‐ Tonight, on "History's Greatest Mysteries"...
[dramatic music]
The Hoodoo Sea.
The graveyard of the Atlantic.
Or, as we know it more commonly today,
the Bermuda Triangle.
♪ ♪
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Nearly a hundred ships and planes
have vanished into this enigma.
On tonight's mystery,
the case that made the Bermuda Triangle famous:
the disappearance of Flight 19.
♪ ♪
In December, 1945,
in the months after World War II,
a squadron of U. S. Navy torpedo bombers took off from Florida
on a routine training mission,
and never returned.
♪ ♪
Where did they crash?
And why?
‐ Somebody has to know the truth.
‐ The only way we're going to solve this
is to find an aircraft.
♪ ♪
‐ Over the decades, there have been countless searches.
But now, a possible game changer.
‐ Bridge, standby.
Fishburne: Three groups of investigators join forces
in the biggest search for Flight 19 yet.
‐ Dead ahead. What is that?
Fishburne: Deep‐sea explorer Rob Kraft
leads the most advanced research ship of its kind.
‐ That's an aircraft. No doubt.
Fishburne: Scientist and wreck diver Mike Barnette
investigates new clues along the coastline.
‐ We definitely have a mystery aircraft, definitely Navy.
Fishburne: And researchers David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott
follow a trail of cover‐ups, conspiracy,
and missing evidence.
‐ Of course they're going to whitewash it.
Fishburne: From the deep...
‐ We're looking for F‐28.
Fishburne: ...to the swamps...
‐ That is a 50‐caliber.
Fishburne: All leading to a moment
that could solve the mystery.
‐ Boom, staring us in the face, a large propeller.
Flight 19 could be in this area, and this could be one of them.
‐ Have they finally found Flight 19?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[light dramatic music]
♪ ♪
‐ Petrel is a very unique ship.
We are outfitted unlike any other vessel.
The ship itself is inherently designed and built
for deep‐water search operations.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: It's February 13th, 2020,
day one of a search 200 miles off the Florida coast.
♪ ♪
‐ Camera's coming up.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Underwater explorer Rob Kraft
has led the research vessel RV Petrel
deep into the Bermuda Triangle...
‐ You're wet, you're in.
Fishburne: ...an infamous area
between Florida's coast, Bermuda and Puerto Rico.
Their hopes for finding Flight 19 are high.
‐ And here's the bottom. That is our waypoint.
Fishburne: RV Petrel's mission
is to seek out the great shipwrecks of the world
using an array of advanced technology,
including ultra‐high‐def cameras
that can be deployed to extreme depths.
♪ ♪
Since 2017, Kraft and Petrel
have discovered over 30 World War II ships
and the final resting place of thousands of servicemen.
‐ It's really about them,
and the service that these men gave for their country
and paid the ultimate sacrifice.
It's part of the reason we do what we do.
Fishburne: And yet, this search will be
Kraft and Petrel's greatest challenge.
‐ This is the biggest search project
we have and will undertake.
And the reality is,
is there is no smoking gun here.
There is no one piece of evidence
that is going to put an X on a map and say they're here.
It just doesn't exist.
You really kind of have to put yourself back in 1945
and try and understand what these men were going through.
Fishburne: The case of Flight 19
begins on December 5th, 1945,
at the Fort Lauderdale naval air station.
It's 2:20 p. m.
Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers
prepare to take off on a training mission
designated "Flight 19."
[indistinct radio chatter]
A choppy wind kicks up,
but visibility was unlimited with blue skies.
[indistinct radio chatter]
The mission should have lasted just over two hours.
♪ ♪
Instead, these five planes,
carrying a total of 14 men,
disappear.
♪ ♪
Hours later, a Martin Mariner rescue plane
with a crew of 13 goes looking for them.
♪ ♪
It, too, vanishes.
♪ ♪
‐ That Martin Mariner also failed to return to base.
It is so bizarre for us to try to comprehend.
Twenty‐seven U. S. Navy sailors
lost their lives.
They disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle,
and there has still never been an adequate explanation
for what happened to them.
♪ ♪
It was a routine training flight.
They were supposed to take off, drop some bombs,
shoot a little navigation and then come back to base.
Fishburne: So what happened to Flight 19?
Did they crash somewhere near Florida's coast?
Did they get hopelessly lost, ditching far out to sea?
Or did they make it back to land,
crashing in Florida?
‐ This is not a needle in a haystack.
This is orders of magnitude more difficult than that.
I mean, this was the largest Navy search ever conducted.
And they found nothing out there.
Fishburne: Fully fueled,
the TBM Avengers lost on Flight 19
had a range of a thousand miles,
creating a massive potential search area.
[indistinct radio chatter]
‐ No one has found anything.
♪ ♪
So, really, all the cards are still on the table.
Fishburne: Aboard RV Petrel,
Kraft has invited David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott
to help narrow the search area.
‐ And I think you're right, I think that would be the area
that we'd have to start at.
Fishburne: David served in the Canadian infantry,
and is now a military historian.
‐ I did two and a half years in uniform
with one of the most famous regiments in Canada,
which was the Black Watch of Canada.
I was recruited from there
to actually work as part of the official historical team.
Going through old files and archives, that's my forte.
That's what I love to do. There's nothing like it.
Fishburne: Wayne is an historical investigator
obsessed with Flight 19 since he was a kid.
‐ I was early teens
when "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
came out in the theaters.
And that was really the first time
I heard about the story of Flight 19.
And it's an iconic opening.
I mean, these scientists are going through
the dusty Mexican desert.
All of a sudden you see five perfect planes from Flight 19.
‐ Who flies crates like these anymore?
‐ No one. These planes were reported missing in 1945.
‐ I don't understand!
Fishburne: In the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"
Flight 19 is abducted by aliens.
To find out what really happened,
Wayne and David are helping Kraft
dig into the official report
from the Navy Board of Inquiry that investigated Flight 19.
‐ This is all we have, so this is what we have to use.
‐ Nobody knew truly where the planes were.
But there is a lot of evidence
within the Board of Inquiry report
of radio transmissions.
And there's just great little tidbits of information.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: According to the report,
signs of trouble began an hour and a half after takeoff.
♪ ♪
3:40 p. m.
Lieutenant Charles Taylor,
the instructor leading Flight 19,
radios one the other pilots saying he thinks they're lost.
‐ Powers, do you copy?
I think we got lost on the last turn.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Back near Fort Lauderdale,
another Flight instructor, Lieutenant Robert Cox,
overhears Flight 19's radio traffic.
‐ Both the compasses are out. We're lost.
I'm sure we're over the Keys,
but I'm not sure how far down
or how to get back to Lauderdale.
Fishburne: According to Cox,
Taylor was convinced Flight 19 was over the Florida Keys,
well off their flight path.
Cox instructed Taylor to fly northeast till they hit Miami,
and then on to Fort Lauderdale.
♪ ♪
But they never made it.
♪ ♪
Where were they?
‐ The flight leader, Charles Taylor,
is completely confused about his position.
Fishburne: The report says that at 1750,
military time for 5:50 p. m.,
the Navy triangulated a rough position fix on Flight 19.
‐ And what we can see from the rudimentary data that we have
is that the flight is actually progressing
off the southeastern part of Florida.
Fishburne: Charles Taylor thought
he'd gotten badly turned around
and was over the Gulf.
But the location fix puts them north of the Bahamas.
If Taylor did turn northeast,
he would have been leading them even deeper
into the Bermuda Triangle.
‐ This is the 1750 fix that the Navy put them at,
and there is the 100 nautical mile radius.
Fishburne: Kraft uses the bearings
to calculate Petrel's search grid.
