THE FINDING OF FLIGHT 19

By Wes Bateman

The loss of Flight 19 on December 5, 1945, is a classic disappearance that took place in the Bermuda Triangle. It began with a routine training flight participated in by five Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers, also known as TBMS. The planes on the mission were designated Flight 19. Their radio identification code was the letters F-T.

It is reported that 4 of the TBMs carried crews of 3 men and one carried a crew of 2. Thus the flight consisted of 14 men.

While returning to their base at Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, the flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor radioed back to the base that the flight was in some kind of trouble. Apparently they were lost, and the confusion continued for about an hour, after which the radio signals grew weaker and weaker until they disappeared. The 5 planes and 14 men aboard them were then reported missing.

During the hour of confusion it is reported that the following radio conversation took place between Lt. Taylor and the For Lauderdale tower.

Taylor: "Calling control tower...emergency. We seem to have gone off course... we can't see the ground any more. I repeat: we can't see the ground."

Another reporting source states that this transmission included the statement "We can't see the ground or the sun."

Tower: "What is your position?"

Taylor: "We are not certain of our position. We don't know exactly where we are; we seem to be lost."

Tower: "In that case, you must fly west."

Taylor: "We can't tell which is west. Nothing is working properly. It's nuts...we can't be sure of any directions. Even the sea looks funny..."

It then became more difficult to pick up messages from Flight 19. The aircraft progressively lost contact with the tower, but every now and then snatches of conversation between the pilots were heard. They were discussing the possibility of running out of fuel, of 75-knot winds, of malfunctioning magnetic and gyro compasses.

According to some reports, the last words heard from Flight 19 were: "We are entering white water. We are completely lost."

Reporter Art Ford stated that another radio conversation took place between flight leader Taylor and a fellow Navy pilot Lt. F. Cox, who was in the air but not part of Flight 19. The conversation went as follows:

Cox: "What is your altitude? I will fly south to meet you."

Taylor: "Don't come after me. They look like they're from outer space. Don't come after me!"

The test of these and all other radio transmissions from Flight 19 are on public record in the National Archives in Washington D.C.

One report states that Taylor was overheard to either turn over the command of the flight to another pilot in the formation, or turn over the flying duties of his plane. This is not clear.

It is also reported that one of the Avenger pilots broke formation and took off on his own to find safer and more familiar skies.

The fact that the compasses and radios of all five planes malfunctioned at the same time and that Lt. Taylor did not comply with the constant request that he switch his radio to the emergency frequency adds to the mystery.

Fort Lauderdale sent a Martin Mariner (a large amphibious craft) to try to rescue the five avengers. There were 13 men aboard the Mariner.

One hour after take-off the Martin Mariner disappeared, too. The control tower tried in vain to contact its pilot. What happened to the Martin Mariner?

A little after 7 p.m., the Naval Air Station at Opalocka picked up an almost inaudible radio signal that continually repeated "FT...FT," which was the call sign of Flight 19. Could this have been a communication from the Avengers?

Nothing was found of the 5 TBMs or the Mariner, in spite of the intensive search by 240 land-based aircraft, 70 aircraft from the aircraft carrier Solomons, 4 destroyers, 18 Coast Guard patrol boats, hundreds of private aircraft and yachts and boats of all sorts. Nothing was found: no inflatable rafts, not the least trace of oil, not a sign of wreckage. Avenger-type aircraft are known to float from minutes to hours. Why were no bodies, oil slicks or wreckage of any type found? Why didn't any of the men use their parachutes and life rafts?

During the search of December 6, 1945, a Navy Privateer, which was a 1-tail version of the Army Air Corps 2-tail B-24, also disappeared without a trace.

A report published by the Navy after several months of inquiry offered no explanation for the disappearances.

During the evening of August 16, 1985, I was engaged in assembling and combining videotape segments that contained accounts and pictures pertaining to the subject of UFOs. I combined three videotape segments, which were:

1. A series of computer enhancements of a Swiss Air Force jet that had been photographed along with a UFO.

2. The account of the missing five TBM (Grumman Avenge torpedo bombers) and a Martin Mariner (seaplane) in the Bermuda Triangle.

