Hitler's Terror Weapons (24 page)

All five aircraft were fitted with two compasses and carried a radio operator who worked the transmitter/receiver. A ZBX homing receiver to obtain a bearing on base and an IFF transponder for use in emergency enabling ground stations to identify aircraft were also fitted. The aircraft had been carefully serviced beforehand and carried inflatable life rafts. Each man wore a life-jacket and had a parachute. The flight leader was 28-year-old bachelor Lt Charles Carroll Taylor USNR, a 6-year Navy veteran and a senior qualified flight instructor who had over 2500 flying hours' experience, including ten months on combat missions in the Pacific. He had been appointed a flight instructor in Miami in January 1945. Two of his pilots, Edward J. Powers, USMC, and George W. Stivers Jr, USMC, were Captains and thus outranked Taylor.

On the fatal afternoon Taylor was late for duty and on his arrival at 1.15 he informed the duty officer, “I just do not want to take this flight out”. Whether this was due to some premonition of impending disaster is not known, but Taylor was told he had to take it since there was nobody else.

Scattered rain showers were forecast for the sea area east of Florida that afternoon. Cloud was broken with a ceiling of 2500 feet, visibility six to eight miles, otherwise unlimited ceiling with visibility ten to twelve miles. Wind was south-westerly, 20 knots gusting to 31 knots at times, sea moderate to rough, air temperature 67 degrees Fahrenheit.

Starting from Fort Lauderdale naval air base the schedule was to fly east 91 degrees true over the sea for 56 miles and practice-bomb a concrete hulk on a rocky outcrop known as the Chicken and Hen Shoals, an exercise lasting about fifteen minutes. Flight 19 would then continue east towards the Bahamas on the same heading for another 67 miles and, using Great Stirrup Cay as a visual fix, turn left at the 123-mile point to a course NNW 346 degrees true for 73 miles. Crossing Great Sale Cay which is 60 miles long at right angles to the path of approach and could not be missed, a second visual fix was to be taken just beyond it before completing the third leg of the triangle home. The total distance to be flown was 316 miles, take-off 2.10, ETA 4.25, time 135 minutes, the average ground speed being about 147 knots, the cruise speed for the Avenger. Sundown was at 5.29. Flight 18 flew the identical course taking off twenty-five minutes earlier and arriving at base at 4.00.

Lt Taylor's Flight 19 took off at ten past two but there was a delay in forming up. A fishing vessel watched the bombing practice over the Hen Shoals at about 2.45 and then saw the aircraft fly off eastwards. Their actual bearing was 120 degrees to compensate for the strong southwesterly wind. At about 3.45, a half-hour after having turned left at Great Stirrup Cay, the five aircraft should have completed the second leg. Powers was leading, Taylor bringing up the rear.

The Flight 19 Anomaly

3.45 Taylor: (repeated several times)
“Powers, what does your compass read?”

(The aircraft were transmitting on the 4805 kilocycles band which was weak over more than 125 miles and, though none of Powers' messages were picked up and logged at base, some were noted by Lt Cox, a colleague flight instructor circling Fort Lauderdale.)

Powers:
“I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.”

As we shall see, Powers' apparent error of landfall was so great that it could only be accounted for by a cross-wind of super-hurricane force. This led Taylor to surmise that everybody's compass must be faulty, an assumption which would imply a local problem involving the Earth's magnetic field.

Taylor:
“Does anyone have any suggestions? I think we must be over the [word in evidence written as ‘Keys'].”

After hearing this conversation, Cox requested Fort Lauderdale to notify the Air-Sea Rescue Task Unit 4, Port Everglades, to stand by.

Lt Cox had been asking Taylor persistently for half an hour what the problem was.

4.21 Taylor:
“Both my compasses are out and I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale. I'm over land, but it's broken. I'm sure I'm in the [Keys], but I don't know how far down.” This statement was included in the deposition of Lt Cox and one word in it has been responsible for all the misunderstanding about what happened on this flight.

