Latest / The Twin History Podcast / The Vanishing of Flight 19

Transcript

The Vanishing of Flight 19 · The Twin History Podcast

0:01
The Twin History Podcast brings together 2 Black Scotsman, 2
0:06
twins, 1 historian and one storyteller to explore the
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moments that shaped our world. The show features Joe McCann,
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the eldest twin and resident storyteller, the one always
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asking why any of this shit actually matters, alongside
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Johnny McCann, 13 minutes younger, and the historian
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equipped with the dates, the fact and the receipts, Every
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week they invite listeners to pull up a chair as they unpack
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some of history's greatest tales, The ones you think you
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know, the ones you've never heard, and the ones that hit
0:48
different when told by them. Enjoy.
1:26
Hi folks. It is a very rainy day in
1:29
Edinburgh and we are doing another soul episode today.
1:36
You guys have responded well to our previous soul episodes, so I
1:41
thought I'd sit down, record an episode for you guys and well,
1:45
let's see what you think. This is Joe McCann, by the way,
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so it's just me. We're going fully soul and I'm
1:54
doing an episode that Johnny probably wouldn't let me away
1:57
with Fort Royce if I tried to get him on board for this one.
2:01
No pun intended. We're going to chat about Flight
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19 at Five U.S. Navy bombers vanished into
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Finnair over the Atlantic 1945. You may have heard the story,
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you may not. Could be considered a paranormal
2:21
tale. So Jonny won't be anywhere near
2:23
it. Thankfully, Jonny's not here and
2:27
we can go ahead and do it before him.
2:30
So 1945, as I said, these five bombers vanished into thin air.
2:38
No trace of them has ever been found.
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No wreckage, no bodies and no answers.
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And you'd be delighted to know this kicked off the whole
2:48
Bermuda Triangle legend that has haunted us for decades.
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And whether or not you believe in the Bermuda Triangle, I have
2:57
my doubts. It's still a very interesting
3:01
tale that we shall dive into and discuss today.
3:06
So it's been 80 years now and still nothing definitive has
3:12
ever turned up. No confirmed planes on the
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seabed of the Atlantic, no closure for the families. 27 men
3:21
were done. Those planes all gone in one
3:25
afternoon. 6 planes if you also count the rescue plane that
3:30
disappeared or the rescued bird. I mean, that makes his tail even
3:35
stranger. The plane that went out to look
3:37
for flight 19 vanished itself. What was it?
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Well, we'll discuss it today. It's a kind of mystery that
3:46
makes me stare at a horizon and wonder, well, what's really
3:49
going on out there? What really happened?
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And there's a time, This is a time when Trump and Co are
3:55
saying that aliens may exist. And plenty of people believe
3:59
that Flight 19 and its crew was abducted by aliens on the Twin
4:05
History podcast. We may not believe that, but
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it's an interesting tale nonetheless.
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So grab your headphones. Grab yourself a drink, be that
4:16
water, a tea, a coffee, a whiskey, a beer, and let's
4:21
settle in. Let's rewind to that sunny
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December day and Florida in 1946.
4:44
I have no idea why I said 1946. And of course, this incident
4:48
happened on December 5th, 1945. And it's great to have sound
4:55
effects on this episode. I believe our benefactor has
5:00
given us a budget to have some propeller sounds.
5:03
So I hope that's an episode. It should be.
5:07
But anyway, it's December 5th, 1945.
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It's a Naval Air station at Fort Lauderdale.
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The time is about 210, and there's five big TBM adventure
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torpedo bombers thundering down the runway.
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I mean, these things are absolute beasts.
5:26
They're single engine free crew, each nicknamed torpedo bombers,
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and that's for good reason. The call sign is for Flight 1914
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Airmen, total seasoned pilots, some trainees.
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There's some Navy, there's some Marines mixed in leading them.
5:44
And remember this name of Lieutenant Charles C Taylor, the
5:50
nickname on CC. He's, he's only 28 years old.
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He's already though, a Pacific combat vet.
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He flew over 2500 hours. So he's got that much flight
6:03
time under his belt. He seems to be solid, seems to
6:07
be a reliable guy. That's what everyone thought at
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the time. The mission they have, Flight
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19's mission is pretty straightforward.
