Avenger Torpedo Life Rafts

[pbehn]

Molders did the same. He died in the nose gunners position knowing he shouldnt have pressed.

As far as I understand accident investigation, there is rarely only one cause but a lot of contributing factors, "diva" behaviour, willingness to please the powerful, rich and famous and lots of macho combined with complete ignorance of risks involved all play a part.

 

[NVSMITH]

The Bermuda Triangle does have some mystery to it, with magnetic anomalies and sudden, violent storms as well as complex currents.
But there's really nothing "otherworldly" about it, as all that is just the way it's laid out geographically.
The Patagonia region is far more treacherous and countless ships (and aircraft) have disappeared without a trace with barely any sensation from the conspiracy crowd.

I think (and this is just a theory) that the mystique of the Bermuda region is a hold over from the Mariners from days of old, who were superstitious. They encountered unusual anomalies which were unique to this region and could not explain it, as they had never encountered conditions anywhere else, there for it had to be the work of the Devil, Sea Witches and so on. As time passed, the legend simply was modernized to include Aliens and whatnot.

Shortly after JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in Massachusetts I was on a course in Ireland and a local blamed it on the curse of the Bermuda Triangle. We also have a "Bermuda Triangle" here in Nevada, not connected (so far as I know) with Area 51.

 

[pararaftanr2]

I think I read where Avenger torpedo bombers had life rafts, and whenever the plane had to ditch the life rafts deployed automatically, is that right? Also, did Flight 19 have those kinds of rafts?

The Avenger had a Navy Mark-IV raft (four man capacity, although the crew was only three), stowed in the fuselage, but it was not automatically deployed. It was contained in a compartment that ran through the fuselage, below the canopy, forward of the turret and could be accessed from port or starboard side. The uninflated raft was packaged in a rubberized canvas carrier case initially, which was replaced by a simple tube-like cloth bag for easier access. In addition, the pilot would have had a one-man pararaft, carried atop his seat parachute pack.
Image below is a screen capture from the 1944 Hollywood film "Wing and a Prayer", but gives a good view of the raft being deployed:

 

[MiTasol]

As far as I understand accident investigation, there is rarely only one cause but a lot of contributing factors, "diva" behaviour, willingness to please the powerful, rich and famous and lots of macho combined with complete ignorance of risks involved all play a part.

You are very very correct and surprisingly one of the most common root causes is complacency.
Others include what is often called push-on-itis and norms (where the standards slip and slip etc until risky behavior becomes normal). The latter often includes dropping items from check lists because it saves time.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I wonder if any of you guys have a pet theory about what happened to Flight 19? Not the sensationalistic stuff.

The Bermuda Triangle does have some mystery to it, with magnetic anomalies and sudden, violent storms as well as complex currents.
But there's really nothing "otherworldly" about it, as all that is just the way it's laid out geographically.

After four years of flying around the keys, south Florida, and occasional jaunts out toward the Bahamas, I've learned to treat that area with a healthy dose of caution and a heads up attitude. Magnetic anomalies abound, winds aloft vary widely over short distances, waterspouts, white squalls, and other intense convective events are common, and haze can quickly rob you of a horizon, leaving you in a featureless sphere of uniform blue if there are no clouds and no sea traffic. At night it's a sphere of black. You have to maintain an IFR mindset even in VMC conditions. Many a terrestrial general aviation pilot island hopping to the Bahamas has come a cropper over the years. Ditto for inland sailors venturing out on the briny blue. It all seems so benign and harmless that the pitfalls the locals warn you about sound like old wives tales.
I never landed in the Bahamas, not wanting to jump through all the hoops that entailed (permissions, documents, insurance riders, etc), but did fly out over Bimini, on over Nassau, and back several times. You really have to put serious effort into maintaining your track, using pilotage, radio navaids, and a reliable directional gyro and ignoring your wandering magnetic compass. Only reset your DG when you are tracking an electronic radial or tracking visually between two known islands. I've ridden in P3s doing low level night navigation exercises (pre GPS), and they did it entirely on their inertial nav system.
Now what happened to flight 19? I think that under the prevailing conditions the pilots were having all the fun they could handle maintaining formation on lead and not bumping into each other. This meant that there was probably little if any backup monitoring of lead's navigation. I believe the flight was supposed to be a pilotage/dead reckoning exercise, and the abundance of radio navaids we enjoy today were not In place then, so I think they just got headed out to sea and ran out of gas or flew into the water after lead lost spatial orientation. The gyro instruments of those days were pretty clunky by today's standards. That's the way I see it.

