Night Moves (3 page)

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I WOULD NOT HAVE WASTED A MINUTE SEARCHING
for the iconic Flight 19, let alone a day flying around Florida, if Dan Futch hadn’t asked me to get involved. Dan comes from Old Florida waterman stock, a fourth-generation fishing guide, when he’s not flying charters, and he’s as solid and smart as they come.

It didn’t matter that Futch had convinced me there was a statistical chance the torpedo bombers had disappeared in the Gulf or the Everglades, not in the Atlantic as most believed. It didn’t matter that out of all the so-called experts on Flight 19, few had done enough original research to be credible. And those few, with rare exception, agreed that there were so many variables, so few facts, that it was impossible to reach an unimpeachable conclusion about the fate of those five planes.

I joined the hunt because Dan is Dan
Futch
. True, he’d helped me land a controversial tarpon project in nearby Boca Grande Pass, so I owed him a favor. But he is also among the most competent men I know—a quality that runs in his family.

Between Orlando and Key West, the name Futch has the ring of blue-collar royalty. It is a family that has earned, over the decades, the instant respect accorded by those who appreciate boats, gutsiness, mechanical savvy, and saltwater. Since the 1800s, the family has been associated with the banyan-shaded village of Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island, forty miles south of Sarasota.
World’s Tarpon Capital
, as the village is known. But generations of Futches have excelled as fishing guides, boatbuilders, and hardworking innovators throughout the state. The reputation of the patriarch grandfather, Daniel Webster Futch, remains near mythic, even years after his death, and the man’s exploits as a rum smuggler and tough-guy fisherman are still a favorite topic around the docks. Dan, the legend’s namesake, is Futch to the bone, from his horn-rimmed glasses to his big-shouldered appetite for life.

A month ago, Futch had landed his seaplane in Dinkin’s Bay and appeared in the doorway of my laboratory carrying a briefcase. I assumed it had something to do with the tarpon study I had recently completed. Wrong. Nor was it a purely social call, but that was okay. We’ve been friends for years, and he has arrived carrying all sorts of odd objects—from a small brass cannon he had salvaged to a hydraulic oyster shucker—but a leather briefcase was unexpected.

“Take a look at this, Doc,” he’d said, unbuckling the hasps. “One of my nephews found it snorkeling. What do you think?”

I’d been making notes on a gravid stingray penned outside because the animal was too big for the aquaria that line the walls of my lab. But I stopped what I was doing and said, “What’d you find this time?”

On the marble top of the chemical station, Futch placed a triad of levers affixed to a metal plate. Beneath a patina of barnacles, the levers were forged of brass and stainless, still solid but frozen by corrosion. On the plate was die-stamped
MIXTURE
in military block letters. Enough barnacles had been sanded away that I could also read
AUTO LEAN/AUTO RICH/FULL RICH
on a tracking rim that guided the levers. In what might have been yellow paint, remnants of numbers were barely visible along the aft edge of the plate. Serial numbers? Possibly. The apparatus had the weight and feel of something that had been precisely machined, engineered to meet demanding specs and tolerances.

“You want those numbers checked under a microscope?” I’d asked. “It won’t fit, but I can drop the viewing tray, or maybe we can rig something. At lowest power, we might get more detail. It’s from the controls of an old airplane, right?”

What Dan’s nephew had found was the throttle assembly from a World War II torpedo bomber, an Avenger. The Avenger, as Dan would explain, was the largest single-engine warplane of that era. The ship carried a crew of three—pilot, radioman, and gunner—plus a single thousand-pound torpedo, along with a lot of clunky radio equipment that today would have been distilled into something the size of an iPod. The plane had a thirty-yard wingspan, a range of a thousand miles, and cruised at one hundred forty knots, or about one hundred sixty mph. Fully fueled, even carrying a payload, the plane could stay aloft at cruising speed for six hours or more.

“That’s key to what makes this interesting,” Dan had told me. “Six hours of flight time and a range of a thousand miles. Remember that—it’ll help you keep an open mind.”

The comment piqued my curiosity, yet I failed to make the connection with the fabled Flight 19. No reason I should. Why would Futch be interested in a bomber squadron that, according to who you listened to, had either been abducted by aliens or disappeared into a time warp? For him, it would have been as out of character as expressing an interest in aromatherapy or vampires.

Twenty minutes later, I looked up from my Wolfe Stereomicroscope and said to him, “I’m sure of three numbers—the second, fourth, and fifth. The next number might be a one, or a seven . . . or a letter. But that’s unlikely, knowing the military. The rest of the paint is too far gone. There are some high-tech methods of recovery, but that’s the best I can do.”