It's an area more than twice the size
of the state of Rhode Island,
with an average depth of 3,000 feet.
‐ I mean, we're talking nearly 2,600 square nautical miles.
And we're looking for a target that is, you know‐‐
the wingspan on an Avenger is 50 feet.
Fishburne: Undaunted,
Kraft begins the search.
♪ ♪
It starts with some of the world's deepest diving
autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs.
Able to reach depths of more than three miles.
‐ Ready? ‐ It's a drone
that we program on the surface.
We tell it where we want it to go
and what we want it to do,
And it goes and does its mission all by itself.
[sonar pinging]
Fishburne: Once the AUV nears the seafloor,
it follows a grid pattern and emits bursts of sonar
to create a detailed undersea map.
Any unnatural shapes it finds could be wrecks.
‐ We have been lucky enough to find targets
on the first dive in the past.
I do not feel that level of confidence here.
♪ ♪
There we go. Dive one.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: As the AUV begins the search,
Petrel's chief technician and lead researcher,
Paul Mayer, reviews what an aircraft in deep water
might look like.
‐ Here is a 3D model of an F4F.
This is in about 10,000 feet of water,
so the paint is still in very good condition.
Fishburne: This F4F Wildcat
is part of the Petrel's 2018 discovery
of the carrier U. S. S. Lexington.
♪ ♪
The team discovered 35 aircraft
that went down with the ship.
♪ ♪
In this deepwater environment,
low oxygen levels reduce corrosion.
These planes have been on the ocean floor
for nearly eight decades.
Yet the paint still looks fresh.
‐ On this particular aircraft, we have victory tallies here
of how many Japanese planes were shot down.
There's a bomb here,
representing that he did a bombing mission.
And then the insignia of that flight group.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: If Flight 19 is in deep water,
the chances of a positive identification are high.
♪ ♪
Thirteen hours later, in the dead of night,
the AUV completes its first dive.
♪ ♪
Kraft reviews the data.
He immediately spots something.
‐ It stands out.
It's an extremely bright,
high‐contrast target.
It could be something manmade.
So we need to go
put some eyes on those and figure out what they are.
Fishburne: Could Rob Kraft's instincts
be proven right yet again?
Is this Flight 19?
♪
Fishburne: It's day two of the search for Flight 19,
the Bermuda Triangle's greatest mystery.
What happened to five torpedo bombers
that disappeared in 1945?
♪ ♪
Aboard RV Petrel, explorer Rob Kraft
has detected a promising target.
‐ It stands out. It could be something manmade.
Fishburne: To get a visual,
he deploys a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV,
fitted with an array of cameras.
‐ And you're going down.
And feet are wet. You're in.
♪ ♪
All right, we're ready for some thrusters.
‐ Altimeters on.
‐ There you go, it's up.
We'll be just a meter off the bottom.
Sound speed still 1522.
♪ ♪
‐ Here's the bottom.
‐ I think you're about 70, 75 meters
due north of this, Rudy.
What's that over to the left? Did you see that?
♪ ♪
Hold your heading right there, Rudy.
Just hold there.
‐ What is that?
‐ That's a squid.
‐ Oh, yeah.
♪ ♪
‐ Look at all that biology.
145, that is our waypoint.
♪ ♪
‐ We're just coming up on it now.
And it appears to be...
♪ ♪
‐ You think it's a wheel?
‐ No. It's a rock.
It's just some form of rocks.
Fishburne: It's just a geological anomaly.
Sonar this sensitive will produce some false targets.
‐ Box ticked? ‐ Box ticked.
‐ On target. ‐ Bring it up.
Fishburne: But for Kraft,
there is a silver lining.
‐ It's not mountainous like we see
in a lot of deepwater environments.
So it's fairly flat.
So we've got a pretty good chance
of identifying these targets.
[thunder rumbles]
Fishburne: But search operations must now be halted.
‐ The weather has come up pretty fast
and ahead of schedule.
We got to get the vehicle up and get it on deck
while we still have this window.
♪ ♪
We're getting everything secured for sea,
because it's gonna be a rough ride in.
You start running at 10 knots,
and it's gonna get pretty lively out here.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Petrel is being chased back to port
by the Bermuda Triangle's
freak and dangerous weather swings.
[thunder crashing]
These sudden and violent storms, called white squalls,
have sunk ships
and added to the Triangle's deadly reputation.
‐ You had a lot of incidents where planes went missing,
boats went missing.
So you have to respect it
and you have to fear it.
Fishburne: The Bermuda Triangle
borders some of Earth's most powerful forces.
The Gulf Stream,
the Atlantic's strongest current.
Known to carry disabled ships and planes
miles from their reported positions.
A mid‐ocean area that is often eerily becalmed,
trapping many a stranded vessel in a slow death grip.
♪ ♪
And the triangle is a superhighway for hurricanes.
‐ There's no doubt that this area is incredibly active.
‐ It is an area where there are anomalies
that cannot be explained by physical science.
[thunder crashing]
Fishburne: And nowhere else has
so many eyewitness accounts of paranormal activity,
malfunctioning instruments and strange lights
attributed to aliens or the supernatural.
‐ Look at that thing, dude. There's a whole fleet of them.
Fishburne: The U. S. government
recently revealed that in 2017,
Navy pilots flying over the Bermuda Triangle
captured UFOs on camera.
‐ My gosh!
‐ The facts are the facts.
There are disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle
that are unexplained.
I don't think it's aliens,
but no one's ever really
discovered the smoking gun.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: While Kraft waits for the weather to calm,
team members Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe head inland.
♪ ♪
They're hunting for any evidence
the planes crashed in Florida.
‐ There is one possibility
that the planes that night
actually decided to split up and go their own way.
And if that's the case,
then it is a possibility that some made it back to land.
Fishburne: The theory that at least
one plane made it back to land
rests on cryptic evidence
of possible dissension on Flight 19.
♪ ♪
Intercepted radio calls indicate
that one of the student pilots,
possibly Marine Captain Ed Powers,
disagreed with instructor Charles Taylor
that the flight was lost over the Florida Keys.
Powers argued they were over the Atlantic.
He urged Taylor to fly west.
‐ Damn it, we need to fly west.
If we fly west, we will get home.
‐ There was some dissension in the ranks.
And a guy like Captain Powers just says,
you know, screw it.
"Taylor, you've messed us around too long.
I'm going to head towards land, because I know where we are."
So that easily could have happened.
Fishburne: Wayne and David have recently
tracked down new evidence that could back up this theory.
♪ ♪
Just west of Vero Beach, Florida,
they've come to meet Graham Stikelether,
who is taking them back to the site
of a vivid boyhood memory.
‐ So how old were you at the time?
‐ I was nine.
‐ So this is similar to what you remember?
‐ Yeah, it is.
The first thing that you passed was the tail section.
And then probably another, gosh,
50 to 100 feet in front of there was the plane.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: In 1962,
years after the disappearance of Flight 19,
a nine‐year‐old Graham was brought here by his father
to see a plane wreck.
Graham's father, a Florida judge,
discovered the wreck while hunting,
and reported it to the Navy.
He was told it was from Flight 19.
But the wreck was removed,
and the Navy later denied any knowledge of the incident.
‐ What did your father do upon finding the wreck?
‐ The first place he called was Patrick Air Force Base.
They finally did pull the plane out,
and there were bodies in it.
‐ Where did your father take this story then?
‐ He finally kind of hit a wall,
and nobody talked to him anymore.
‐ What really raises a lot of mystery about this plane
is the Navy told him that this was part of Flight 19.
Unfortunately, no matter how much
the judge went back to the Navy,
he could not get any more information.
‐ As a researcher, you can't place too much faith
in human memory.
