Post by andy on Sept 26, 2010 11:21:26 GMT -5
OK. By now you should all have had enough time to buy and read Gian’s book, ‘They Flew Into Oblivion’ 
So, what did you make of it? Personally, I haven’t changed my opinion that the mystery of where Flight 19 ended up has probably been solved (the only thing that has changed is that I’ve learnt how to spell Okefenokee correctly).
That said, there are enigmas within the mystery that still baffle me, and probably always will. Not least of these, as Gian points out, is how Flight 19 came to be lost in the first place. The book sets out a well reasoned argument that Taylor’s compasses were out by as much as 30-degrees, explaining how the flight managed to get out of the Bahamas without sighting land. But that leaves a big question: what could cause such a sudden and considerable error to both of Taylor’s instruments, and to all the other compasses in the flight at the same time, by the same amount?
I’ll explain my use of emphasis later, but for now let’s concentrate on Taylor’s aircraft. Unless they did things differently back in ’45, it would be part of the pilot’s routine to check the compasses whilst taxiing out to the runway. He’d be looking to see them deviate correctly at every turn of the aircraft. Once lined up for take-off, a further check is made to verify the needles are pointing in the same heading as the runway (the large numbers painted on the ends of each runway give this heading: e.g., runway 09 is pointing at 090-degrees, or due East). A small error at this stage can be allowed for – but 30-degrees? Surely, Taylor would have noticed such a large difference and declared his main compass unserviceable (something which should have resulted in an aborted mission)?
But the mission went ahead – so no significant errors were present at take-off. Taylor’s compass must still have been reading correctly when they arrived at Chicken & Hen Shoals to commence the practice bombing. Why? Well, because they obviously found their way there. One of the ‘students’ would have been leading, but Taylor would have been monitoring the course, and since he didn’t notice an error, his compass must have been OK.
The same can be said for that part of the flight between Chicken & Hen Shoals and Great Stirrup Cay – they got there, ergo, all their compasses must have been reading correctly. It’s only after making the turn at the latter position that things start to go wrong. So now I ask again – what would cause such a sudden, major, and simultaneous deviation in both of Taylor’s compasses?
In the book, Gian wonders why no one else in the Flight noticed they were off-course after Great Stirrup. For a full half-hour, he tells us, there is silence, before Taylor begins to question their position. I believe the answer to this silence is the obvious one – no one noticed, because all their compasses were displaying the same 30-degree error as Taylor’s. We are told that Taylor had an uncanny sense of dead-reckoning. Was it this instinct which gnawed at him for half-an-hour before he voiced his doubts to the others?
But here we come up against one of this story’s many imponderables. If Taylor was such a natural navigator, why didn’t he simply give up on compass headings and point Flight 19 towards the Sun – Westward? Even more incredible, what made him think he could be anywhere near the Florida Keys? He knew where they were half-an-hour ago (when they turned at Cape Stirrup); he knew the winds were gusting 30-35 knots against them from the South-West; he should have known, therefore, they couldn’t have flown that far, in that direction, in that space of time. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
There are other little things that niggle me. It’s said that after a while, Taylor relinquished command to Powers, and merely made ‘suggestions’ as to course changes. Why then is it Taylor’s call-sign that repeatedly gets recorded in the radio logs? Why is it Taylor’s voice we hear on the bulk of inter-Flight and air-to-ground comm’s? Shouldn’t some station have picked up more from Powers, and thus recorded his call-sign? Why is it Taylor who states firmly at 5:16 p.m. that, “We will fly two-seven-zero degrees till we hit the beach or run out of gas,”? Shouldn’t Powers have issued that command if he was in charge by then?
Here’s another thing: no matter who was leading Flight 19, and when, how could anyone confidently order a turn to such-and-such a course when they must have realized that all their compasses were out? Small, inconsequential things, perhaps … but they still intrigue me.
