It’s an enduring mystery in U.S. military lore and now, seven and half decades old and no closer to being solved.
It was December 5, 1945, less than four months after VJ Day marked the formal end of World War II. Five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers took off from the Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
The planes — collectively known as “Flight 19” — were scheduled to fly a three-hour exercise between Florida, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and back in an area that’s come to be known as the Bermuda Triangle.
As the weather deteriorated, radio contact became intermittent, and the planes just disappeared.
All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members sent out to look for them in a search plane.
Twenty-seven souls in all just vanished without a trace.
Hellbound and Down 