Human memory becomes fallible immediately after.
We still needed some sort of concrete proof.
Do you have anything that came from the plane?
‐ Yeah, I do.
I do have pieces of the plane, and some bits.
‐ You have pieces of the plane that your father found?
‐ Yeah, absolutely.
Fishburne: After his father died,
Graham gave the plane pieces to a friend named Jimmy,
who collects World War II memorabilia.
Jimmy has agreed to meet Wayne and David.
Are they about to uncover
a piece of the legendary Flight 19?
‐ Here it is. ‐ Oh! There we go.
[all laugh]
Fishburne: Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe
are part of a team of Bermuda Triangle investigators.
They're now in Florida to examine plane wreckage.
‐ Here it is, fellas.
Fishburne: It was found on this spot,
and is allegedly part of Flight 19.
‐ That's a 50‐cal. ‐ That looks great.
‐ That is a 50‐caliber.
‐ Yes, this is M2 aircraft 50‐caliber,
which I believe would have been mounted
in the wing of the aircraft.
‐ And this is the mount?
‐ That would be the forward mount
that would've attached to this portion of the gun.
Fishburne: David compares the parts
to a schematic from a TBM Avenger manual.
‐ Looking at this picture, if you look right there...
‐ Yeah, there's the ball. There's the mount.
‐ Look at that. ‐ That is.
‐ That is it.
Fishburne: The TBM‐3 Avenger
had 50‐cal machines guns mounted in its wings.
This gun was used on many planes.
But the small mount is unique to the Avenger.
♪ ♪
Making it likely this gun came off of the same kind of planes
lost on Flight 19.
♪ ♪
‐ Is there any other markings on here?
‐ There are.
The original markings from the factory.
And there is a serial number, which...
‐ A serial number. ‐ Yes!
All right, this is great.
This is great,
because all of these were logged,
particularly when it came to armaments on planes,
and somewhere in the archives,
there is going to be a log of this.
‐ The big reason that having a machine gun is great
is because it comes with a serial number,
and with a serial number, we might be able to find out
what plane this came off of.
We might be able to find out who the pilots
and the rest of the crew were.
‐ This is the best piece of hard evidence
we've ever come across.
Fishburne: As David follows the trail
of the serial number...
another member of the Bermuda Triangle investigation team,
seasoned explorer Mike Barnette,
is opening up a new search.
His dive team will focus on the waters
along Florida's coastline.
‐ I've been working in the Bermuda Triangle,
or as I call it the [bleep] Triangle, for 30 years.
Fishburne: As a scientist,
Barnette believes these disappearances
have a rational explanation.
‐ There's all sorts of theories about what's going on here,
whether it's the paranormal phenomenon, UFOs,
time warps, Atlantis.
Fishburne: In the film
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"
another famous Bermuda Triangle disappearance,
the ship called the Cotopaxi,
was set down by extraterrestrials
in the Gobi Desert.
Barnette recently found the Cotopaxi
and worked out what really happened.
‐ The Cotopaxi was caught in a storm on November 30th, 1925,
and she sank in just over 100 feet of water
about 40 miles off the coast of Florida.
♪ ♪
There's no need for additional drama.
The weather can provide all the drama you ever would want.
I mean, the weather can go from flat calm
to raging, you know,
seven‐to‐ten‐foot seas and 25‐knot winds
in the snap of a finger.
Fishburne: To find Flight 19,
Barnette's using the same approach he used
to find the Cotopaxi:
follow the fish.
‐ Fish are after structure and habitat,
and shipwrecks provide great habitat.
Fishburne: Shipwrecks are like mini reefs
that make for rich fishing ground.
There are hundreds off Florida's coast.
And the fishermen who make their living off these wrecks
can provide valuable leads.
‐ They know where the wrecks are.
They don't know what the wrecks are,
but they know there's something there.
I've worked with all sorts of commercial fishermen,
whether it be draggers or trawlers.
Or, in this case, I'm working with Captain Jeff Marinko,
who is a commercial spear fisherman.
There's a little bit of current,
then we can do whatever we want.
‐ Me and Barney have been friends a long time,
and he wanted to come out here
and check out some wrecks off of North Florida
that we've been talking about for years.
You know, a lot of these wrecks,
a lot of people lost their lives,
so anytime you can identify something
and finish the equation of what happened to it,
I think it's a good thing.
‐ There's a mystery wreck the captain's told us about.
No one knows what it is.
Fishburne: The dive team includes Jimmy Gadomski
and underwater cinematographer Evan Kovacs.
‐ What's the range? Depth range?
‐ 130 to almost 200 feet of water.
Fishburne: They're rated to hit extreme depths
of up to 500 feet,
close to the limit for human divers.
‐ Just starting to mark the edge of the wreck now.
‐ Now we're starting to see some stuff.
The bottom's at 160, 165,
and we're seeing the fish up to 140.
So there's definitely something here.
‐ I'm ready when you are if you want to try to hook it now.
[dramatic music]
‐ Cool.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Below, they find not a plane,
but a 200‐foot shipwreck.
Could this be an important piece
of the Bermuda Triangle mystery?
Fishburne: Mike Barnette is part of a team of investigators
exploring the legendary Bermuda Triangle.
Searching for a lost squadron of Navy bombers,
they may have stumbled upon another
of the Triangle's victims:
a massive shipwreck.
What is it?
‐ We found a wreck that was about 200 feet long
and about 24 1/2‐foot beam.
We noticed it was carrying a very bizarre cargo.
It was white clay‐like material.
‐ We took a sample of that, because we figured
if we can identify the cargo,
potentially we could identify the wreck.
Fishburne: Barnette's team heads to the surface
to try to work out what they've found.
♪ ♪
‐ This is a sample of cargo.
It just looks like a white‐grayish clay,
but it's just tons of it down there.
So I'm curious what this is.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: After assessing the evidence,
Barnette matches the wreck
to a famous unsolved Bermuda Triangle disappearance.
A cargo ship lost in April 1950 and never heard from again:
the Sandra.
The Sandra left Savannah with a 12‐man crew and vanished.
Thought to have been swallowed
by the legendary Bermuda Triangle.
‐ We found a record of a vessel called the Sandra
that was lost in 1950.
And it was carrying a cargo of DDT.
♪ ♪
And when we actually analyzed the cargo,
we found out it was kaolin clay,
which is used as an insecticide or pesticide,
as well as traces of DDT.
We know the Sandra left Savannah, Georgia,
headed south along the North Florida coast.
It would have passed right over where we were diving,
where this mystery wreck is.
And all the dimensions,
all the machinery matched exactly what the Sandra was.
We put all this evidence altogether,
cumulatively, it was overwhelming
that the mystery wreck was indeed the Sandra.
Fishburne: For the Bermuda Triangle investigation team,
it's a major discovery.
A 200‐foot ship thought to be vanished forever is now found.
♪ ♪
But what, or who, buried the Sandra and her 12 sailors
in this watery grave?
Is there some unknown force behind this
and so many Bermuda Triangle mysteries?
With the sensational discovery,
these questions can now be investigated.
‐ I mean, just serendipity, right?
You know, we're trying to find information
on another Bermuda Triangle mystery,
and yet we stumble into another one,
which just shows you that's what happens
when you go out exploring out here.
You just never know what you're going to run into.
Fishburne: But the mystery of the Sandra must wait.
Barnette is eager to return to his primary mission:
finding the missing planes.
♪ ♪
Forced into port by severe weather,
Petrel is heading back to sea.
Barnette joins team member Rob Kraft
for the next leg of the expedition.
‐ Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity.
‐ Mike Barnett is a NOAA marine biologist
and an avid diver.