 

[GrauGeist]

After four years of flying around the keys, south Florida, and occasional jaunts out toward the Bahamas, I've learned to treat that area with a healthy dose of caution and a heads up attitude. Magnetic anomalies abound, winds aloft vary widely over short distances, waterspouts, white squalls, and other intense convective events are common, and haze can quickly rob you of a horizon, leaving you in a featureless sphere of uniform blue if there are no clouds and no sea traffic. At night it's a sphere of black. You have to maintain an IFR mindset even in VMC conditions. Many a terrestrial general aviation pilot island hopping to the Bahamas has come a cropper over the years. Ditto for inland sailors venturing out on the briny blue. It all seems so benign and harmless that the pitfalls the locals warn you about sound like old wives tales.
I never landed in the Bahamas, not wanting to jump through all the hoops that entailed (permissions, documents, insurance riders, etc), but did fly out over Bimini, on over Nassau, and back several times. You really have to put serious effort into maintaining your track, using pilotage, radio navaids, and a reliable directional gyro and ignoring your wandering magnetic compass. Only reset your DG when you are tracking an electronic radial or tracking visually between two known islands. I've ridden in P3s doing low level night navigation exercises (pre GPS), and they did it entirely on their inertial nav system.
Now what happened to flight 19? I think that under the prevailing conditions the pilots were having all the fun they could handle maintaining formation on lead and not bumping into each other. This meant that there was probably little if any backup monitoring of lead's navigation. I believe the flight was supposed to be a pilotage/dead reckoning exercise, and the abundance of radio navaids we enjoy today were not In place then, so I think they just got headed out to sea and ran out of gas or flew into the water after lead lost spatial orientation. The gyro instruments of those days were pretty clunky by today's standards. That's the way I see it.

Great post!
And to add to FL19's issues, none of the TBMs were reported to have had clocks on board for some reason (supply/maintenance issues?) so they had to rely on wristwatches for nav timing between waypoints.

 

[MiTasol]

The wrist watches would all be what is commonly called the A-11 or The watch that won the war. They were specially built for aviation use to withstand the vibration of large piston engines and were extremely accurate. They had sweep second hands for nav purposes like rate one turns. Hack means can be synchronized so that all the pilots and navs on an op can be operating to exactly the same time.

 

[MIflyer]

The latter often includes dropping items from check lists because it saves time.

A friend of mine, after his long USAAF and ANG military career, was employed by the US Army at Ft Rucker as a check pilot. Everyone, regardless of rank, had to get a check ride once a year. One day he had to do a check ride in an OV-1 with an Army General, who deeply resented the fact. The General told him, "If YOU don't do everything perfectly by the book, I'll write YOU up!" So they got in the airplane and went right down the checklist.

At the run-up they followed the checklist exactly.

1. Set Parking brake
2. Do a run up for each engine and check gauges
3. Pull back throttles to idle
4. Call the tower and ask for takeoff clearance.
5. Advance throttles and taxi into takeoff position.

When they got to step 4 the airplane did not move. There was no "Release Parking Brake" step in the checklist.

The two men glared at each other. Who was going to bust the checklist and take the parking brake off?

 

[Phileep]

Not sure what you mean by "hoax".
Five TBMs were lost that day, military records show the BuNos were stricken from the register as lost/missing.

BuNo 45714 - TBM-1C
BuNo 46094 - TBM-1C
BuNo 46325 - TBM-1C
BuNo 73209 -TBM-1C
BuNo 23307 - TBM-3

I don't care what the military reconds say, people who pull hoxes can and do say anything. What do I mean by "hoax", I mean the Navy said Flight 19 disappeared but it didn't.
Maybe the flight took place and then landed back at the base or it didn't happen at all. When you really begin to study this so-called Flight 19 and the flying boat you can see all the strange things that happened that would not have happened with seasoned pilots. Why would the Navy pull this hoax? Read the book and find out, but I assure you the Navy had a good reason.

 

[SaparotRob]

And I thought you were joking.

 

[GrauGeist]

Ahh...ok, so basically you're saying it's a conspiracy theory.