6:20
It's navigation problem #1 fly E 66 smiles to hens and chicken
6:28
Shoals in the Bahamas, drop practise bombs on a Target
6:32
wreck. What that looks like, well, it
6:34
must be pretty cool. It'll swing N over Grand Bahama
6:39
Island, then W back home. I mean, for an experienced
6:45
pilot, apparently this is a very straightforward flight.
6:50
It's three hours, 3 hours and a round trip.
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The weather's good. It's clear.
6:57
There's a bit of scattered showers.
7:00
That's what the weather reports say that day.
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It's really nothing to worry about. 18 order flights did the
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exact same drill that say that very same day and they all
7:12
landed fine and before incident. So Flight 19 lifts off, it
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hedges, it hits the Shoals around 2:30 or so.
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They they bomb the target. It's pretty textbook stuff at
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this point. Then then it turns N.
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That's where it all starts going wrong with this flight and this
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mission starts to go wrong. So around 3:45 PM, the tower
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picks up some radio chatter, radio static.
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Taylor's voice comes through. It's calm, but it seems a little
7:53
off as well. He says something like both my
7:58
compasses wrote I'm overland, but it's broken.
8:04
I'm sure I'm in the follow the Keys, but I don't know how far
8:07
down and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.
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That's what Taylor said, those fateful words.
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Oh, more sound effects. Great radio static this time.
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So the tower on the ground is like, up there.
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We can get this guy back. Fine.
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We can guide them these. Tell them switch frequencies.
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Turn on your IFF beacon and we'll pinpoint you.
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We'll find you, Taylor. I mean, it's odd.
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He barely responds. He thinks they've flown.
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Way to save into the Gulf over the Keys.
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He wants to head northwest to find Florida, so he's a little
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confused at this point. One of the pilots on this flight
9:16
cuts him off and he says damn it, if we could just fly West,
9:20
we could get home head W, damn it.
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Should I do that on an American accent?
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Damn it, if we could just head West, we would get home, head W,
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damn it. I don't know if that's a good
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accent, but we'll leave it. Taylor, though, is having none
9:35
of it. He's the leader of this flight
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squadron. He says we're going east.
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And when that happens, a weather front moves in fast.
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Clothes thicken above them, rain starts, winds per cup.
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I mean, it might be similar to the weather I experienced here
9:55
today in Scotland. There was absolutely drenched in
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rain. I had a meeting for ATV show
10:05
that I may be working on. But yeah, when I came out of
10:08
that meeting, I was absolutely soaked, drenched and my clothes
10:13
were soaking wet. And the great thing is I had to
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come all the way from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
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I make it sound like it's a great distance.
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It's not really, but I was soaked the whole way.
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I I was grateful for that warm shower when I got home.
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But yeah, the weather turns pretty fast on these guys.
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It all turns the weather, so invisibility is not great at
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this point. Their signals are fading in.
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They're fading out. So we get to around 5:00 or 6:00
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PM. Taylor is sounding more rattled,
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more unnerved. We didn't go far enough E.
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We may as well just turn around and go E again.
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Well, there's the accent again, the crews argue.
11:00
Now they're at each other's throats, something one plane
11:05
peeled off. But most, most of the crews
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stick with the leader. I mean, he's in charge, right?
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So if he's telling you we're going this way, even if you're
11:14
doubting them, you have to fall. And then ultimately, this leads
11:19
to these men's demise. The fact they followed them.
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So then the final transmission crackles through.
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This is Taylor. All planes close up tight,
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who'll have to ditch in less landfill, who'll have to ditch
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when the first plane drops below 10 gallons.
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We all go down together, and then there's a bit of static,
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and more static than nothing. Silence.
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Which is if they've varnished into fan air, which they in some
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ways they have. Flight 19 is gone. 14 men, 5
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planes swallowed, presumably by the ocean.
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Some say maybe swallowed by something else or taken by
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something else. But yes, flight 19 is gone.
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All these men are gone. The Navy sends out everything
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they can. There's ships going out, there's
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planes, there's a massive, massive shirt search grid.
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They want to find flight 19 as quickly as possible and bring
12:31
these men to safety. Around 7:30 to Martin BPM
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Marina, flying boats launch from a place called Banana River to
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hunt for them. Banana River?
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That's a cool name I wish I could visit Banana river.