We're going to bring him onboard
and we're going to talk to him
about the PBM Mariner aspect of Flight 19.
Fishburne: Barnette is most interested
in a lesser known aspect of the Flight 19 saga:
the loss of the Martin Mariner search and rescue plane.
‐ In the process of trying to rescue these five aircraft,
another search and rescue aircraft
was dispatched to go find them,
and it disappeared less than a half‐hour after taking off.
So in an instant,
we've doubled the men that need to be rescued.
Fishburne: 7:30 p. m.
About an hour since the last transmission from Flight 19.
♪ ♪
A 13‐man rescue team goes after the lost flight
like firemen running into a burning building.
‐ 2‐0‐0 departure radar contact.
Fishburne: Around 8:30 p. m.,
the rescue plane suddenly drops off radar.
♪ ♪
A passing freighter,
the S. S. Gaines Mill
reported a large fireball in the skies around that time.
Did the plane explode mid‐flight?
No wreckage was ever found,
and the true location of the incident
is hotly debated.
‐ This is a site identified in 1989
during the search for Challenger debris.
Fishburne: Barnette thinks he may have found
the missing Mariner
by digging through the archives
of a seemingly unrelated event.
♪ ♪
The 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.
♪ ♪
‐ Tragically, it exploded a few minutes after launch
and crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in several pieces.
And there was a major effort to go out
and search for this debris.
And they actually found
what they identified as a DC‐3,
which is a twin‐engine aircraft, in this area here.
Fishburne: Searching for the debris of the Challenger,
NASA identified the wreck of a DC‐3 aircraft.
But the dive report states visibility was poor.
So did they get it right?
Could this actually be the missing Mariner?
‐ How far offshore is this?
‐ This is about 30 miles. ‐ Okay.
Let's get on the phone and call the bridge,
and give them that position.
Fishburne: Rob Kraft adjusts course
to head towards Mike Barnette's provocative target.
Fishburne: It's early March 2020.
Rob Kraft and Mike Barnette
have taken RV Petrel over the very spot
where NASA records document a mysterious aircraft wreck.
♪ ♪
‐ Next one, you'll be 133 meters.
Fishburne: They suspect that it may be
the PBM Mariner rescue plane
that was lost along with Flight 19.
‐ We know the PBM was likely traveling
at an altitude of 800 feet or so.
So if it did crash, we should have large chunks of wreckage.
Fishburne: Using the Petrel's sonar,
they search the ocean floor for half a mile
in every direction and turn up...
nothing.
‐ Yeah, there's‐‐ there's nothing there.
Fishburne: Is the NASA data inaccurate?
Or did churning undersea currents destroy the wreck?
Whatever the explanation, there's no plane here.
But for Kraft, this is still progress.
‐ When you rule targets out that can help you
focus your search.
X rarely ever marks the spot.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: As Kraft steers Petrel
back toward deeper water,
Barnette prepares another dive expedition along the coast.
♪ ♪
Meanwhile, back in Florida, the other members of the team‐‐
Investigators Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe‐‐
Have uncovered a provocative witness.
‐ This is the first interview she's ever given.
‐ Yeah. I mean, 75 years later,
it's going to be hard to find any eyewitnesses.
And so she's about the closest thing we're going to get.
♪ ♪
‐ My father was Lieutenant Robert Cox.
He was in radio contact with Flight 19.
Fishburne: Colby Cox is the daughter
of Lieutenant Robert Cox,
the first to realize Flight 19 was in trouble
on that fateful day.
‐ Powers, you copy?
I don't know where we are.
Fishburne: Cox was also the only person
to have more than a fleeting contact with Flight 19.
‐ Please identify yourself so someone can help.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Cox was sure he could find them.
But he was low on fuel.
He requested to land and swap into a ready plane
that was on standby.
‐ This FT‐74 coming in low on fuel.
Request permission to immediately disembark
in ready plane.
I think I got a pretty good fix on those lost fliers.
Fishburne: But his request was inexplicably denied.
♪ ♪
Why wasn't Lieutenant Cox
allowed to go back up after Flight 19?
‐ It's very sad that Dad wasn't allowed to go back up.
‐ Did it weigh heavily on him?
‐ My dad felt extremely strongly
that he could locate the flight
if he were allowed to go back up.
And he was very frustrated
that he wasn't allowed to go back up.
‐ What was the fallout for your father then?
‐ My mother was always convinced
that this adversely affected my father's career,
because my father told the truth.
‐ Robert Cox is one of the most crucial characters
in the whole Flight 19 story.
Now, Robert died a few years ago,
and his story died with him.
But Colby Cox told us a story that is shocking.
‐ There was a huge party on the base that night.
From what I recall Dad saying,
they couldn't even find the base commander.
My father believed
that the fact that there was that big party the night before
definitely contributed to the loss of Flight 19.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: If Lieutenant Cox did testify
to this base‐wide party
the night before Flight 19 was lost,
it's nowhere in the Navy's official report.
‐ Did your father believe that they whitewashed,
say, the Board of Inquiry?
‐ Yes. ‐ Wow.
‐ The Navy doesn't want to hear that.
I grew up as a Navy brat.
My father was in the service 24 years.
And knowing what I know about the Navy,
of course they're going to whitewash it.
♪ ♪
‐ Boy, did she just open up something.
‐ Do think that they would have sanitized the Board of Inquiry?
‐ Well, they could have. I mean, let's just say
the entire base was off its game.
They were all hungover.
Would the Navy really want that to come out?
‐ Especially with the loss of 27 men.
‐ Particularly with the loss of 27 men.
♪ ♪
‐ The amount of partying that was happening
is a bit surprising, shocking.
But also understandable.
My God, these guys just got home from fighting World War II.
male announcer: It's official. It's all over.
It's total victory.
[crowd cheering]
Fishburne: The guns of World War II
fell silent in August 1945,
after the final Japanese surrender.
announcer: Cameramen and reporters of many countries
record this historic moment.
Fishburne: Servicemen from all branches
went from high alert to suddenly,
unexpectedly, coming home.
‐ The American military did not look to the year 1945 and go,
"'We'll wrap it all up then and then we'll all go home."
That was not the plan.
The American military had imagined a force
of 305,000 American troops
participating in amphibious landing
on the Japanese home islands.
I don't want to say that they suddenly became unprofessional,
and that they neglected their duties and responsibilities.
But I am saying that there's a different set of priorities
by December 5th 1945.
Fishburne: Even if there was
a massive base party the night before,
the men of Flight 19 were experienced aviators.
Most had seen combat in the Pacific.
None more than flight instructor Charles Taylor.
‐ His friends called him CC.
And he was from Texas, from Corpus Christi.
And he joined the Navy in 1941.
He was a highly seasoned pilot.
[machine‐gun fire]
He had combat experience, but he had also logged
2,500 hours of flying time,
mostly on the Avenger.
He ditched twice while in combat.
If there was anybody on Flight 19
who understood what it was like to land in the ocean,
deploy the rafts and survive,
it seems to have been Charles Taylor.
So he was nowhere near in over his head.
There must have been something
that really threw him off that day.
Fishburne: Could Flight 19
have run into something in the Bermuda Triangle
that surprised them?
‐ In aviation, when we look at accidents,
when we look at reports,
we look at things as a compound series of events.
An accident doesn't just happen with one thing.
Fishburne: Wayne and David have come
to the Florida Aviation Academy.
They're meeting U. S. Air Force pilot
and accident investigator,
Lieutenant Colonel Jason Harris.
‐ We need to be able to gain experience from somebody
who's been in the cockpit.
Somebody who's been in situations like this before.
Fishburne: Jason has a way to give David
a pilot's‐eye view of Flight 19.