So what about the 10 missing pilots from FL19?
Changed their identities and relocated to unspecified places around the country?

What were they covering up? Did they accidently find the secret Nazi base in the Antarctic? Did they know who assasinated Patton? Were they part of the Phillidelphia experiment?

And now that the truth is out there, are we at risk too, since we know too much?

 

[MIflyer]

And to add to FL19's issues, none of the TBMs were reported to have had clocks on board for some reason (supply/maintenance issues?) so they had to rely on wristwatches for nav timing between waypoints.

Clocks were so highly pilferable that pilots often had to sign for the airplane and the clock mounted in it separately. My HS physics teacher said he positioned himself on a carrier deck with a screwdriver in hand, just waiting for an airplane that would make a bad landing and have to be pushed over the side. And when that occurred the pilot jumped out and he jumped in. They were yelling at him to get out as they pushed it over the side; he got the clock.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

Shortly after JFK Jr. died in a plane crash in Massachusetts I was on a course in Ireland and a local blamed it on the curse of the Bermuda Triangle.

Three decades before JFK Jr, I had a similar experience, except my airplane (a T34) didn't come apart when I made a panicked pullout at wavetop height. Beautiful moonlit night over the Gulf of Mexico headed for NAS Boca Chica...until the moon went behind an overcast and I flew into a cloud I never saw. Neither I nor the plane was instrument rated, and the rotating beacon reflections brought on instant vertigo. In and out of graveyard spirals from 10,500 down to cloud base at 1,200 +/- and nearly 200 kts, 60° +/- bank and 2+ G. After my shaky landing the G meter read seven, and I still don't know if that was inflight or on landing. I do know my vision tunneled during the pullout just after I saw the reflections of my nav lights in the water.

 

[SaparotRob]

I LOVE that kind of talk!

 

[XBe02Drvr]

you can see all the strange things that happened that would not have happened with seasoned pilots.

We regularly saw "seasoned pilots" not used to the quirks of the area fall victim to those quirks because they didn't take the warnings seriously. Experienced pilots with confident attitudes and egos to match were more likely to have trouble than lower time ones with a sense of humility. If you've got three or four thousand hours flying around the great plains of North America and you're headed off to Nassau or Bermuda in that elegant Baron or Bonanza you've worked and sweated to own with a planeload of admiring friends or relatives, are you going to stoop to asking for a radar or DF steer when you realize you're not where you thought you were? The NTSB report will be as predictable as a midsummer Memphis weather forecast.

 

[Joe Broady]

I believe the flight was supposed to be a pilotage/dead reckoning exercise.

Correct. It was a standard student exercise called "Navigation Problem No. 1," a triangular course which took the flight approximately east, north, then southwest back to base. The Navy page on the disaster has a chart of the route (regrettably cluttered with other stuff).

Some TV documentaries give the impression Lt Taylor (instructor) was physically leading the flight, but it would make more sense to let the students take turns leading. The first leg went over Hen and Chickens Shoal where they practiced bombing, then continued on the original course. So two students could swap lead after bombing. That leaves two legs for the remaining two students. Taylor would fly as a wingman and just monitor. That's my theory on how the flight was planned.

Allegedly Taylor tried to get someone else to take flight 19 out, but that may not be significant. For example, there may have been an unofficial practice of instructors swapping flight assignments if one wanted to get off work early.

Has the original report been put on line? I have it on microfilm, so had to go to a library to read it. It's been several years, but my recollection is that Taylor was new to the east coast of Florida. He had experience on the other coast, so would have been accustomed to flying east to reach land. In addition, he had never flown the Problem No. 1 route before. My belief is that these factors, plus maybe having a bad day, resulted in disorientation. He said on the radio that he took over when the students started going wrong, but maybe they were right.

Aircraft clocks — back when I was a SAC maintenance man, one of my co-workers got caught with a pilfered clock during a random vehicle inspection at the base gate. The clocks were tracked by serial number so he couldn't claim it had been purchased legitimately.

 

[Frog]

In France, we have the Triangle of La Burle in the Cévennes, with more than 80 mysterious crashes, begining with a Halifax that was scheduled to airdrop containers to the Resistance in 1943.
Among the planes involded were 2 Javelins, one Meteor, 2 F 104s, one Mystère IV.
The most renowned victim was Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, JFK's sister in 1948.​