3. UFO photographs and motion picture footage that was taken by American astronauts as they conducted missions in space.

The videotape from which I was dubbing segment 3 was several years old and had not been played recently. On several occasions during the dubbing process, the player deck misidentified the original recoding speed of the tape. This caused the tape to slow down, distorting parts of the dub. To accomplish my work, I had to run the tape over and over again until the problem cleared up.

During these numerous reruns my attention was drawn to a picture of an odd-shaped UFO that was photographed by the crew of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, while they were en route to the first moon landing.

Even though the shape of this UFO was irregular, it looked familiar to me. I knew I had seen that shape before. I soon realized that I had in fact seen something similar to that shape only several minutes before when I was dubbing the segment that contained the computer-analysis pictures of the UFO and Swiss Air Force jet.

I then ran off a black-and-white photo of the Apollo 11 UFO on my video printer. After rotating the video-print from the vertical to the horizontal, I concluded that the UFO had the shape of an airplane that was either encased in ice or some other material.

Following the contour of the UFO from nose to tail, I noted the familiar blunt nose and long canopy that covered the two-seat cockpit, the bubble of the rear gun turret, and the high tail of the Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bomber.

Returning to the segment that pertained to the missing planes (Flight 19) I made a video photo of an Avenger for comparison with the Apollo UFO. This comparison left me in little doubt that the Apollo 11 UFO was the remains of a Grumman Avenger and most likely one of the five that once composed Flight 19.

In studying the Apollo UFO, two things about the shape of the object bothered me. (1) The tail looked a little too close to the rear gun turret. (2) There are two small arc-like indentations in the bottom of the object just below the position of the cockpit.

Both of these questions were answered by a friend who at one time flew this type of plane when dropping Borate on forest fires.

There are two possible answers for this tail appearing to be too close to the rear turret. (1) The angle from which the astronauts took the picture may have somewhat distorted the true perspective.

The second possibility and the one I presently favor, is that (2) the fuselage is bent at an angle due to the tail section hitting the waters of the Atlantic in what my friend called a "boomerang crash." From personal knowledge he said that it was common or an Avenger that crashes into the sea to end up with a bent rear fuselage.

My friend then answered the question of the existing arc-like indentations in the belly of the plane/UFO. His answer was simple: The indentations represent either the collapsed torpedo bombing doors or their absence.

The silhouette (shadow) or a scale model TBM was superimposed over a slide projection of the Apollo UFO finding that all features fit exactly.

The Apollo 11 UFO photo was taken when the spacecraft was one day out on route to the moon. I have not ascertained what distance Apollo 11 was from the earth when the photo was taken.

One thing is quite certain, the Avenger in the astronaut's photo did not and could not attain orbital velocity and insert itself into any orbit, let alone an orbit that ranged far out into space. This, of course, means that something natural, supernaturatural, or man-made that had these physical abilities in 1945 places at least one of the missing five planes into earth orbit.

One explanation is that some freak natural force such as a giant tornado-like vortex sucked up the Avengers and accelerated them to a speed in excess of 18,000 miles an hour (gravitational escape velocity). Another explanation is that some power source planted by some sort of intelligence went into action either by plan or chance. Both are somewhat discredited by the communications Lt. Taylor had with Lt. Cox: "Don't come after me. They look like they're from outer space. Don't come after me!" From Lt. Taylor's words we can conclude that he might have been encountering at the time more than one something (thus the plural terms "they" and "they're" in his communication). Then again he may have had sight of one thing that he thought contained a number of occupants who in his opinion were demonstrating something he was sure was not of this world.

It is reported that the planes were armed and their mission actually entailed dropping explosives into the sea. If this is true, this activity might have triggered the fate of the airmen involved.

Perhaps in the course of their bombing they accidentally hit and damaged a submerged alien spacecraft -- or maybe they had actually been sent on a mission to target the spacecraft. If the latter is true, you can bet the Navy will never admit it.

Let's for the moment imagine that the Avengers were either deliberately or accidentally drawn into a force field that relates to a field-driven propulsion system of the damaged extraterrestrial spacecraft. Such a field driven system might have some active electromagnetic components and gravitational effects, which in turn would account for the malfunctioning of the magnetic and gyro compasses of the Avengers, causing Lt. Taylor to say: "We can't tell which is west. Nothing is working properly. It's nuts... we can't be sure of any direction. Even the sea looks funny...."