‐ Whoa! Dave, jeez. ‐ There we go.
‐ I didn't realize you weighed that much.
Fishburne: They're lifting off in a flight simulator,
programmed for December 5th, 1945.
‐ Are you ready? ‐ Let's go.
♪ ♪
‐ So we'll go ahead and just start climbing on up.
‐ Perfect.
‐ We know that the weather report
here in Fort Lauderdale on that day was CAVU:
"Clear skies, visibility unrestricted."
Fishburne: But the naval report shows that offshore,
conditions quickly deteriorated.
‐ And that is almost standard in this part of the country
that there might be clear weather here on the landmass,
but the flight conditions
over the entire route of the flight were not.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: In a time before GPS,
and with limited aerial radar,
pilots relied on visual landmarks
to correct for course drift.
Flight 19's first landmark was a small island,
called Chicken Shoals.
With poor visibility,
Jason thinks Flight 19 was unable to find Chicken Shoals.
‐ Wow. When it comes in at first,
you don't realize how quick
you can lose your visibility and your reference points.
‐ Absolutely.
Fishburne: Unable to find the small island,
Taylor would have turned to his compasses to stay on course.
The Avenger had two.
But turbulence and poor weather
could lead both to read incorrectly.
♪ ♪
Even in a simulator,
the feeling of being lost leads to a pilot's worst enemy:
panic.
‐ This is it, this is serious. We're lost.
‐ And we have no idea where Chicken Shoals is,
what our intended target is.
‐ This is not a good feeling. ‐ It's not.
♪ ♪
When you look at the transcripts on Flight 19,
you begin to realize that Taylor, the flight instructor,
was clearly panicked because he was lost.
You're running out of fuel.
It's in the middle of the night.
You've got rain, potentially.
You've got cloud cover.
You've got turbulence. You've got winds.
You've got instruments that you no longer can trust.
I'd be panicked.
I don't care how much experience I have
as a professional pilot.
Those are a recipe for disaster.
Fishburne: From the simulator,
Jason reconstructs one possible scenario.
♪ ♪
Unforecasted bad weather closes in,
reducing visibility and causing Flight 19
to drift from their planned route.
As panic sets in,
Charles Taylor distrusts his compasses
and leads the squadron further out to sea toward certain doom.
♪ ♪
‐ So there's the possibility
that there was a lot of weather that day,
there was a lot of stress.
What I think happened is that these guys got lost.
Fishburne: If Jason's right,
that means Flight 19 is most likely deep out to sea.
♪ ♪
But now, on land,
Wayne and David have uncovered a clue
that could flip the whole case on its head.
‐ "You have been misinformed about me.
I'm very much alive, Georgie."
Fishburne: Was there a survivor from Flight 19?
Flight 19, It's the most legendary
Bermuda Triangle disappearance on record.
David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott are part of a team
trying to finally solve this mystery.
They're now hunting for clues in the stories of the men
who disappeared that night.
‐ This is about 14 men
that took off that day and never came home.
Fourteen families that had to deal with that.
Not to mention the other 13 men lost on the Martin Mariner
that went out to rescue them.
Twenty‐seven men died in one night.
That's the real story.
Fishburne: The trail's led them
to the suburbs of New York City.
‐ For years I've been hoping that we could speak to somebody
from the Paonessa family.
‐ Yeah, they've got that one piece of cryptic evidence
we have to take a look at.
Fishburne: Wayne and David are meeting Bill Paonessa.
‐ Hi, how are you? ‐ Good.
‐ Dave O'Keefe. ‐ Bill Paonessa.
‐ Nice to meet you. ‐ Hey. Wayne Abbott.
Fishburne: Bill's uncle was Flight 19
radioman George Paonessa.
‐ I've got something to show you
that's going to be piquing your interest.
Fishburne: Today, Bill is the keeper of a family secret.
‐ Is this all related to George?
‐ All related to George that my Aunt Lou,
who was the matriarch, took very good care of.
And communication.
I also have some of his effects from Florida
where he disappeared.
And, also, from the Pacific.
Even the stencil from his locker.
‐ No way!
‐ George was my dad's brother.
And George was the youngest of the brothers.
My dad was in the Army.
George was Marines,
flight aviator, gunner bombardier.
♪ ♪
The disappearance in Bermuda Triangle
always hung over the family.
And it's something that we have always,
you know, wanted an answer.
And his flight book.
This was from the Pacific.
‐ He was on patrols.
He was on convoy duty, dive‐bombing.
They were attacking Japanese‐held islands,
strafing.
I mean, he saw some heavy combat.
‐ What has the family said
about the night of December 5th to you?
‐ Well, they really thought there was a miscommunication.
How could men who were experienced,
seasoned pilots get lost?
♪ ♪
‐ Whatever happened, they wanted an explanation,
ironclad, that tells them
why this happened to a group of servicemen
that went through the Pacific Theater
and came back to die in the Atlantic Ocean.
Fishburne: In December 1945,
as families around America prepared
for their first Christmas together again
after years of war,
the Paonessas received a series of telegrams.
"Your son is missing."
"The search has been discontinued."
"Your was son killed."
♪ ♪
And then, the day after Christmas,
they received a telegram that appeared to be from George.
♪ ♪
‐ The one telegram that threw everybody for a loop
was on December 26th,
my Uncle Joe received this telegram.
So this is a bit strange.
‐ "You have been misinformed about me.
I'm very much alive, Georgie."
‐ And he spelled it G‐E‐O‐R‐G‐I‐E.
That was his signature.
♪ ♪
The telegram was allegedly sent by my uncle,
and he signed it G‐E‐O‐R‐G‐I‐E.
He was the only person that signed his name like that.
So it was like, wait a minute,
we got a letter from the government saying
he's lost at sea, presumed dead,
And we've given up on the search
'cause it's been over 10 days.
And yet we get a telegram from Georgie, alleged,
that he's fine.
Which one do you want to believe?
‐ This mystery telegram leads to so many questions,
with the strangest question being:
did George survive?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: George Paonessa was
Captain Ed Powers' radioman.
Some speculate Powers realized
flight instructor Charles Taylor
was heading the wrong way, and turned west toward land...
ultimately crashing somewhere over Florida.
If so, could Paonessa have survived?
♪ ♪
‐ Was there discussion in the family?
Like, who would have done this as a hoax?
‐ No, no, no. This came from Florida.
It came from the Western Union, in Florida near the base.
So this all had credence of it's original, it's authentic.
It might not have been sent by Georgie,
but it was sent by somebody.
‐ Any frustration or hurt or anger, even, over this?
‐ I think hurt from the standpoint
that there wasn't any satisfactory answer.
That it seemed to be a cover‐up.
In the end, nobody had an answer.
‐ So you know what we're trying to do here
is try to get down to the truth,
the truth of what happened.
And if we do succeed,
what would the truth mean to you with this?
‐ Well, it'd finalize everything
for the family, for myself,
but I think I already know the outcome,
but it would be nice to, you know, to find the planes.
♪ ♪
‐ I really feel for the Paonessa family,
because we don't really know what the situation was,
whether that was a hoax.
It kind of goes down as a hoax.
But why would anybody do that?
You know? Why?
I mean, I kind of lean on believing it,
in other words that, you know, maybe he deserted.
Maybe he had enough. Maybe he wanted to get out.
Maybe our search inland
will discover something that ties that together.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The Paonessa telegram
could add more weight to the theory
that one or more of the planes somehow made it back to land.
♪ ♪
Could this clue connect to the plane
Graham Stikelether's father allegedly found in 1962?
♪ ♪
While Wayne and David
may be on the verge of a major breakthrough...
back on RV Petrel,
frustration is mounting among the deep‐sea team members.
