PODCAST iTunes users can click here to add the Podcast feed. To download the Flight 19 Podcast, copy-and-paste the following URL into your Podcast application: http://www.scifi.com/trianglesecrets/podcast/podcast.xml When you synch your MP3 device, you'll automatically receive the Flight 19 commentary. It is divided into two five-minute segments. These edited highlights of pilot Rick Siegfried's observations and comments were recorded in the cockpit during his nearly two-hour Flight 19 re-enactment. LEARN MORE ABOUT PODCASTING INDIVIDUAL FILES • Flight 19 Re-enactment   Part One • NEW! Flight 19 Re-enactment   Part Two

On Dec. 5, 1945, at 2:10 p.m., Flight 19 — which included five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers, crewed by a total of 14 naval aviators — departed the U.S. Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on a training flight. They were engaging in a standard training exercise known as "Navigation Problem #1". The weather was considered average for training flights of this type, and never varied from that. Although it was a training mission, each of the pilots had at least 350 hours of flight time, at least 55 of which were in this type of aircraft.

The flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor, was a senior qualified flight instructor with more than 2,500 hours of flight time, most of it in this model of aircraft. However, Lt. Taylor also was reluctant to take this mission. Forty-five minutes before takeoff, he requested that someone else run the exercise; no relief was available, so the request was denied.

For the first hour and 45 minutes of the exercise — which consisted of flying 56 miles to Hen and Chicken Shoals to conduct low-level bombing, then flying for another 67 miles at one course, 73 miles at another course, and 120 miles at a third course, then turning homeward — everything was routine.

At 4 p.m., the tower received a radio message from Taylor: "Cannot see land. We seem to be off course."

Ten minutes of radio silence followed. Then reports came in hard and fast, and very confused, from all the pilots. "We can't find west." "We can't tell where we are." "Everything looks strange, even the ocean." "Can't make out anything." "We think we may be about 225 miles northeast of base." "It looks like we are entering white water." "We're completely lost."

At one point, Taylor thought he was at the Florida Keys — horribly off course — and then claimed he had run out of islands and saw no more land. This was baffling to the tower personnel, because there is an abundance of land in the vicinity of the Keys and, according to the flight officer at Fort Lauderdale, Taylor "could not possibly have gone on more than one leg of his navigation problem and still gotten back to the Keys by 1600."

Throughout all this, no mayday was ever sent.

None of the five planes were ever heard from again. They had only enough fuel to last them until 8 p.m., although there are reports of sporadic radio contact with them later than that.

Search-and-rescue (SAR) operations were initiated, but no sign was ever found of the five aircraft or their crews. A Mariner rescue plane was lost during the SAR. Although a nearby freighter, the S.S. Gaines Mills, reported sighting an explosion (a sighting later confirmed by the U.S.S. Solomons, one of the SAR vessels), no wreckage was ever found of the Mariner, either, and there were reports of strange lights in the sky immediately before the explosion. The SAR was also hampered by interference from Cuban radio broadcasts.

An extensive U.S. Navy Board of Inquiry investigation shed no light on the mystery. The board's conclusion was simple, if frustrating: "We are not able to even make a good guess as to what happened."