According to the board of enquiry, by the term ‘Keys' Lt Taylor must have meant the chain of Florida Keys islands running a short distance west from the tip of the Florida peninsula. Taylor knew them well, and from the air the aviator can see the whole chain and the Florida mainland. Since Lt Taylor was over the Bahamas he obviously did not mean the Florida Keys, but something else, and Lt Cox also pointed out that the interpretation made no sense.

Lt Taylor was flying a navigational exercise eastwards from Florida towards the Bahamas. The Bahamas comprise 700 low-lying islands and cays that stretch over 100,000 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean seaward of the Atlantic Coast of Florida to Hispaniola. It is obvious that what Lt Taylor said to Cox was: “I'm sure I'm in the Cays, but I don't know how far down.”

If he was in the Bahama cays but didn't know exactly where, we can see the dilemma, for he was supposed to be over the most northern few large cays which he knew well and which are isolated by at least 100 miles from the main chain.

Cox:
“What is your altitude?”

Taylor:
“I know where I am now. I'm at 2300 feet. We have just passed over a small island. We have no other land in sight. Can you have Miami or someone turn on their radar and pick us up? We don't seem to be getting far. We were out on a navigation hop, and on the second leg I thought they were going wrong. I took over and was flying them back to the right position. But I'm sure that neither one of my compasses is working.” This confirms that Taylor did not mean the Florida Keys. He knew he had been on the second leg of the navigation hop, i.e. the 73-mile stretch between Great Stirrup and Great Sale Cays; he thought his trainees had gone wrong, so he took over to get them right.

But here is another strange expression Taylor uses:
“We don't seem to be getting far”.
This seems to imply that he couldn't make progress physically through the air: he was attempting to fly head-on to the anomaly and was more or less hove-to, prevented from returning to the second leg of his navigational hop by an apparent force equal to his airspeed. In response to a question, Taylor said that he had not switched on his IFF transponder, and did not reply when Cox suggested he use his ZBX homing receiver. This was standard procedure and it is incomprehensible that an instructor would not have taken this step at once. In the event of disorientation he was supposed to have changed radio frequency to the 3000-kilocycles emergency band, climbed for altitude and attempted to obtain a bearing on the base homing transmitter. If over water in the Atlantic, he was supposed to fly west. But he did none of these things. All he did was fly around and talk. Already we are gaining the impression of a swiftly developing mental problem symptomatic of exposure to an electro-magnetic gravity field: a wilful lassitude and inability to see the obvious solutions to a simple problem.

4.25 Captain Stiver to Fort Lauderdale Tower:
“We are not sure where we are. We think we must be 225 miles east of base.” The estimate of 225 miles east of base indicates that the flight had been deposed from the northern leg of the triangle in an easterly direction by 100 miles in thirty minutes. This implied a 200-knot crosswind which naturally would not have escaped attention. A discussion of their estimated position and compasses now ensued between all five pilots of the flight. The only remaining explanation was that Powers had led the flight in the opposite direction SE at a speed of 200 knots because of compass failure. This could only account for an error of navigation of this magnitude if all compasses had malfunctioned and Powers had forgotten that he was supposed to be flying a left-handed triangle. But even then it would have brought the sun abeam to starboard and everybody would have noticed. Thus it was utterly inexplicable.

After some static interference, Stiver to base:
“It looks like we are entering white water.” What this latter sentence is intended to convey is not obvious, but numerous veteran pilots, shipmasters and coast guard officers have mentioned being seized by a strange vapour and their equipment going haywire while in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. Actually that may have been at the point where Flight 19 emerged from the anomaly, for a few minutes later Lt Taylor began to steer a number of strange headings. As we saw earlier in the incident over Ohrdruf, passage through an electro-magnetic anomaly can cause temporary insanity. And that is what now seems to have befallen the pilots of Flight 19.