‐ Yeah, go ahead.
‐ Um, that was a [bleep] bad idea.
♪ ♪
That was a terrible idea.
Fishburne: It's now mid‐March, 2020.
‐ All right, Eric, we're away.
Fishburne: Rob Kraft and the crew
have been scouring the Bermuda Triangle for weeks
looking for any sign of the Avengers.
‐ Nothing.
Nothing but a barren wasteland.
Fishburne: Kraft knew this search would be a slow grind.
But there is some good news at last.
♪ ♪
They have detected a promising new target.
‐ It's around a thousand meters or so,
so it's not going to take long to get the ROV down there.
We should be able to get a good look at this
and decide whether it's one of our planes or not.
‐ Hold it there. ‐ Yeah.
♪ ♪
‐ We'll start to push it toward the target, Rob, yeah?
‐ Yeah.
Dead ahead, what is that, Rudy?
There's something.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: As the target comes into view,
it's clear it's definitely manmade.
And it's clear it's definitely not a plane.
Most likely it's a fridge, thrown overboard as trash.
♪ ♪
‐ Well, it's an adventure.
‐ You know what an adventure is? ‐ What?
‐ It's a poorly planned vacation.
[both laugh]
Fishburne: The team can still joke.
They've proven they can detect even the smallest objects.
And Rob Kraft is convinced that all they need to do
is finish mapping their prime target area.
‐ To date, we've covered about 210, 220 square nautical miles.
So it's really just the beginning of this search.
♪ ♪
It's just going to take a lot of time to cover it all.
‐ Breaking news tonight.
The U. S. and Canada closing their borders
as the coronavirus pandemic deepens.
Fishburne: But time is something Rob Kraft
has just run out of.
‐ The World Health Organization
has officially named it COVID‐19.
‐ A new wave of states are issuing
stay‐at‐home orders tonight,
recognizing the measures needed to control the virus...
‐ So we've had to cut the mission short.
There's a bit of craziness going on with this coronavirus,
so we're going to shut it down right now
and get everybody a chance to get home
so they can get rested up and we can get back out here.
Fishburne: Petrel is driven to port
by the pandemic and locked down.
But with the discovery of a provocative new target,
the search is just heating up.
A team of investigators
are on the hunt for the Bermuda Triangle's
most famous disappearance:
Flight 19.
The COVID pandemic has thrown a wrench
into the offshore search.
But on land, David O'Keefe and Wayne Abbott
are now following up on a tantalizing clue:
a 50‐caliber machine gun that could be from Flight 19.
♪ ♪
‐ You've attempted to cross‐reference
the serial number
with the reports written at the time?
‐ That's what I was planning to do.
The problem is trying to find the reports.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The gun was allegedly recovered
by a Florida judge in the 1960s.
Naval officials initially told the judge
that the plane was part of Flight 19.
But the Navy later denied any knowledge of the incident.
♪ ♪
The gun is the only evidence of the crash.
But after an exhaustive search,
David has failed to uncover any record of this serial number.
‐ I'm not going to call it a cover‐up or anything,
but the judge tried to get information out of the Navy
once they cleared the wreck, and he came up empty.
‐ Yeah, I can understand the 1960s.
It was still kind of fresh. It was new.
There was security classifications.
But 75 years later?
I mean, it should be relatively easy
to get our hands on this information if it still exists.
Fishburne: Typically, 50‐caliber machine guns
were carefully tracked,
so the missing serial number raises eyebrows.
Is there something the Navy is hiding?
Or is there a less conspiratorial explanation
for why David has been unable to locate the records?
‐ This is December 1945.
There's a big giant war machine that is starting to gear down.
And who knows, you know?
Who knows whether, you know, the people on the base
took their eye off the ball a little bit?
You know, you're no longer at war.
All you want to do is get home.
Maybe your record‐keeping is not as good as it was.
Fishburne: David still believes
the serial number records are buried somewhere.
But a definitive answer won't come anytime soon.
The pandemic has shut down the archives.
♪ ♪
‐ We are now locked down.
We're shut out. So for the time being,
this remains one heck of a mystery.
Fishburne: And the news for Rob Kraft
has gone from bad to worse.
The pandemic has forced RV Petrel off the water
for seven months and counting.
‐ We had no idea that it was going to have
the impact that it did.
The boat went into the dry dock period,
and so right now, it's unavailable.
Fishburne: Hopes of finding the missing Avengers
are dwindling.
♪ ♪
But Rob Kraft has never been one to go down without a fight.
With Petrel's high‐tech tools off the table,
he has assembled an ad‐hoc team
to go after a provocative new lead,
code‐named "Target 77."
‐ This target was discovered by another survey,
and it was an incidental target.
It was not something that they were actually looking for.
Fishburne: While the target
is outside Kraft's primary search area,
it is well within Flight 19's range.
And the sonar image matches the wingspan of a TBM Avenger.
‐ It's the right signature in sonar.
It's the right size.
It is definitely something we need to go look at.
Fishburne: Rob Kraft and Petrel's lead technician,
Paul Mayer, are teaming up
with Micah Eldred and Dan Taylor on this expedition.
‐ So what do you have on this target?
‐ We found this target doing a big survey out here with an AUV,
and this is going to be the first time we've‐‐
We've got an ROV on it to see what's there.
‐ Excavate a little bit there, or...?
Fishburne: Dan and Micah are modern‐day treasure hunters.
‐ Look at that.
Fishburne: They search for lost ships,
some known to have gone down with cargo
worth millions of dollars.
‐ There's not a lot of people in the world that do this,
particularly in the deep ocean, because it's so expensive.
For us, not independently wealthy,
we needed to find targets
that could potentially find commercial cargo
that would be of value.
Fishburne: Micah and Dan
were conducting sonar scans in an area
known for colonial‐era shipwrecks...
when they stumbled across what looked like an airplane.
where an airplane should not be.
‐ I was like, "Hey, what's this airplane doing out here?"
It's not on a flight path where you would go
with a single‐engine aircraft.
We came to the conclusion that this could be
one of those Avengers.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: With Petrel's future uncertain,
this could very well be Kraft's best shot
to find the lost squadron.
‐ We have to go identify this target,
and this is all we can do right now.
This is our last chance.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: As Kraft and the Go America
head toward the mystery wreck in deepwater...
♪ ♪
back onshore,
Mike Barnette is meeting Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe
to review a new series of targets.
‐ Well, I think our investigation
has run its course, you know, for now.
And I think it's up to you and Kraft to get out there
and search that deeper water.
‐ Yeah, I think, you know, Rob has got
a very worthwhile target he's going to be looking at,
and I have that cluster of aircraft
that we're going to check out.
‐ Oh? ‐ A cluster of plane wrecks.
That's what we're looking for. ‐ Yeah.
When this fishermen told me he's got three, four aircraft
within about five miles of each other.
‐ No way.
‐ Which is a pretty tight cluster
when you're talking about 80 miles offshore.
So we're going to focus on that now.
Fishburne: Barnette's intel for this cluster of plane wrecks
comes from spear fisherman Jeff Marinko.
‐ Warp speed.
There's no secrets in the ocean.
And I feel, if it's in traveled water,
somebody has a number for a Flight 19 wreck.
It's just a matter of when it lands in the right hands.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The team begins their descent.
♪ ♪
This time, they hit pay dirt.
The unmistakable outline of an aircraft.
Could this be Flight 19?
Deep in the waters off Florida's coast,
Mike Barnette is part of a team of investigators
out to solve the Bermuda Triangle's greatest mystery:
Flight 19,
a squadron of torpedo bombers that disappeared in 1945.
