From: mcgrew@dropout.rutgers.edu (Charles Mcgrew)
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors
Subject: Re: Apparent Em Interference By Ufos
Date: 6 Nov 92 07:18:15 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Hi,

   I couldn't find the book, but I did dig out the Nova episode (which
actually turns out to have been done by the BBC, in 1976.)  A couple
of the things in my previous post were slightly incorrect; this should
correct that.

Interviewed: Richard Winer, Charles Berlitz (who both wrote "believer"
books), Lawrence Kushe (author of "Solved"), several coast guard
folks, some USN people who were in the tower on Dec. 5, 1945 or had
information that was of import, and Phil Klass (aiee, he's
everywhere!)

  The documentary took the tact of showing selected scenes from
Winer's "The Devil's Triangle" movie (based on his book, narrated by
Vincent Price), to give the "believer" side, and then giving Kusche's
side.  The "believer" side winds up pretty punctured.  Kusche resorts
to handwaving a few times, but is a paragon of logic compared to the
handwaving done by Berlitz and Winer (who are confronted on-camera
with contradictions to their accounts of events.)  A few highlights:



August 28, 1963 - 2 KC-135 tankers from Holmestead AFB disappeared.
Berlitz/Winer say that two sets of widely separated wreckage were
found, indicating they went down separately.  Kusche has the CG
report, which says that there was only one set of wreckage, and that
had pieces from both planes (the second set of wreckage was actually
misindentified seaweed around a buoy), and Kusche says this shows a
mid-air collision, and the CG report backs that up.

1947 - A British "Startiger" disappeared, no wreckage found.  But
the plane ditched in bad weather, at night.  (Planes often float
like rocks.)

(no date specified) - USCG vessel "Hollyhock" picks up "landmass" on
radar when nothing was there, and loses radio contact with Fla., but
can still contact California.  They interview a CG officer, who says
that isn't particularly strange.  Kusche says it was probably
atospherics and rain squalls.

   They also mention that around 100 vessels disappear in the Bermuda
Triangle (BT) every year, and that the Coast Guard gets about 10,000
ship-in-trouble calls every year, and interview a CG officer who tells
a few war stories about people trying to navigate with world atlas
maps from the dictionary, to show how inexperienced some sailors are.

   Now, on to the main event:


Flt. 19 - 2pm, Dec. 5, 1945, takes off from Ft. Lauderdale, on
practice bombing mission (with an east-bomb-north-southeast
flightplan); Lt. Taylor commanding four planes with student pilots (5
planes in all).  Berlitz/Winer (and others) say that 15 minutes before
the flight was due to land, various radio messages came in -- "off
course/can't see land/everything wrong/don't know which way is
west/ocean doesn't look right, etc.".  The documentary people couldn't
find anybody who was there who says they heard these messages; two
people who *were* there (Don Poole, Walt Winchell) say they did get
messages that the planes were lost, but none of the more inflamitory
supposed-messages.  (Kusche did track down the first occurance of
reporting of these messages, in a 1962 issue of "American Legion
Magazine"; he corresponded with Alan Eckerd, the author, who said he
could not remember who told him about the messages.)

   The documentary crew then flew in a CG plane, following the
flightplan of Flight 19, to see what they could see, and using that
and the Navy report on the loss of the flight, come up with the
following.

   The practice bombing at the end of the east leg of the flight (to
"Hans and Chicken Islands") went fine, but when then flight turned
north, they encountered "no horizon" conditions (haze that blurs the
visible difference between sea and sky).

   At 3:40pm, Cmdr. Robert Cox, then flying over Ft. Lauderdale,
picked the following on his radio from Ft. 19:

	"lost after last turn; Both compasses out; I'm sure I'm in the
	 Keys, but not sure how far down.  Don't know how to get to
	 Ft. Lauderdale."

