Flight 19, made up of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers, a plane that was instrumental in bringing down Japanese warships in the Atlantic Ocean, set off for a routine training flight on December 5, 1945. 

Each plane was crewed by three men except for one which only carried two, the trainees involved each having completed around 300 hours in the sky. 

The training got off to a smooth start. But half an hour in, the flight’s leader 28-year-old Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor – who was heavily experienced having carried out more than 2,000 flight hours, over 600 of them in Avengers – reported a problem. 

Lieutenant Taylor thought his Avenger’s compass was malfunctioning, convincing himself that Flight 19 had been travelling in entirely the wrong direction. 

Turbulent weather compounded problems further with one of the pilots stating: “I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.”

Instead of flying West towards the mainland, Lieutenant Taylor became disoriented and ordered Flight 19 to travel further out to sea, in a northeasterly direction. 

Flight 19 had now been out for four hours and with fuel running dangerously low, Lieutenant Taylor could be heard stating: “All planes close up tight, We’ll have to ditch unless landfall…when the first plane drops below ten gallons, we all go down together.”

As they travelled further out to sea, radio transmissions slowly disappeared, falling completely silent, never to be heard again.