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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.Molders did the same. He died in the nose gunners position knowing he shouldnt have pressed.
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.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.
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.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?
You are very very correct and surprisingly one of the most common root causes is complacency.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.
I wonder if any of you guys have a pet theory about what happened to Flight 19? Not the sensationalistic stuff.
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.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.
Great post!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.
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.The latter often includes dropping items from check lists because it saves time.
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.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
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.
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.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 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.you can see all the strange things that happened that would not have happened with seasoned pilots.
I believe the flight was supposed to be a pilotage/dead reckoning exercise.