying boat assumed to have exploded in mid-air while searching for the flight. It was one of the largest air and sea searches in history. Flight 19 remains one of the great aviation mysteries.
| Flight 19 Burt Edward Baluk, Jr. Joseph Tipton Bossi George Devlin Robert Gallivan Forrest Gerber Robert Gruebel William Earl Lightfoot George Paonessa Walter R. Parpart, Jr. Edward Powers George William Stivers, Jr. Charles Taylor Herman Thelander Howell Orrin Thompson | PBM-5 Rescue Seaplane Roger Allen Charles Arceneaux Robert Cameron Wiley Cargill Harris Cones Lloyd Eliason Walter Jeffery James Jordan John Menendez Philip Neeman James Osterheld Donald Peterson Alfred Zywicki |