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Where's banana river? Can someone give me an answer on
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that? Unfortunately I'm alone here so
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no one can give me an answer. I'd have to give myself an
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answer. These PBM marine flying boats
13:01
are nicknamed gas tanks full of fuel.
13:05
They've they're very prone to blown up on impact or in rough
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air. You don't want to be in one.
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At least I wouldn't want to be in one.
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So it's 20 minutes later and one of these PBM flying boats
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disappears. I mean, that's what makes this
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mystery so enduring. The fact is the initial flight
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vanished and then the rescue, one of the rescue flights
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vanished, but there was no distress call.
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There was no explosion. There was no debris. 30 men were
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lost on this flight. It's quite easy just to think
13:49
about it. It's just maybe exploded and no
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one heard it. That could have happened and it
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was never found, just like flight 19.
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Lastly, well that's a total of 27 airmen, 6 aircraft all gone.
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And the Navy, their first report, they blame Taylor,
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that's who the Z went on. He mistakes some small islands,
14:19
the Bahamas, probably for the Florida, the Keys, That's what
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they say. The compasses failed or he
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ignored them. He panicked.
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They flew NE into the open Atlantic.
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They ran out of fuel entering dust and they ditched into the
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sea. The Marina.
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They argue that likely that exploded on water contact that
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was common for that model. As I said, you don't want to be
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in one. No one heard that explosion.
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That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but later on the Navy
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says the cause of the disappearance of Flight 19 is
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unknown. They didn't want to destroy
15:01
Taylor's very good name. As I said, he had flown over
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2500 miles over the Pacific during World War Two.
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He was seen as a crack pilot. The same Oswald was a crack
15:17
shot. That was a debate we had in an
15:20
earlier episode, wasn't about JFK.
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There's no one here to debate me now.
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But yeah, you didn't want to destroy his good name.
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There was no wreckage ever found.
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To this day, there's been no wreckage.
15:32
And then we go with, was it the Bermuda Triangle?
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And as I said at the top of this episode, whatever you think of
15:43
the Bermuda Triangle is something that is captured
15:48
folk's imaginations for, well, almost 100 years.
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Now, Johnny will probably kill me up on the almost 100 years
15:56
like he did on the Kennedy one. But in the 60s, a man named
16:02
Vincent Gathers coins the term they've been made of triangle in
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a magazine. I'm probably pronouncing a song
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called Argosy Magazine. He uses Flight 19 as the main
16:18
case, the poster child, if you will, for the power and the
16:25
mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. There's a book by a man named
16:30
Charles Berlitz in 1964, and this turns the Bermuda Triangle
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into a global phenomenon. But it's a curse triangle, some
16:41
say, between Florida, Bermuda, Puerto Rico, where ships and
16:45
planes disappear mysteriously and there's a lot of different
16:50
theories. Is there mechanic magnetic
16:54
weirdness, Scrambling conferences, True north and
16:57
magnetic and magnetic north or coaster methane bubbles, maybe
17:03
from the sea floor? Sinking ships or stolen
17:06
androids? UFOs snatching them?
17:09
Atlantis. Maybe that's where Atlantis was.
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Time warps. People speak about time wars,
17:16
poor toes, these guys disappearing into another time
17:20
and place. But Flight 19 becomes something
17:25
of a legend. It's mentioned in Close
17:29
Encounters of Fort Kane, the Spielberg movie.
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You if you've ever seen that movie.
17:35
Spoiler. Is it spoilers now when that
17:37
came out in 1974, I believe, Maybe not maybe a little later,
17:42
but is it a spoiler to see at the end of the movie, when the
17:49
UFOs descend on Devil's Tower, members of Flight 19 emerge from
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one of the UFOs. So Spielberg obviously liked
17:59
that legend that these men had been captured by UFOs.
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He was also in scooby-doo. It's an endless documentaries.
18:09
People love that mystery. I mean, we are predisposed to
18:16
love mysteries, and Flight 19 is certainly a mystery.
18:21
But if we cut through the fog for a second and look at this
18:25
logically, unfortunately we have to do that.
18:29
So those experts, the Coast Guard, the Lords of London,
18:35
scientists like Carl Kozinski have been saying the same thing
18:40
for years. There is no real anomaly with
18:45
the Bermuda Triangle. It doesn't lose more planes or
18:49
ships for traffic than any other ocean spot.
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That's argument. Adjust for volume and the
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numbers match. Everywhere else storms hit.