... the documentary notes that Taylor had been recently transferred
from further south in Fla., and so had before flown often over the
Keys.  The documentary postulates that Taylor got confused, and
thought he was over the Keys; they showed footage from the CG plane
following the route, and the "Key-like" islands to be seen along Flt.
19's path.   Taylor might just plain have disbelieved his compasses,
and decided he was over the Keys.  [Of course, if he did that, then
he would have been unlikely to believe his compasses further, which 
he apparently did.]

   The tower could not raise Taylor on the radio (they could hear, but
not get through to him), so could not tell him anything.  If Taylor
thought he was in the Keys, he would have headed north and east to get
back to the Florida mainland.  If Flt. 19 did follow that track, they
would just wind up flying further out into the Atlantic.

   Poole and Winchell (in the tower) heard a student pilot say,
"Dammit, if we head west, we'd get home."  (So you were right, Kevin.)

   Taylor and the others headed west for a few minutes, but then back
to the east, and then in various directions.  Radio traffic (all
recreated by the documentary):

	"One of the planes thinks if we head 270 [i.e. west], we could
	 hit land."

	"We are heading 030 [northeast] for 45 minutes, then we will
	 fly north to make sure we're not over the Gulf of Mexico"

	"Flight, this is leader.  Change course to 090 [east] for
	 ten minutes.  One-Zero minutes."

	"I receive you very weak.  We are now flying 270"

	"We will fly 270 until we hit the beach or run out of gas"

	"Flight, this is leader.  When the first man gets down to 10
	 gallons of gas, we'll all land in the water together.  Does
	 everyone understand."

... but they later turned east again.  At 6pm, a radio fix placed Flt.
19 north of the Bahamas [they showed the fix directions from the 6
stations that picked up the planes -- the bearings to not intersect
particularly well; for instance 2 cross over western Florida, but
their placement is ok], 150 miles north of Ft. Lauderdale.

... so the Flight was ditching in the dark, in rough seas (reported by a
ship in the area).  They quote from the Avenger's pilot handbook that
the Avenger can stay afloat for 15-20 seconds after ditching (and
Kusche says he's talked to some Avenger pilots who claim 45 seconds).
In any case, not a pleasant prospect for Flt. 19.

   The flying boat (a Martin Mariner PBM, not PBY as I had said
earlier) took off from Bananna River NAS at 7:27 pm to search.  It was
tracked by radar for 20 minutes, then disappeared.  A midair fireball
was observed at the right time and location (they don't say by who);
the supposition was that the plane exploded.  They interviewed a
Richard Adams, of Mariner rescue operations at the time of Flt. 19,
who says "it coulda happened" that somebody was smoking in the fuel
compartment -- Mariner's were called "Flying Gastanks", and had a
known gas-fume problem.  (They also note flaws in Berlitz/Winer/others
accounts, which have the last radio contact at 4:25pm (Winer, others),
5:25pm, or 4pm (Berlitz), and the PBM's departure "soon after", when
clearly the last contact times were wrong, and the plane takeoff
wrong-- giving the false impression that everything happened in
daylight, which it did not.)


   ... the documentary then takes a few spare potshots (really just
namecalling) at various other books (Chariots of the Gods, for
instance), and then finish up with none other than our old pal Phil
Klass to say that airline service in the BT is safer than average, and
(with a flourish, producing NTSB records for 1964-1973) that only 25
light planes were lost in the BT in a 10 year period; 2/3 of whose
pilots were not instrument-rated, and half of which had fewer than
1,000 hours (i.e. they would not be in such good shape in bad
weather), and that some (well, 2) actually reported problems before
being lost.

   The documentary ends with glowing words of how science can solve
things, and so on.  All in all, a good job.


... so anyway, there's the deal.  If you accept this idea (which is
pretty compelling, IMO), that Taylor thought he was over the Florida
Keys, far to the south and west of where he actually was (which is
pretty odd, as I've said before, but appears to be borne out by the
radio-traffic that's quoted), then the planes began flying fairly
aimlessly, and wound up ditching in the dark in rough seas.  Given
that ditching in *daylight* is pretty hard, it would be likely then
that the pilots that did not actually die in crashes drowned, either
in their planes or afterward.

Charles