December 5, 1945 was a clear day when Lt. Charles Taylor arrived late to meet the flight students that he was to take out for a training exercise that day. The flight was scheduled to leave at 1:45 p.m., but due to the lieutenant’s tardiness, it was delayed until 2:10 p.m.

Taylor had only recently transferred from NAS Miami, bringing with him 2,500 hours of flight time, most of it in TBM Avengers. His students each had about 300 hours of flight time, with about 60 of that being in the TBM. During previous exercises, the students had become somewhat familiar with the area over which they would be flying since they had each participated in other training exercises in the past.

Each aircraft was fueled and pre-flight inspections had been done. None of the planes had clocks in them; this was deliberate. They were intended to learn dead reckoning, which involved the determination of time based on speed and distance traveled. However, it was assumed that each man had his own personal watch.

Weather conditions were described as favorable with sea conditions moderate to rough.
Lieutenant Taylor appointed a student to lead the flight; Taylor would observe and intervene only if errors were made by the students.

The lesson involved negotiating a triangular course that would take them east about 56 miles to Hens and Chickens Shoals where they would practice bombing runs. Following the bombing run, the group was expected to continue eastward on a course of 346 for 73 miles, flying over Grand Bahama Island in the process. The last turn was to have been on a course of 241 for a distance of 120 miles, returning to Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station.

Radio conversations from Flight 19 could be heard by the base and other aircraft in the area. At about 1500 hours, (3 p.m.) one of the pilots requested permission to drop his last bomb, an indication that the bombing mission was completed and at that point, all was proceeding as expected. Forty minutes later, that would change!

Lieutenant Robert Fox in aircraft FT-74 was forming up with his students to conduct the same training exercise when he heard an unidentified radio transmission. The voice on the radio asked one of the students in Flight 19, a student named Powers, what his compass read. He replied, “I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.” Fox then intervened, not knowing if this transmission had come from a boat or plane, “This is FT-74, plane or boat calling? Please identify yourself so someone can help you!”

This was followed by a few moments of silence, then other students of Flight 19 started asking for advice. FT-74 radioed back with apparently no response until a voice came on the radio, identifying himself as FT-28, this was Lieutenant Taylor. Fox continued, “FT-28, what is your trouble?”
Taylor responded with, “Both of my compasses are out and I am trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land, but it’s broken. I am sure I’m in the Keys, but I don’t know how far down and I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale!”

FT-74 (Lieutenant Fox) informed NAS that the aircraft of Flight 19 were lost, then he suggested Taylor put the sun on his port wing and fly north up the coast to Fort Lauderdale. Base Operations at Fort Lauderdale NAS, then asked Taylor if his plane was equipped with an IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) transmitter. With that, the flight's location could be triangulated, but the question received no immediate reply from Taylor. Later, he indicated that he had IFF and its transmitter was activated.

At 16:45 (4:45 p.m.) Taylor radioed “We are heading 030 degrees for 45 minutes, then we will fly north to make sure we are not over the Gulf of Mexico.” During this time, Taylor’s IFF was not being detected. He was then instructed to change his radio broadcast frequency to 4805 kilocycles; he didn’t respond. He was later instructed to change his frequency to 3,000 kilocycles, the search and rescue frequency and he replied, “I cannot switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact."

At 16:56 (4:56 p.m.) another request was made for Taylor to turn on his IFF transmitter; there was no response. A short while later, Taylor was heard on radio talking to his students, “Change course to 090 degrees (due east) for ten minutes.” Following that transmission came the remarks of two of the pilots, “Damn it, if we could just fly west, we would get home; head west, damn it!” The students followed orders and continued on the eastward course as the weather conditions began to deteriorate.

Due to weather conditions, radio transmissions between the flight members became broken, garbled and intermittent. Taylor radioed, “We’ll fly 270 degrees west until landfall or running out of gas.” At 17:24, he was heard requesting a weather check. Several land based radio stations had by this time triangulated Flight 19’s position as being within a 100 mile radius of 29°N 79°W. Flight 19 was north of the Bahamas, far from the Florida coast, in rough weather and low on fuel! Information about Flight 19’s location was not transmitted repeatedly, which would have helped ensure that Taylor would have heard it in the worsening weather.

At 18:04 (6:04 p.m.), Taylor radioed his flight saying, “Holding 270, we didn’t fly far enough east, we may as well just turn around and fly east again.” By this time the sun had gone down and Flight 19 was facing bad weather conditions in the dark, without a clue of their location.

At about that time, The British tanker, HMS Empire Viscount, radioed that it was encountering heavy seas and high winds, northeast of the Bahamas.