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It's the sea, it's Atlantic, it's the Pacific.
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Storms can hit. Weather turns fast, human error
19:07
creeps and people panic. What?
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What about Flight 19? Taylor had a reputation even
19:17
though we had a stellar flight record.
19:20
He did have a reputation for getting disorientated.
19:23
He had gotten lost on order flights.
19:26
There's also compass glitches to consider in bad weather or near
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metal heavy aircraft. They probably flew northeast
19:37
into Atlantic, run out of fuel around 8:00 PM.
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They went down in these 20 foot waves.
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It must have been terrifying for the pilots.
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I mean, no wreckage has ever been found.
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But oceans are, well, they're scary places and things can be
19:58
lost to an ocean and you'll never see them again.
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These planes were the sunk quickly to the bottom of the
20:07
ocean. They're probably down there
20:09
somewhere. With the Marina, I mean, it's a
20:15
very creepy, incredible story, but some witnesses did report a
20:20
flash in an oil slick. Maybe missed in the dark.
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But as of right now, in 2026, there's still no Flight 19
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wreckage. There have been searches in the
20:40
90s to thousands even recently. Old adventurers turn up these.
20:48
That's what the planes were called.
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The adventurers turn up, but they never match the Flight 19
20:54
tail number. There was a group in 1991 who
20:59
thought they'd found it, but they hadn't.
21:03
An order headed east and search they couldn't find it.
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Some claims will pop up from time to time about people
21:12
solving it are no scans but there's been nothing ever
21:15
verified by Navy or experts. So flight 19, why does it stick
21:21
with us after 80 years? For me it's more about the sheer
21:27
tragedy than the mystery. Almost 30 men, young men, 27
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young pilots and Gunners and radio men on on a well, a
21:42
boarding, straightforward training mission vanished.
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Their families waited for news that never came and will
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probably never come. The Navy did their best to
21:58
protect Taylor's reputation, but everyone else was left waiting
22:06
to find out what happened. It's essentially about her
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fallibilities as shamans. Taylor, who was the leader.
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Without disparaging the man, without knowing what's what
22:21
happened definitively, I would suggest he perhaps made a bad
22:27
call. He was disorientated, he was
22:31
lost. It can happen, the crew argued.
22:35
But they followed, and the radio voices, they fade into nothing,
22:44
and there's unknown aspect of all.
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Back in 1945, there was no GPS, there was no black boxes, no
22:55
satellites. If you make one wrong turn 1
23:00
fate weather over the Atlantic, the Atlantic will claim you.
23:07
Flight 19 is much fun as it as to think is much fun as
23:12
Spielberg had in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
23:15
Great movie by the way, obviously very inspirational for
23:19
one of my favourite shows, The X-Files.
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But as much fun as Spielberg had, Flight 19 is probably not
23:28
about UFO abductions or portals. Is essentially what happens when
23:35
navigation feels decisions. Walk in and the Unforgiven Sea
23:43
is waiting for you. If this episode made you think,
23:48
or perhaps that the first this is the first time you're hearing
23:52
this story, It is an odd, creepy story.
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I remember it terrified me when I was younger, maybe 14 or 15.
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So it's something that has stayed with me since then.
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It's a legendary tale, but it's probably one that can be
24:12
explained. Or maybe not.
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Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe everyone else is
24:18
completely wrong. 5 planes vanished without a trace.
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Another plane that went to look for them vanished too.
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Maybe there was more to it than it seems.
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Maybe Taylor wasn't lost, maybe something was waiting for them
24:36
out there, however unlikely that was.
24:40
But what's your take on it? What's your take on the burnt of
24:43
triangle? What's your take on Flight 19?
24:46
So we come to the end, the end of Flight 19 and the end of this
24:53
episode. As I said, this thing has
24:57
haunted me for years. Flight 19 disappeared into a
25:02
Quantic dust on December 5th, 1945.
25:06
There was no call for help. There was no final flair.
25:09
No wreckage drifted back to the shore.
25:13
There was just silence. Silence where there should have
25:19
been voices. But I keep coming back to him.
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I keep coming back to Charles Carl Taylor in those last hours.
25:29
What was he thinking? Just imagine, as the darkness
25:33
closes in around the cockpit, The instruments are useless.
25:40
The fuel needles are trembling. They're near empty.
