December 5:

1945 : Aircraft squadron lost in the Bermuda Triangle
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers
comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale
Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour
training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them
due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then
back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them
to the naval base. They never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the
squadron, who had been flying in the area for more
than six months, reported that his compass and back-up
compass had failed and that his position was unknown.
The other planes experienced similar instrument
malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted
to find the location of the lost squadron, but none
were successful. After two more hours of confused
messages from the fliers, a distorted radio
transmission from the squadron leader was heard at
6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare
to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack
of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally
determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the
Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27
p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off
with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner
aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was
underway. The Mariner was never heard from again.
Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off
the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at
7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the
13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air
and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships
and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the
Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote
locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of
the bodies or aircraft was ever found.
Although naval officials maintained that the remains
of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because
stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of
the "Lost Squadron" helped cement the legend of the
Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where
ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a
trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from
the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to
the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.

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1933 : Prohibition ends
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