The saga of Flight 19 remains as one of the most mysterious disappearances in Bermuda Triangle. Flight-19 was the code name for Five Avenger bomber planes that took off from the naval base at Florida on 5th of December 1945, but never returned. Flight 19 was a training flight with five TBM Avengers and was led by Commander Charles Taylor. Other than Taylor, there were 13 others in the flight (in different planes) but were all trainees. Taylor was the only experienced pilot. On December 5, 1945 at 2:10 p.m., the five Avengers of Flight 19 took off from the Naval Air Station (NAS) of Fort Lauderdale at Florida for a routine training session. It was a clear day.
As per plans, the flight's path was to first go towards East into the sea for 56 miles up to Hens and Chicken Shoals to practice bombings. At about 3:30 p.m., Taylor sent a message to the control tower that his compass was malfunctioning and he thought he was somewhere around the Florida Keys, which is a chain of islands south of Florida. So instead of heading towards East, he thought that they actually flew southwards due to compass problems. Immediately an instruction was given from the tower to turn north and fly towards Miami, only if he was sure that they were at the Florida keys. At 3.45 p.m., Taylor's voice was heard again at the control towers. This time he sounded worried and confused ... "Cannot see land, we seem to be off course". It was getting dark. The weather started to become rough too and the Avengers were very low in fuel. Hope was rapidly fading for the Flight 19 by then. Officers at the naval base station thought it was enough. At 7:27p.m, two Martin Mariner planes were sent to search for the Flight-19 planes. There was no sign of the Avengers. The rescue Mariners were supposed to meet at the search zone. But quite strangely the second Mariner never showed up, it too disappeared never to return again.
So what really happened to the second Martin Mariner?
The mariner was in the best of conditions and thoroughly checked by both technicians as well as the captain before taking off. So any engine failures or such were ruled out. Some speculated that a cigarette lighting inside the cabin had blown up the plane. That theory was ruled out too. Since the mariners carried huge amount of gas, smoking was strictly prohibited in flight and no one should have lit a cigarette.
Now the interesting twist comes. The Navy board during the investigation reported that there are often greenish lights seen along the coast lines of Florida. This has also been confirmed by the resident locals. This green light would float around for a while, then descend and slowly disappear. This is often linked with something known as St. Elmo's fire which has a green hue. The fire is caused due to the area's unique climate. It radiates huge amount of electrical charge. And it is also known that airplanes seem to glow green when they come under the charge from such Elmo's fire even though they have anti-static equipment. And in one such occasion, a plane had actually blown up.