And there’s more: why did Taylor keep asking the time? The book states he wasn’t wearing a watch – but why not? An accurate wrist-watch is a standard piece of kit for military personnel. Without it, how can an officer synchronize operations with other units? How did Taylor draw up his flight-plan and estimate his ETA if he didn’t have a time-piece? Well, OK, let’s accept that he wasn’t wearing a watch when he climbed into his thingypit that day – here’s the thing – every Avenger (and just about every other aircraft I know of) has a clock built-in as part of the instrument suite. Check out the pilot’s hand-book for the TBF/TBM-3, if you can find one, and you’ll find the clock on the pilot’s lower-right instrument panel, just above the fuel quantity indicator. Was Taylor having to ask the time because his built-in clock was also malfunctioning, just like his compasses? If so, were his instruments affected because they were electrically powered, whereas the mechanical wrist-watches of the other pilots were not?
Small, inconsequential things …
One last thing still bugs me, but it’s an important one. I’m talking about the messages to Taylor, advising him to change frequency to 3000 kilo-cycles (the SAR channel). Granted, the radio logs show he was told by Dinner Key to remain on 4805 kilo-cycles, but going to the SAR channel was standard procedure under these circumstances and would have greatly improved their chances of being located. Yet Taylor refuses, saying, “I cannot change frequency. I must keep my planes intact.” I’m still confused by what he meant by that. Was he worried about losing radio contact with one or more of the Flight? That doesn’t make sense to me. The Flight was in formation. They could see each other, even if only by navigation lights after dark. Taylor was still nominally in command of a Flight of five aircraft. As designated Officer in Charge, his duty should have been to the Flight as a whole. In other words, I would have expected him to do what was best for the unit, which right then was to switch to the SAR-frequency, despite what Dinner Key advised, even if that risked losing communication with one or more aircraft. That’s what his training and his instincts should have prompted him to do. But he refused.
Even more baffling, in my view, we come back to the fact that Flight 19 was just that – a Flight, with four other pilots involved, one of whom may even have assumed command over Taylor. Each aircraft carried its own set of radio gear. Why didn’t Powers, or one of the others, change frequency to the SAR channel as a back-up strategy in case Dinner Key failed to locate them on 4805 kilo-cycles? We are told that frequency changes were difficult, due to the length and sensitivity of radio cables. But the aircraft had highly trained Radio Operators aboard. Surely these men would have been best qualified to at least attempt a frequency change? After all, at that stage, this would be their best chance of survival. Why did none of them try?
We could argue forever about the probable fuel range of Flight 19. Jenkins’ estimate that the aircraft could not still be flying past 8.00 p.m. was conservative, even by the figures he quoted to the Board of Inquiry. I think all arguments are made academic, however, by the key piece of evidence given in the book – the radar contacts of five aircraft in formation by the USS Solomons, and stations at both Jacksonville and Brunswick. As Gian says, if this wasn’t Flight 19, who were they? Airliners don’t fly in formation, and neither do private pilots, at least not at night, in bad weather. Gian presumably found no record of another five-aircraft Flight in that area at that time (or he would have told us), so again – who were they, if not Flight 19?
Convinced as I am, this data still brings up another of those niggles that won’t let me alone. Why were they still flying after dark?
Here’s what I’m thinking: ditching an aircraft is a tricky enough business in full daylight. But in the pitch black of night, with no visible horizon or visual awareness of wave-height or direction, it would be a near-suicidal nightmare. We will never know the thought processes that Taylor and the others went through, but one thing is certain – by the time darkness approached they’d been flying in various directions for several hours, without sight of land anywhere. With absolutely no clear idea of their position (except that they were over the ocean), I’d have been inclined to ditch the Flight while there was still enough light to do it with a margin of safety. But that’s just me. Evidently, they decided to fly on (the radar contacts prove it), so we have to accept that decision.
In the book, Gian has them crossing the Florida coast near Flagler Beach, heading roughly NNW between Gainsville and Jacksonville. He says the airmen would not have sighted land, or city lights, because they were flying at 4,000-ft, with a cloud-base of only 1,000-ft. That’s plausible enough, but again, there’s a niggle. Why were they flying in cloud? By this time they would have been getting low on fuel and anticipating a ditching. Perhaps they still hoped to sight land, even after all this time? In either case, the one thing they needed most was a visual cue – something they would never get if flying in cloud. They thought they were over water. Would they not have been easing down, searching out for a glimpse of what lay beneath them? At around 1,000-ft they would have broken through the cloud-base, and saw –
What follows is sheer speculation on my part. I have absolutely no proof or evidence that any of these notions are plausible, or even possible. I present them merely as random thoughts for discussion by the forum.