Lt Taylor's Mad 100 Minutes

4.45 Taylor to Flight:
“We are heading NNE for 45 minutes, then we will fly north to make sure we are not over the Gulf of Mexico.”

5.07 Taylor to Flight:
“All planes in this flight join up in close formation. Let's turn and fly east. We are going too damn far north instead of east. If there is anything we wouldn't see it. To all planes in this flight change course to 090 degrees (due east) for ten minutes.”

5.15 Taylor to Port Everglades:
“We are now flying 270 degrees (due west) until we hit the beach or run out of gas.”
Taylor to Flight:
“All planes close up tight. Will have to ditch unless landfall. When the first plane drops to ten gallons, we all go down together.” (It will be remembered that the aircraft had enough fuel for at least seven hours, therefore it was another four hours before they had to consider ditching.)

Port Everglades to Taylor:
“Can you change to 3000 kilocycles emergency channel?”

Taylor:
“I cannot change frequencies. I must keep my planes together.”

Just before 6.00 Lt Taylor described a large island he had just seen through a break in the clouds. Baker identified it as Andros Island, the largest in the Bahamas, and gave Taylor a course to steer that would get him to Fort Lauderdale. Taylor steered a westerly heading as instructed and the signal volume increased as he approached Florida.

6.04 Taylor to Flight:
“I am pretty sure we are over the Gulf of Mexico. We didn't go far enough east. I suggest we fly due east until we run out of gas. There is a better chance of being picked up closer to shore.”

Because of Taylor's use of the word “suggest” the board of enquiry stated in Opinion 34 “that at some undetermined time prior to 6:05 pm, Edward J Powers, Captain USMC, assumed the lead of Flight 19.” Nevertheless Taylor was still quite certain that east was best:

Taylor to Powers:
“We may just as well turn around to go east again.”

From now on, reception of the transmissions from the mad hatters of Flight 19 began to deteriorate. The last message was heard at 7.04. Powers was mentally in no better state than Taylor or he would have got back on the westerly heading for Fort Lauderdale which Taylor had abandoned. It seems possible from the reconstructed records that he was heading west, but the strengthening crosswind from the SW would have pushed them 50 miles further north every hour. It was a dark, moonless night with cloud and rain. The flight was never once picked up on radar, which suggests that the aircraft themselves had undergone some structural change while in the anomaly, making them invisible to radar. According to researcher Gian Quasar, Air Training Command informed Banana River at 8.50 pm on 5 December 1945 that five aircraft, never subsequently identified, were spotted visually bearing 245 degrees 32 miles from Brunswick, Georgia, heading 150 degrees SSW. He theorized that a landing was attempted in the Okefenokee Swamps. It need hardly be added that such a proceeding in this sparsely populated region of wet forest and alligator-infested swamp on a dark night would have been utter madness.

When we speak of another ‘dimension' as the possible origin of UFOs, we really have no understanding of what this word may imply. It may be that Dr Carstoiu is right, that there are two gravity fields and one is the domain of UFOs, the Underworld of mythology, so to speak. There can be no doubt that the SS experimented into the matter, and in the concluding chapters a look at the evidence of their developments provides us with a very disturbing picture.

CHAPTER 15

The “Foo-Fighter”

T
HERE ARE NO natural flying discoidal objects in Einstein's time-space continuum. So far as we know from declassified documents, for a great investment of time and money modern engineers could design a flying disc for subsonic speeds with a range of about 7,000 miles, but it would lack the advantages of modern aircraft. It is apparently a concept simply not worthwhile developing.

In Hitler's Germany aeronautical designer Rudolf Schriever began design work on an unmanned flying disc on 15 July 1941. The model was completed on 2 June 1942 and made its maiden flight the following day, astonishing observers with its excellent flying qualities. It was remote-controlled and propelled by a hydrogen peroxide engine. Apparently it could take off and land vertically, but nothing further is known.