Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

The version of the Flight 19 story presented to the public by such unreliable writers as Gaddis and Berlitz has it that the pilots and crew were all “experienced airmen” (Berlitz 1974, p. 13). As the flight progressed, these experienced flyers became mysteriously lost, in spite of the “ideal flight conditions” (Gaddis 1965, p. 191). Radio communications between the pilots and the base revealed something strange going on: “Everything is wrong… strange. Even the ocean doesn’t look as it should,” Gaddis (p. 191) and Berlitz (p. 14) quote one of the pilots as reporting. Gaddis adds, “Apparently not only the sea looked strange, but the sun was invisible” (p. 192, emphasis added). No trace was ever found of the planes or any of the crew. This, too, we are told, is a great mystery. How could five such aircraft vanish so completely, especially in the face of the massive search that was conducted? Berlitz suggests a shocking answer: The planes, crews and all, were kidnapped by UFOs. He says, “A mother of one of the lost pilots who attended the naval hearing stated at the time that she had received the impression that her son ‘was still alive somewhere in space.”’ He also quotes approvingly the view of a local “scientist” that “they are still here, but in a different dimension of a magnetic phenomenon that could have been set up by a UFO” (p. 18). (Incidentally, the sharp-eyed movie viewer may recall that Flight 19 played a minor part in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When the UFO finally lands at the secret government installation at Devil’s Tower, who pops out of the UFO but the crew of Flight 19, all decked out in their original flight gear and not having aged a bit.)

As before, investigation of what actually happened to Flight 19 explodes the fictionalized stories that are foisted on the reading public as nonfiction. Kusche has devoted an entire book, The Disappearance of Flight 19 (1980), to telling what really happened to this flight. The following information is taken from that book.

Flight 19, it turns out, was not manned by group of experienced aviators. It was a navigational training flight. With the exception of Taylor, the leader, the other pilots were not experienced, they were students. The “excellent flight conditions” are another fiction. For one thing, Taylor’s two compasses malfunctioned after he was airborne. The weather was only “average to undesirable for a training flight” (Kusche 1980, p. 7) with gusty winds up to thirty-one knots and a moderate to rough sea. The forecast called for scattered showers until about 6 P.M. On December 5, 1945, the sun set at 5:29 P.M. It is important to understand that aircraft in 1945 had none of the sophisticated navigational gear that is now carried even by some light private aircraft. The pilots of Flight 19 were navigating with compasses and air speed indicators. To make matters worse, air speed is not equal to ground speed. It can be greater than, equal to, or less than ground speed, depending on the strength and direction of the wind. Further, the compasses of the only experienced pilot in the flight were broken, so he couldn’t navigate. He had to depend on the students for correct navigation. The flight was over water, which obviously has very few landmarks. These factors alone would lead any experienced pilot to predict trouble of some sort, but another factor is important: Taylor had been flying out of Fort Lauderdale for only two weeks. His previous flying assignment in Florida, after transferring stateside from the Pacific Theater, had consisted of eight months of flying from a base in Miami. Thus, when he led Flight 19 he was unfamiliar with the area into which he was flying. In particular, if he were flying out of Miami, he would be nearer to the Florida Keys than when flying from Fort Lauderdale.

As could be predicted on the basis of the poor conditions—meteoro—logical, instrumentational, and experiential—about one hour and twenty minutes after takeoff, Taylor was unsure of his location. The Naval Board of Investigation quoted him as asking for directions and saying, “I’m sure I’m in the Keys” (Kusche 1980, p. 4). As the afternoon wore on, the flight became more lost and confused. Radio messages among the five pilots that were monitored on shore and printed in the transcript of the Naval Board of Investigation or associated documents, reveal considerable confusion as to their location. Taylor ordered several changes of direction during the next few hours, including 180-degree changes. Importantly, the statements attributed to the flight that appear in the Gaddis and Berlitz volumes, and that were noted above, do not appear in the official record. They, like so much else in this manufactured mystery, were made up after the fact to spice the story.

By the time the sun set at 5:29 P.M., Flight 19 had been flying around lost for about two hours. Being lost, especially over the ocean with no landmarks (and no airports!), is a terrifying experience for any pilot, especially a student pilot. Fear does not lead to clearheaded, rational behavior, and even experienced individuals’ decision-making abilities are severely impaired in stressful situations. This fear probably contributed to the several unhelpful course changes ordered by Taylor.

All during this time, radio communication between the planes and shore bases had been weak. Taylor did not switch from the static-filled training frequency to another frequency, perhaps, Kusche (1980) speculates, out of fear that switching radio frequency would put the five planes out of radio contact if it were not carried out correctly by all the students. As sunset approached, and as the planes flew farther and farther away from Fort Lauderdale, communication became even worse.

Where were the planes going? Contrary to the usual report of the incident, an approximate position for the lost flight was calculated from different directional bearings. These bearings revealed that the flight was much farther north than had been suspected, about three hundred miles north of Fort Lauderdale and about two hundred miles east of the Florida coast. At 6:04 P.M., thirty-five minutes after sundown, when the flight was flying in the dark, Taylor was heard to order the flight, “Holding west course. Didn’t go far enough east. Turn around again. We may just as well turn around and go east” (Kusche 1980, p. 36). Of course, flying east would take them away from land, not toward it. Taylor was obviously very confused about his position. At 6:06 P.M. Taylor ordered, “Turn around and fly east until we run out of gas” (p. 36). Unfortunately, the flight’s position as calculated by the radio bearings was never radioed to the flight due to failure of the teletype communication system used and radio problems.

The flight had fuel to last until about 7:00 P.M. Then they would have to ditch their aircraft in the sea. While Taylor had ditched twice before in the Pacific, the conditions there were quite different from those he now faced. His previous two ditches had been in daylight with rescue ships standing by. Now he had to ditch at night in rough seas. Of course, none of the students had ever ditched before. Landing an aircraft on the water is never an easy task, even in the best of conditions. When an Avenger ditched, it usually hit the water at about eighty miles an hour. Such an impact can produce everything from a dazed state to unconsciousness. The best “ditch” is one where the plane’s tail hits the water first and pulls the rest of the plane down. Flying headfirst into the water will cause much greater injury to the crew. To be able to land tail down in the water, one needs first to be able to see the water, which is difficult at night, and second, experience, which only Taylor had. Rough seas, like those running that night, make ditching even more dangerous.