The one thing that struck me as odd about the 8:50 pm radar contact from the Brunswick area was the reported heading of 150-degrees. Some two hours earlier the pilots had ‘agreed’ to fly west until they ran out of gas, yet they had made a radical course change once again. Why? Did they break through the cloud-base somewhere near the Okefenokee, and is it possible that someone spotted the lights of far off Jacksonville? At only 1,000-ft, I suspect they would be under the Jacksonville/Brunswick radar coverage and radio range. Did they turn towards the lights, climbing back up to 4,000-ft just north of Folkston to improve their chances of radar and/or radio contact? Does this explain the turn to 150-degrees? At that point, did their gas, and their luck, run out at the same moment? But if so, why did they turn back west to finish up in the Okefenokee, instead of simply bailing out over land?
Here’s a wild idea that I fully admit is probably ridiculous and unrealistic. What if Flight 19 broke through the cloud-base and glimpsed the lights of Jacksonville, as above, but convinced themselves they had been flying in circles? What if they thought that the dark mass to their west was actually Lake Okeechobee and the lights to the south-east were in the area of Boca Raton/Ft.Lauderdale? Looking at a map of Florida, the shape and area of both Okefenokee and Okeechobee are remarkably similar, and at night, both have strong city lights to their south-east. OK, it’s a crazy notion, but it would help to explain the turn back to 150-degrees, and why they might have then turned west again, thinking it better to ditch in the ‘lake’ than bail out.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, just about exhausts my thoughts on ‘They Flew Into Oblivion’. Give yourselves a pat on the back for reading this far, then go lay down in a darkened room for several hours to recover.
Did I say this was the end? I lied!
There are two more things I wish Gian would/could give more information on. I’m still not sure if there’s any truth to the notion that Taylor received bad news prior to take-off on Flight 19, or that he asked to be relieved of duty that day. A definitive answer to this might help explain some of his, apparently, ‘clouded judgements’ during the flight. Secondly - the alleged telegram sent to the relatives of George Paonessa, stating that he was alive and well: Gian has hinted on his FaceBook page that there is more information on this. This is such an important and sensational fact – if true – that you simply cannot hold out on us, Gian. Please, tell us more!
OK, I’ve finished now.
So, what did you make of it? Personally, I haven’t changed my opinion that the mystery of where Flight 19 ended up has probably been solved (the only thing that has changed is that I’ve learnt how to spell Okefenokee correctly).
That said, there are enigmas within the mystery that still baffle me, and probably always will. Not least of these, as Gian points out, is how Flight 19 came to be lost in the first place. The book sets out a well reasoned argument that Taylor’s compasses were out by as much as 30-degrees, explaining how the flight managed to get out of the Bahamas without sighting land. But that leaves a big question: what could cause such a sudden and considerable error to both of Taylor’s instruments, and to all the other compasses in the flight at the same time, by the same amount?
I’ll explain my use of emphasis later, but for now let’s concentrate on Taylor’s aircraft. Unless they did things differently back in ’45, it would be part of the pilot’s routine to check the compasses whilst taxiing out to the runway. He’d be looking to see them deviate correctly at every turn of the aircraft. Once lined up for take-off, a further check is made to verify the needles are pointing in the same heading as the runway (the large numbers painted on the ends of each runway give this heading: e.g., runway 09 is pointing at 090-degrees, or due East). A small error at this stage can be allowed for – but 30-degrees? Surely, Taylor would have noticed such a large difference and declared his main compass unserviceable (something which should have resulted in an aborted mission)?
But the mission went ahead – so no significant errors were present at take-off. Taylor’s compass must still have been reading correctly when they arrived at Chicken & Hen Shoals to commence the practice bombing. Why? Well, because they obviously found their way there. One of the ‘students’ would have been leading, but Taylor would have been monitoring the course, and since he didn’t notice an error, his compass must have been OK.
The same can be said for that part of the flight between Chicken & Hen Shoals and Great Stirrup Cay – they got there, ergo, all their compasses must have been reading correctly. It’s only after making the turn at the latter position that things start to go wrong. So now I ask again – what would cause such a sudden, major, and simultaneous deviation in both of Taylor’s compasses?