It is safe to speculate that at least 1 of the 4 Avengers (or 5, counting the one that reportedly left the flight formation) were drawn into the vortex of a spacecraft's propulsion system (as birds are sometimes drawn into jet engines). After that maybe other things -- such as large volumes of foaming seawater -- were also drawn into the spacecraft's field drive, causing Lt. Taylor to transmit the statement "We are entering white water. We are completely lost!"

It is possible that Lt. Taylor did comply with the request to switch his radio to the emergency frequency, but perhaps radio waves of that frequency could not escape the confines of the spacecraft's field drive.

At this point we can imagine the extraterrestrial spacecraft accelerating into space, either in ignorance of or with full knowledge that they were dragging with them 1 or more of the 5 Avengers plus large amounts of seawater.

Such an ascent must have been quite rapid, and by the time the spacecraft reached outer space the Avenger pilots would be dead, entombed in their planes now sheathed in frozen seawater.

Upon reaching outer space, the Avengers, now having acquired a velocity that would permit them to orbit the earth (for at least 2 years) were either jettisoned by the spacecraft or released automatically when the spacecraft changed its propulsion field for the purpose of space travel. In either case the Avengers could have been dropped off at intervals that might now separate them in the same orbit or in successively higher orbits by thousands of miles.

When the question of why the extraterrestrials would do such a thing is considered, many thoughts come to mind:

(1) Their actions might represent a disregard for the lives of what they might consider to be a lower life form.

(2) Their encounter and involvement with Flight 19 might have been an accident caused by a malfunction of their propulsion system or by damage to the system sustained from bombs dropped unknowingly or deliberately by the avengers on the spaceship(s) lying submerged in the sea. If the Avengers did not practice live bombing runs that day, perhaps their practice attack dives could have been interpreted by the extraterrestrials as a real threat.

I prefer to think that the Martin Mariner and the Privateer became lost for different, unrelated reasons, because the alternative implies that they were deliberately destroyed or captured by the extraterrestrials out of revenge.

Returning to the subject of the Apollo 11 UFO, the photograph indicates that the plane might have "boomerang crashed" into the sea, thus bending its fuselage at an angle. This could be the only plane of Flight 19 that is in orbit. It could very well be the plane that left the formation.

In this possible scenario, four of the Avengers and their crews are taken aboard the extraterrestrial spacecraft intact, and the fifth plane and its crew are fished from the sea. Later the plane and maybe its crew are abandoned in orbit.

In the spring of 1990, a supermarket tabloid headlined: "World War Two Bomber Found on the Moon." An accompanying picture provided by a Soviet space probe showed a US Navy Privateer resting in a lunar crater. Is this the Privateer that disappeared while looking for the 5 TBMs and the Mariner?

It is hopeful to think that all the men of Flight 19 are now alive and well on some distant world, learning all they can about the culture and technology of their extraterrestrial hosts. Some day they might return in the manner depicted in the motion picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind and tell us what really happened on that day some 40 years ago.

Nolan Luftus of Salt Lake City,Utah, was an employee of McDonnel-Douglas and was present at Mission Control during the Apollo 11 mission. His firsthand account of the Apollo UFO sighting and photography by the spacecraft's crew is as follows:

"The UFO was in orbit at about a 6000-mile altitude. At first the Apollo crew thought that it was their discarded booster rocket, but it was later proven that the rocket stage was some 6000 miles away at the time. The booster rocket was about forty feet long (which is the same length as a TBM)."

The Apollo crew used several rolls of film to photograph the UFO. Because of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission, little was said or done about the UFO until the crew and photographs were returned to earth.

Even though a number of photographs of the UFO were taken, it appears that only one of the exposures has been widely circulated.

NASA's photoanalysis of the UFO initially declared the UFO to be a "formation of ice" and later stated it was a piece of debris only 10 inches long and from the Apollo spacecraft itself. NASA would have us believe that the highly trained Apollo astronauts' estimated 40-foot length of the object was wrong. What do you think?
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Wes Bateman is a telepath with direct, open contact to ETs from the open state, who are not subject to earth mankind's frequency-barrier-caused closed brain and limited consciousness. Bateman has 30 years of ongoing information on the open state.

This article formerly ran in the Missing Link Number 109. Wes spoke about this at the conference of the UFOCCI in Cottonwood, Arizona.