Quasar - They Flew into Oblivion: The Disappearance of Flight 19

They Flew

into

Oblivion

By the same author

Into the Bermuda Triangle

They Flew into Oblivion

Recasting Bigfoot

SOMA

Hell Ship

Distant Horizons

Scarlet Autumn

Brodwyn-Moor & Doane

2013

______________________________________

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Quasar, Gian Julius 1966-

They Flew into Oblivion

The disappearance of Flight 19

st Edition

TXu 1-841-470

Bibliography

1. Flight 19 I. Title

Copyright 2013 by Gian J. Quasar

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, broadcast, transmitted, distributed or displayed except for brief quotations in reviews without prior written permission.

Introduction

In 2005 the national spotlight was placed upon a mystery of aviation because of the story you are about to read. Having an early and still-unfinished copy of this manuscript, Larry Landsman, SCI-FI Channels determined and slightly maverick Special Projects Director, pushed for a two-hour documentary to be produced by NBC News Productions and then lobbied Congress through Podesta-Matoon, the nations third largest lobbyist, for formal recognition of the subject of this book in Congress. This culminated in a Resolution in Congress sponsored by Republican E. Clay Shaw of Florida, which passed overwhelmingly at 420-2 votes.

This recognition was unique in that it honored 14 US Navy airmen who had vanished 60 years before on December 5, 1945. Yet they were not war heroes. Nor were they on some crucial mission. World War II had been over for months, and the men were on but a routine training mission. They stand out in history because of their number, and the real facts were lost to history for the same reason. The disappearance of the Lost Patrol, Lost Squadron or, as it is more commonly known, Flight 19, captured the imagination of the nation like no other mystery. It is a unique moment in time when 5 aircraft simultaneously and utterly vanish from the earth. It was by all acceptable standards an impossible disappearance. It is time that the actual facts are brought to light, mysteries both accepted and challenged. Only from this point can a solution be found even 65 years after they flew into oblivion.

Contents

Prologue

1. Off Florida, Over the Bahamas

2. Hazardous Duty

3. South of Cuba, West to Pacific

4. Standard Procedure

5. Place in Time

6. Born Leader

7. Gallant Hours

8. Fishbowl of Ink

9. Destination Indigo

10. Scramble!

11. The Drunken Frog Hunter

12. The Blame of Inquiry

13. An Untold Agony of Suspense

14. Gorilla Dust

15. Flights of Fancy

16. Clues to the Riddle

17. Dont Disturb the Alligators!

18. An Infrared Detective

19. Keep a Sharp Lookout

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Prologue

F ive aircraft simply do not disappear while in routine formation and leave no trace whatsoever. There has to be an explanation somewhere for something like this. Such an event simply cannot be dismissed after routine investigation and filed away. And yet for the last 68 years this has been just the case for those 5 Avenger torpedo bombers designated Flight 19. James P. ODonnell once wrote: The gap between the generations, unless it is to become a chasm and make history meaningless, must somehow be bridged. Each generation owes an after-action report to the generation that follows. Yet for this very unusual mystery there has been no accountability. Perhaps it is not an earth-shaking historical event. But it is nonetheless a world famous incident that continues to elicit questions that have not been answered. It has, in truth, been bridged for the last 68 years by the fabulous and, more often than not, the ludicrous.

According to one popular theory UFOs may have sucked up the flight and spirited it away; in another, time warps may have sent it through a tear in the curtain of time. But the truth of Flight 19 is only hidden by the funhouse. It stands alone and reluctantly aloof from sober theorizing for 3 vital reasons. The first: sheer number. The disappearance of five aircraft is not like the disappearance of one aircraft. It cannot be compared to Amelia Earhart disappearing between far-flung ports over the Pacific in her Lockheed Electra in 1937, nor to Glenn Miller disappearing in a war zone over the English Channel in a light reconnaissance aircraft in 1944. Five, by its very number, begs many more questions whose answers must, no matter how we might disapprove, flirt with the fantastic.

The second: witnesses and evidence. To an extent, Flight 19 exists in a blurry firmament between both. It had neither and yet had too much. It did not simply vanish, leaving us with no clue. Garbled dialogue and fragmented sentences were picked up for over two and a half hours by base stations, lending fuel to much speculation and embroidery. Men thus partook in the drama, but they were not witnesses. Their observations were recorded in a report over 500 pages in length wherein the Board of Inquiry merely tried to place in order contradictory testimony. The third vital reason is secrecy. Of this it had too much. The evidence their collective testimony could have provided was silenced. The report on Flight 19 was unnecessarily kept restricted; it was not generally released until 30 years later under the Freedom of Information Act.

That gulf is vast and densely populated and given its depth only with popular ideas; some good, some sensational, some bad and some banal. That gulf was also the medium in which spawned the enigma of the Bermuda Triangle, and Flight 19 became its most famous case. This indeed buried it in a vast vault. Any recounting of the incident thereafter was but a vignette designed to link it with the many other aircraft and ships that had vanished.

After its release the Board of Inquiry report helps to vanquish some popular notions, but in some instances it expands rather than takes away from the final enigma of the flight. For example, a study of its loosely compiled radio logs and dispatches prove that the carrier Solomons was in a position at the time the flight ran out of fuel to have detected them at sea with its radar. Yet it did not.