In the book, Gian wonders why no one else in the Flight noticed they were off-course after Great Stirrup. For a full half-hour, he tells us, there is silence, before Taylor begins to question their position. I believe the answer to this silence is the obvious one – no one noticed, because all their compasses were displaying the same 30-degree error as Taylor’s. We are told that Taylor had an uncanny sense of dead-reckoning. Was it this instinct which gnawed at him for half-an-hour before he voiced his doubts to the others?
But here we come up against one of this story’s many imponderables. If Taylor was such a natural navigator, why didn’t he simply give up on compass headings and point Flight 19 towards the Sun – Westward? Even more incredible, what made him think he could be anywhere near the Florida Keys? He knew where they were half-an-hour ago (when they turned at Cape Stirrup); he knew the winds were gusting 30-35 knots against them from the South-West; he should have known, therefore, they couldn’t have flown that far, in that direction, in that space of time. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
There are other little things that niggle me. It’s said that after a while, Taylor relinquished command to Powers, and merely made ‘suggestions’ as to course changes. Why then is it Taylor’s call-sign that repeatedly gets recorded in the radio logs? Why is it Taylor’s voice we hear on the bulk of inter-Flight and air-to-ground comm’s? Shouldn’t some station have picked up more from Powers, and thus recorded his call-sign? Why is it Taylor who states firmly at 5:16 p.m. that, “We will fly two-seven-zero degrees till we hit the beach or run out of gas,”? Shouldn’t Powers have issued that command if he was in charge by then?
Here’s another thing: no matter who was leading Flight 19, and when, how could anyone confidently order a turn to such-and-such a course when they must have realized that all their compasses were out? Small, inconsequential things, perhaps … but they still intrigue me.
And there’s more: why did Taylor keep asking the time? The book states he wasn’t wearing a watch – but why not? An accurate wrist-watch is a standard piece of kit for military personnel. Without it, how can an officer synchronize operations with other units? How did Taylor draw up his flight-plan and estimate his ETA if he didn’t have a time-piece? Well, OK, let’s accept that he wasn’t wearing a watch when he climbed into his thingypit that day – here’s the thing – every Avenger (and just about every other aircraft I know of) has a clock built-in as part of the instrument suite. Check out the pilot’s hand-book for the TBF/TBM-3, if you can find one, and you’ll find the clock on the pilot’s lower-right instrument panel, just above the fuel quantity indicator. Was Taylor having to ask the time because his built-in clock was also malfunctioning, just like his compasses? If so, were his instruments affected because they were electrically powered, whereas the mechanical wrist-watches of the other pilots were not?
Small, inconsequential things …
One last thing still bugs me, but it’s an important one. I’m talking about the messages to Taylor, advising him to change frequency to 3000 kilo-cycles (the SAR channel). Granted, the radio logs show he was told by Dinner Key to remain on 4805 kilo-cycles, but going to the SAR channel was standard procedure under these circumstances and would have greatly improved their chances of being located. Yet Taylor refuses, saying, “I cannot change frequency. I must keep my planes intact.” I’m still confused by what he meant by that. Was he worried about losing radio contact with one or more of the Flight? That doesn’t make sense to me. The Flight was in formation. They could see each other, even if only by navigation lights after dark. Taylor was still nominally in command of a Flight of five aircraft. As designated Officer in Charge, his duty should have been to the Flight as a whole. In other words, I would have expected him to do what was best for the unit, which right then was to switch to the SAR-frequency, despite what Dinner Key advised, even if that risked losing communication with one or more aircraft. That’s what his training and his instincts should have prompted him to do. But he refused.
Even more baffling, in my view, we come back to the fact that Flight 19 was just that – a Flight, with four other pilots involved, one of whom may even have assumed command over Taylor. Each aircraft carried its own set of radio gear. Why didn’t Powers, or one of the others, change frequency to the SAR channel as a back-up strategy in case Dinner Key failed to locate them on 4805 kilo-cycles? We are told that frequency changes were difficult, due to the length and sensitivity of radio cables. But the aircraft had highly trained Radio Operators aboard. Surely these men would have been best qualified to at least attempt a frequency change? After all, at that stage, this would be their best chance of survival. Why did none of them try?