25:45
He might be smashing at them and frustration, praying for the
25:49
miracle. Outside, above and all around
25:54
him, the sky has turned a deep, bruised purple, The kind of
26:02
colour you only see when the sun has already vanished and said
26:10
it's goodbyes. The kind of colour that they
26:14
save for the movies. There may have been a thin rim
26:20
of gold clinging still, clinging desperately to the western
26:27
horizon, refusing to let go completely.
26:33
The clouds above Taylor were edged in that dying light, soft
26:40
Violet, and rose like the last breath of day, painted across
26:47
the heavens. Taylor would have seen the sea
26:52
below him. He would have seen.
26:54
That was changing, too. It wasn't the bright, playful
27:00
blue of the Bahamas anymore. It wasn't those shells.
27:08
But it would have been something much deeper, Older ink black
27:15
water folding into itself, waves rising and falling like slow
27:23
heartbeats. Whitecaps would have been
27:29
catching the fading goal, flashing for a second like
27:34
distant lighthouses before sinking back into the shadows.
27:42
Those around them, the Order planes, those would have been
27:47
shadows too, silhouettes against the twilight.
27:50
He wouldn't be able to see them. He could hear them, most likely.
27:55
They would have been close enough that he could probably
27:58
make out the faint glint of a canopy, perhaps the outline of a
28:03
wingman trying to stay tight. They were brothers in the sky,
28:08
flying their formation one last time.
28:16
He must have looked out and felt the weight of what all these men
28:21
had trusted him, the choices he had made, the vastness, the
28:26
answer back with nothing but wind, water and darkness.
28:35
Or maybe did he, just for a heartbeat, find something
28:39
peaceful in it all? The terrible beauty of a world
28:43
that doesn't care. The sunset and stars beginning
28:49
to reveal themselves through the overcast, the ocean rolling on
28:54
and rolling on as it had for millions of years.
28:59
A quiet that swallows everything.
29:04
Well, we will never know Taylor's last thoughts.
29:08
We'll never hear his final words as he weren't caught on radio.
29:13
But I like to think, when I remember by this case, I like to
29:18
think in that final light, bruised, golden and different,
29:23
he saw something worth the flight.
29:25
Not answers. He would never have those.
29:28
We would never have those. Not rescue that was not
29:32
forthcoming. Just the raw, aching wonder of
29:37
being alive, even for that moment, against something so
29:42
vast and so big. 27 men flew into the dusk and didn't come
29:49
back, but the late they flew through it still lingers.
29:55
And the stories we tell like this one on the Twin History
29:58
podcast and those questions we refuse to let go of.
30:04
And the way the ocean keeps this secret and many secrets and in
30:10
the way the sky keeps turning, that's the draw of Flight 19.
30:17
It's not a curse. It's not a portal, it's just a
30:21
reminder that sometimes the most beautiful fans are also the most
30:27
merciless. Well, thank you for listening to
30:58
this solo episode on Flight 19. I hope you enjoyed it.
31:04
Johnny will be back next week. We're we'll be talking about
31:08
something. I'm not sure what that something
31:10
is. What are your thoughts on these
31:14
solo episodes? We've had a great response to
31:19
them. What are your thoughts on
31:21
episodes such as this? Which stable a little in the
31:26
paranormal, although Flight 19's demise probably had nothing to
31:33
do with UFOs. We did touch on the paranormal a
31:37
little in this episode, but this is the Twin History podcast.
31:45
Please subscribe or give us a five star rating, whatever you
31:48
get your pods. And this is Joe McCann, the last
31:54
survivor of the US in a stroke. Well, I'm not the last survivor
31:59
of that I know, but this, this is Joe McCann signing off for
32:03
this evening from a still very rainy Edinburgh.
32:11
Thanks for listening and good night wherever you are.
32:18
The Twin History Podcast is a Lost Cosmonauts production
32:21
produced by me Virag Estre Tut. Additional producers are Dale
32:27
McGoldrick, Johnny McCann and Joe McCann.
32:31
Written by Johnny McCann and Joe McCann.
32:34
Original music and score by Kevin McCloud.
32:38
The podcast is available wherever you get your podcast.
32:42
You can find us on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Tic Tac
32:46
under the handle The twin history part.
32:50
You can e-mail us at thetwinhistorypodcast@gmail.com.
32:56
Thanks for listening.