♪ ♪
‐ Going down the water column,
we actually have great visibility.
We got down, the marine life came out and looked at us,
realized they can't eat us,
and they headed back to the wreck.
So we followed them,
and that's when we found an aircraft wreck.
♪ ♪
Any initial dive that I do on a new wreck site,
I want to try to gather as much information as possible.
The prop of an aircraft,
is it three blades versus four blades?
Basic size, how many engines?
♪ ♪
But as we look a little bit closer,
the site's dominated by a large turbine jet engine.
And so this is not World War II vintage.
This is not what we're looking for.
But this aircraft has a story to tell.
♪ ♪
Diving on sites like this,
you have to keep emotions in check.
There could be very well
a fatality associated with these sites.
♪ ♪
It's definitely a jet engine fighter aircraft,
most likely from the 1960s or '70s,
or maybe even more recent.
Odds are, the U. S. Navy probably has a report
of this crash site right here,
or at least an event in the near vicinity.
Fishburne: Barnette identifies the wreck
as an F‐8 Crusader,
at one time the fastest vehicle in the world.
♪ ♪
Naval records reveal a deadly 1966 incident
that's likely tied to this wreck.
The Navy lost contact with a Crusader
on patrol in this area...
later finding only an oil slick and some floating debris.
The cause of the crash remains unknown.
♪ ♪
Barnette will report his discovery to the Navy,
who can more fully investigate and inform the family.
♪ ♪
While this wreck is not from Flight 19,
it's proof that Mike's intel is good
and his approach is working.
‐ Just going out blindly and diving in the water
is not very productive.
I mean, every hour you can spend in a library,
in the archives, speaking to commercial fishermen,
every little piece of that puzzle
can come together to solve the mystery.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Back aboard Go America,
shipwreck investigator Dan Taylor believes
the key to the Triangle mystery is a bizarre subsea anomaly.
♪ ♪
Methane bubbles.
Naturally occurring gas seeps are not uncommon.
But Dan's seen evidence that in the Bermuda Triangle,
they can be lethal.
‐ On one of our surveys,
we discovered huge crater‐like formations.
♪ ♪
We had no idea what these things were.
The largest one was 600 meters across.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: There is growing scientific consensus
that when subsea methane deposits explode,
they can create a massive bubble
with the potential to displace water and sink ships.
‐ A 600‐meter gas hydrate bubble
would create a bubble on the surface of the ocean
that's miles, miles wide.
If you were a vessel
and a bubble burst underneath you,
then you would simply fall off the planet,
into the abyss,
and the water would swallow you.
Fishburne: Some even speculate
they can create lethal turbulence
and down aircraft.
Could this explain the disappearance of Flight 19?
♪ ♪
Or is this another farfetched explanation
for what may have been a tragically simple disaster?
‐ This story took on a life of its own,
and people were connecting it to aliens and vortexes
and, you know, different dimensions.
Fishburne: Paranormal and supernatural explanations
have proliferated.
They include subsea crystal pyramids,
alien abductions, time warps,
and vortexes to alternate dimensions.
‐ When Flight 19 disappears out over the Bermuda Triangle,
people want some bigger explanation.
They want something better
than the crew made a navigational error,
because that seems so hard to reconcile.
To lose someone for something so common and banal
is just a little bit too painful.
But if you lose them to supernatural forces,
suddenly it all makes sense.
‐ Everybody's looking for the one reason
why they got lost.
The one reason they didn't come home.
[thunder crashing]
But it doesn't work that way
There are plenty of different reasons,
all playing off of each other.
And the only way we're really going to solve this
is if we find an aircraft.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Onboard the Go America,
that's exactly what underwater explorer Rob Kraft
is hoping to do.
He has teamed up with modern‐day treasure hunters
Micah Eldred and Dan Taylor
to investigate target 77:
a wreck the size of the Avengers from Flight 19.
‐ It looks really good.
It's the same size as an Avenger,
so we got a pretty good shot here.
Fishburne: They are 300 miles offshore
in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle,
on a vessel that has been retrofitted
for deep‐sea exploration.
‐ She's digging in quite hard on the front.
‐ Gotcha.
Fishburne: Rough conditions make it challenging
to launch the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV.
♪ ♪
‐ The boat's pitching and rolling quite a bit,
so as soon as you pick that heavy vehicle up off the deck,
it starts swinging.
And once that happens, you can't really stop it.
You've got to set it down and try again.
‐ All right, left side. Nice and easy.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
‐ Ooh, she didn't want to go, did she?
♪ ♪
‐ 9‐5‐0.
♪ ♪
‐ We're off bottom.
‐ Winch all stop.
‐ Eagle has landed.
Fishburne: Ahead,
the ROV detects the unmistakable outline
of an aircraft.
‐ Wing, wing, nose, tail.
‐ That's an aircraft.
No doubt.
Fishburne: Will this aircraft
finally unlock the mystery of what happened to Flight 19?
Fishburne: In the heart of the Bermuda Triangle,
underwater explorer Rob Kraft watches
as a remote vehicle approaches a mysterious plane wreck.
♪ ♪
He's searching for the Triangle's most famous victims:
five Avenger torpedo bombers that vanished without a trace.
♪ ♪
‐ Visibility is really bad.
‐ The current's really strong.
Trying to push me to port.
♪ ♪
You're on it.
♪ ♪
‐ There it is.
♪ ♪
‐ There's the prop right there.
‐ Is that the cockpit to the left?
‐ There's a windshield there.
‐ Looks like it's white, doesn't it?
‐ Yeah.
‐ Stripes.
Yeah.
It's not our bird.
♪ ♪
Well, we definitely have an airplane,
but we've got some paint markings on this aircraft
that indicate that it's commercial.
It's not military.
So it's not an Avenger.
Fishburne: From the yellow and white paint,
it's immediately clear this is not Flight 19.
♪ ♪
So what is it?
And how did it end up here?
‐ You can see the shapes and how this lines up
with the window, sits down below here.
‐ This little triangular window here is‐‐
It's a really unique feature on this airplane.
Fishburne: The team identify the aircraft
as a Cessna Skymaster.
♪ ♪
A ditched Cessna can float hundreds of miles
before sinking.
This wreck is most likely tied
to an accident report from 1982.
The pilot ran out of fuel and ditched over sea
before being rescued by the coast guard.
♪ ♪
‐ We were excited to come out and rule out this target.
It needed to be done.
You know, we were always hoping to find an Avenger,
but this would lead us to believe or reaffirm our theory
that the flight is much further to the west.
So it is kind of a bittersweet ending.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Now, their last chance of finding an Avenger
lies with Mike Barnette.
‐ So, guys, I think we have the option for one more dive
before the weather really shuts us down for good.
Fishburne: He and his team have been exploring
a cluster of plane wrecks off the North Florida coast.
♪ ♪
They're racing to hit one last target
before weather closes the door for the season.
[thunder crashes]
But it may already be too late.
‐ We have a hurricane to the east of us,
we have a hurricane to the west of us,
and here we are stuck in the middle.
Being out there in 25 knots, 70 miles offshore,
that's what's caused a lot of these shipwrecks out here.
We don't want to become one of them.
Fishburne: There's only a short window
before dangerous weather moves in.
Barnette's team decides to take advantage
of the calm before the storm and go for it.
♪ ♪
As the divers descend,
Captain Jeff Marinko closely watches the surface.
‐ With typical scuba diving,
there's actually bubbles coming up
that we would follow.
However, when they're doing closed‐circuit rebreathers,
there's no bubbles to follow.
So basically, I just have a timer running,
an approximate bottom time that they're trying to do.
Fishburne: The team has only about 30 minutes
on the seafloor.