We could argue forever about the probable fuel range of Flight 19. Jenkins’ estimate that the aircraft could not still be flying past 8.00 p.m. was conservative, even by the figures he quoted to the Board of Inquiry. I think all arguments are made academic, however, by the key piece of evidence given in the book – the radar contacts of five aircraft in formation by the USS Solomons, and stations at both Jacksonville and Brunswick. As Gian says, if this wasn’t Flight 19, who were they? Airliners don’t fly in formation, and neither do private pilots, at least not at night, in bad weather. Gian presumably found no record of another five-aircraft Flight in that area at that time (or he would have told us), so again – who were they, if not Flight 19?
Convinced as I am, this data still brings up another of those niggles that won’t let me alone. Why were they still flying after dark?
Here’s what I’m thinking: ditching an aircraft is a tricky enough business in full daylight. But in the pitch black of night, with no visible horizon or visual awareness of wave-height or direction, it would be a near-suicidal nightmare. We will never know the thought processes that Taylor and the others went through, but one thing is certain – by the time darkness approached they’d been flying in various directions for several hours, without sight of land anywhere. With absolutely no clear idea of their position (except that they were over the ocean), I’d have been inclined to ditch the Flight while there was still enough light to do it with a margin of safety. But that’s just me. Evidently, they decided to fly on (the radar contacts prove it), so we have to accept that decision.
In the book, Gian has them crossing the Florida coast near Flagler Beach, heading roughly NNW between Gainsville and Jacksonville. He says the airmen would not have sighted land, or city lights, because they were flying at 4,000-ft, with a cloud-base of only 1,000-ft. That’s plausible enough, but again, there’s a niggle. Why were they flying in cloud? By this time they would have been getting low on fuel and anticipating a ditching. Perhaps they still hoped to sight land, even after all this time? In either case, the one thing they needed most was a visual cue – something they would never get if flying in cloud. They thought they were over water. Would they not have been easing down, searching out for a glimpse of what lay beneath them? At around 1,000-ft they would have broken through the cloud-base, and saw –
What follows is sheer speculation on my part. I have absolutely no proof or evidence that any of these notions are plausible, or even possible. I present them merely as random thoughts for discussion by the forum.
The one thing that struck me as odd about the 8:50 pm radar contact from the Brunswick area was the reported heading of 150-degrees. Some two hours earlier the pilots had ‘agreed’ to fly west until they ran out of gas, yet they had made a radical course change once again. Why? Did they break through the cloud-base somewhere near the Okefenokee, and is it possible that someone spotted the lights of far off Jacksonville? At only 1,000-ft, I suspect they would be under the Jacksonville/Brunswick radar coverage and radio range. Did they turn towards the lights, climbing back up to 4,000-ft just north of Folkston to improve their chances of radar and/or radio contact? Does this explain the turn to 150-degrees? At that point, did their gas, and their luck, run out at the same moment? But if so, why did they turn back west to finish up in the Okefenokee, instead of simply bailing out over land?
Here’s a wild idea that I fully admit is probably ridiculous and unrealistic. What if Flight 19 broke through the cloud-base and glimpsed the lights of Jacksonville, as above, but convinced themselves they had been flying in circles? What if they thought that the dark mass to their west was actually Lake Okeechobee and the lights to the south-east were in the area of Boca Raton/Ft.Lauderdale? Looking at a map of Florida, the shape and area of both Okefenokee and Okeechobee are remarkably similar, and at night, both have strong city lights to their south-east. OK, it’s a crazy notion, but it would help to explain the turn back to 150-degrees, and why they might have then turned west again, thinking it better to ditch in the ‘lake’ than bail out.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, just about exhausts my thoughts on ‘They Flew Into Oblivion’. Give yourselves a pat on the back for reading this far, then go lay down in a darkened room for several hours to recover.
Did I say this was the end? I lied!
There are two more things I wish Gian would/could give more information on. I’m still not sure if there’s any truth to the notion that Taylor received bad news prior to take-off on Flight 19, or that he asked to be relieved of duty that day. A definitive answer to this might help explain some of his, apparently, ‘clouded judgements’ during the flight. Secondly - the alleged telegram sent to the relatives of George Paonessa, stating that he was alive and well: Gian has hinted on his FaceBook page that there is more information on this. This is such an important and sensational fact – if true – that you simply cannot hold out on us, Gian. Please, tell us more!
OK, I’ve finished now.
