| Charles Carroll Taylor |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT CHARLES CARROLL TAYLOR | |
| 1917 births | |
| taylor, charles carroll | |
| 1945 deaths | |
| bermuda triangle | |
| disappeared people | |
| american world war ii pilots | |
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BACKGROUND Charles Taylor served in the United States Naval Reserve during World War II . He graduated from the Corpus Christi NAS in February 1942 and became a flight instructor in October of that year. Over the next three years, Taylor would ditch three planes into the ocean, twice because he got lost, and was rescued all three times. In November 21, 1945, he was transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Florida . FLIGHT 19 A training mission on December 5, 1945 was scheduled to take the squadron 320 Nautical Miles , first to the southeast, then north to Grand Bahamas Island , and finally back to Fort Lauderdale. Taylor commanded the flight and its 14 servicemen taking off at 14:10. At 16:00 a transmission was received from Taylor: "Both my compasses are out, and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land, but it's broken. I am sure I'm in the Keys, but I don't know how far down, and I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale." Shortly after this communication, Taylor was asked to switch his radio to the emergency frequency for better communication with the base, but he refused, saying, "I cannot switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact." Disagreement among the Taylor and his student as to which direction the planes should travel to return to base was overheard. One student wanted to turn the flight westward, "Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit." Taylor ordered the flight to turn west and radioed to the base that he would continue in that direction until he "hit the beach." Due to this assurance and worsening weather conditions, a duty plane in Fort Lauderdale was not sent out to guide Flight 19 back to the base until 18:20. At 18:04 Flight 19's radio transmissions were triangulated and indicated they were north of the Bahamas and East of Florida. Airfields in the vicinity turned on beacons and landing strips. The first plane sent after Flight 19 was forced to return when its antenna froze. The second duty plane, a 13-man PBM Mariner flying boat was dispatched. One of the final transmissions from Flight 19 was Taylor stating, "All planes close up tight. We'll have to ditch unless landfall. When the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together." The second PBM Mariner fell silent at 19:47, and was not heard from again. A search and rescue mission involving 250 planes and 15 ships was begun the next day, but no trace of wreckage from either Flight 19 or the lost duty plane was found. All twenty-seven men were presumed lost. A CLOSE ENCOUNTER? Flight 19 was featured in the 1977 movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind . The film posits that the flight was abducted by aliens, only to be retuned later, fully intact. SOURCES
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