The myth of the Bermuda Triangle exploded after an incident on Dec. 5, 1945. On that day, a training flight took off from the naval station at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The 5 TBM Avengers torpedo bombers were led by Lt. Charles Taylor. He was a veteran of the war in the Pacific with 2,500 flying hours. His trainees all had at least 300 hours in the air. There were 14 men in total. The mission was a combination bombing/navigation exercise. It was supposed to last 3 hours. Ironically, the flight plan called for a triangular pattern that would take them to the island where they would drop practice bombs and then back home. The bombing part went as planned, the navigation part, not so much. After dropping their bombs, Taylor radioed that he was having compass problems. He determined that they were heading in the wrong direction. That belief and bad weather contributed to a feeling of disorientation. Taylor thought they had accidentally flown over the Florida Keys so he ordered the flight to proceed northeast. Unfortunately, they were most likely where they were supposed to be, over the Bahamas. A course change to the northeast would take them to Florida, or so Taylor thought. In fact, it was taking them far out into the Atlantic. Under the circumstances, it was standard procedure to fly west, but Taylor broke protocol. Radio transmissions indicate some of his charges may have questioned his decisions. One said: “Dammit, if we would just fly west, we would get home.” But the trainees maintained military discipline and stuck with their commander. (There is some evidence one of them broke formation.) A later transmission had Taylor preparing his men to crash land together when they ran out of gas. No one knows where this was as a five-day search by 300 ships and planes turned up nothing. Ironically, a PBM Mariner sent to search disappeared from radar soon after taking off. 13 crewmen went missing. The theory is the “flying gas tank” exploded as Mariners tended to do. A ship saw a fire ball and found an oil slick. That made 27 men claimed by the Bermuda Triangle, or so we are told by fantasizing writers and film-makers. In reality, what we have is the story of a confused flight leader and a poorly designed plane.
https://www.history.com/news/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-flight-19
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19
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