But to Jeff's surprise, they resurface way too early.
♪ ♪
Something has gone wrong.
♪ ♪
‐ The tide on the bottom is running really hard.
The storm has really stirred things up.
It's really green water.
Yeah, so the hook had pulled out,
and no sign of the wreck on the bottom.
So we had to abort the dive
and come up and try for another run at it.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: A whipping bottom current
ripped out the line
securing the boat to the dive target,
and they missed the wreck.
♪ ♪
With their weather window closing fast,
the team can't afford another miss.
‐ Just makes things a little tougher,
but that's been the theme of this, hasn't it?
It's just been one hurdle after another.
First COVID, now there's hurricanes.
It just doesn't stop.
‐ All right, we'll try this again.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: This time, everywhere Barnette looks:
fish.
A sure sign he's close.
‐ That's them. They're on it for sure.
So this is good.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Below, the wreck comes into view.
But what is it from?
‐ One of the first things we see is,
there's this big chunk of debris metal
that could have been from anything.
It could have been garbage pitched off a ship.
It didn't really speak to me of an airplane.
♪ ♪
And the next thing we come across
is a large section of flat metal with rivets.
Looking through a rust hole in the top,
I saw what appeared to be black rubber.
I'm saying to myself, "Maybe this is a tire."
♪ ♪
Time is our enemy right now. The clock is ticking.
We got to find something to reveal what we're diving on.
♪ ♪
Then, boom.
Right there, staring us in the face:
a large propeller.
♪ ♪
And right next to it was the engine.
♪ ♪
We are excited. We are stoked.
We know we have an aircraft.
We have a World War II vintage aircraft.
♪ ♪
But now we want to find proof positive
of what this aircraft is.
We want to find that smoking gun.
♪ ♪
And then we move on a little bit farther
and we see this round piece of wreckage with,
in the middle of it, teeth, like for gears.
I'm thinking to myself, "This looks like a turret."
♪ ♪
Emotions are running off the chart.
♪ ♪
Could this be an Avenger?
♪ ♪
[boat horn blows]
Fishburne: Barnette meets up
with Rob Kraft and Paul Mayer
to share the exciting discovery.
‐ We checked out some targets, and I can show you some footage.
We've definitely found an aircraft.
It's spread out pretty wide,
and it's been busted up pretty good.
‐ Obviously this aircraft had a really bad day.
I mean, it's ending was catastrophic.
‐ Yeah, it wasn't pushed over the side.
Fishburne: To find out what the mystery wreck is,
they're joined by Roy Stafford,
a former Navy pilot and World War II aircraft expert.
‐ We got a three‐blade prop and this ball turret,
which looks to me like it's definitely a ball turret.
‐ I agree. ‐ It sounds like you got
a lot of convincing clues there.
‐ At first, I wasn't sure,
you know, because there's so many World War II aircraft
that had three‐bladed props.
You know, the wreckage was kind of dispersed.
Fishburne: One by one,
Roy identifies each piece.
The wing.
The propeller and double‐radial engine.
♪ ♪
And the gunner's turret,
with a pane of bulletproof glass.
♪ ♪
But it is the first piece of wreckage
that reveals what the aircraft is.
This structure, almost overlooked on the dive,
is a landing gear.
And the design is unique to the Avenger.
♪ ♪
‐ It was a perfect match,
because the TBM sat real high and, you know,
had the torpedo bay underneath it and this, that and the other.
You know, you take the landing gear,
the bulletproof glass,
the serrated teeth on the gears of the turret.
It's all there.
I'm actually 100% at this point that it's a TBM.
‐ Roy's looking at the footage.
He's pointing out multiple things and saying,
"Oh, there's this and this and this."
And we're like, "So it's an Avenger?"
He said, "Without a doubt, it's an Avenger."
And that was just exciting to know.
‐ You've made some amazing discoveries here.
You found an Avenger, you've still got some other targets.
‐ And based on what we know, Flight 19 could be in this area.
This could be one of them.
Fishburne: It's an enticing discovery.
A TBM Avenger torpedo bomber
on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle
where all indications are Flight 19 went missing.
After 75 years,
has Mike Barnette finally found the legendary lost squadron?
Fishburne: December 5th, 1945.
Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers
and a Martin Mariner rescue plane
fly into the Bermuda Triangle and disappear.
♪ ♪
Seventy‐five years later,
no trace of them has ever been found.
That may be about to change.
Mike Barnette's been invited to the Washington Navy Yard
to share a promising discovery with Dr. Robert Neyland.
‐ This first one here obviously is a three‐blade propeller.
Fishburne: Neyland heads underwater archaeology
in the Navy's History and Heritage Command.
He and naval underwater archaeology expert
Augustin Ortiz review Mike's dive.
‐ So I see here you were counting the cylinders.
How many were you able to count there?
‐ I think I saw seven. It was definitely two rows.
‐ This really looks, you know, positive that this could
very well could be an Avenger,
but is it one of the Flight 19 Avengers?
‐ That's the question that we need to answer.
‐ To be able to actually identify it
to a specific one is really tough,
because it's broken up, it's very corroded.
So you're looking for something that will,
you know, tie it to a specific aircraft.
Fishburne: The one thing they know for sure
is where it was found.
Could the wreck's location match any known crashes?
‐ We found the record of TBM aircraft 7‐3‐3‐7‐9
that crashed within the crash zone of this wreck site.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The Navy's records, now declassified,
reveal a botched carrier landing in February 1945,
just three miles from Barnette's discovery.
Luckily, the pilot was able to escape.
‐ We can't say for 100% that this is that aircraft
without doing more exploration
to see if there's some sort of marking that identifies it.
Fishburne: Without identifiable markings,
there's no way to be certain
this plane is tied to the carrier crash.
And key questions remain unanswered:
why is an aircraft that ditched
while trying to land
broken into scattered pieces like this?
And what are the other nearby plane wrecks?
‐ There are other wrecks in this general area,
and we don't know what those wrecks are.
‐ That's really exciting, and we look forward
to continuing to work with you,
and we'd be very interested
to see what you find next.
Fishburne: If the nearby wrecks are also Avengers,
that would strengthen the case
that Barnette has indeed discovered Flight 19.
‐ This story with Flight 19
is important for the Navy to see resolved,
because it highlights the sacrifice and the service
that military personnel have done.
If there's other Navy aircraft out there,
we need to know where these are located.
Fishburne: With the dive season closed for the year,
Barnette must wait to explore the nearby targets.
For the moment, the Bermuda Triangle
still holds its grip on this mystery.
But the team is more determined than ever to find the planes.
♪ ♪
‐ This is going be a lifelong pursuit.
We're not going to stop until we find the Martin Mariner
and hopefully Flight 19.
Fishburne: If the Avengers crashed in shallow water,
Mike Barnette is convinced he can find them all.
And the investigation still cannot rule out the possibility
some of them made it back to land.
‐ We've been able to check off some of the boxes.
There's a lot of them here
and there's still more to check,
but we've been able to get rid of some of them.
Fishburne: Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe
believe the archives still hold secrets.
‐ Just when we think we're answering one question,
a whole bunch of others pop up.
But that's the mystery of Flight 19.
Fishburne: And Rob Kraft was only able
to map out a fraction of his primary search area.
‐ We spent a lot of time and effort
to make sure that we were doing the right thing,
and I think we were.
Fishburne: If the planes are in deep water,
Kraft is sure he can find them.
‐ We need to go back and resume the search where we were before.
‐ Despite the challenges,
the team believes they've come closer
to finding Flight 19 than anyone else.
And it's just a matter of time
before the mystery is solved.
Officially, Flight 19 is still out there.
But the net could be closing fast.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."
♪ ♪