I wrote the numbers on a yellow legal pad and slid it in front of Futch, who had been arranging research material and photos of Avengers on my stainless steel dissecting table. He looked at the pad, cleaned his glasses, then opened a book to do a comparison. The book, I noticed, was
They Flew Into Oblivion
, by someone with the unlikely name of Gian J. Quasar. Minutes later, a slow smile told me Futch liked what he’d found.

“It’s a stretch, but these could be serial numbers . . . and they
might
match up,” he said. “Not with Taylor’s plane . . . but maybe one of the five.” He spun the open book around. “Take a look.”

That was my first serious introduction to Flight 19’s flight instructor, Lt. Charles C. Taylor, and the few verified facts regarding five missing warplanes and a crew of fourteen men. Futch had done so much research that he could have recited the data verbatim, but he’s not the sort to lecture. Instead, he had handed me his own written summary and offered comments as I read.

On 5 December 1945, 2:10 p.m., five TBF-1 Avengers left Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station on a training flight known as Navigation Problem #1.

Their orders: Fly east (91°) for 141 statute miles. Turn northeast (346°) and fly 84 statute miles. Turn southwest (241°) and return to Lauderdale 140 statute miles away.

All aircraft had been checked in preflight and were fully fueled per operational procedure. Weather was reported as “Clear.” Wind 15-20 knots out of the southwest. A “perfect” day for flying, one report noted.

The route was to have covered 365 statute miles in approximately two hours and fifteen minutes. But the squadron never returned. No trace of the crew or planes was ever found despite the largest land-and-sea search in the nation’s history . . .

I had looked up from my reading long enough to reassure myself by saying, “You’re too smart to believe in the Bermuda Triangle thing. What happened to those men might be a mystery. But there’s nothing mysterious about planes or ships disappearing at sea, which no one knows better than—”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Futch had interrupted. “Even in shallow water, there’s nothing harder than finding a small chunk of anything in a big chunk of ocean. Doc, the only reason those planes haven’t been found is because no one’s found them. Sounds simpleminded, I know, but there you go. At least, no one
realizes
they found them.”

The emphasis implied an interesting possibility. Modern fishermen use electronics to scan the ocean’s bottom for what they call “structure.” It is a generic term that applies to any rock, hole, ledge, or three-dimensional object that provides shelter and prey for fish. Fishermen don’t much care what constitutes the structure, and the locations are kept secret, always logged by precise GPS coordinates. These coordinates are known as numbers.

Every offshore fisherman accumulates a list of known structures, and those numbers are hard currency in fishing circles. Numbers are jealously guarded, although sometimes traded and occasionally sold. The lucky few who stumble onto an undiscovered piece of structure, however, keep their mouths shut. They trust no one. The smart ones use all sorts of trickery to disguise their true destination when they head offshore. Rather than be seen fishing a new number, the smart ones will drift the site, engine cowling open as if they’ve broken down. A virgin chunk of structure is a fishing gold mine to its discoverer—and also its claim jumpers.

“I see what you’re getting at,” I said. “Particularly over the last ten years. Digital sonar is a dozen times better than the old white-line recorders, and GPS is more accurate than ever. Could be that one, maybe all five Avengers have been found, but no one’s bothered to dive the numbers and see what’s down there. That’s what you’re thinking?”

“The odds are even better if they went down in less than two or three hundred feet of water,” he’d responded. “Back in the seventies, when Mel Fisher’s bunch finally found the
Atocha
, divers had to dodge all sorts of fishhooks and lures snagged on stacks of silver bars. Wouldn’t be the first time an important wreck has been found but not identified.”

I nodded, familiar with the story. I told Dan I’d had a similar experience a few years back when Tomlinson and I formed a little salvage company to recover the manifest of a wreck we’d found off Sanibel Island. Anglers had been working the spot for years—lots of broken leaders and hooks—but we were the first to actually see what was on the bottom.

“It’s kind of funny when you picture it,” Futch had observed. “Some poor fisherman cussing his bad luck, pissed off ’cause he’s lost a three-dollar lure, not a clue in the world he’s just snagged a fortune in Spanish treasure. Whole time, it was right there under his feet.” Futch had paused, anticipating my reaction to what he said next. “But that’s only
if
the planes ditched at sea. Which has never been proven.”

It was a pet theory of his, I could tell. So I motioned to the throttle plate. “But you said your nephew found this thing snorkeling. Even if he was close to land, it couldn’t have been that deep. How much water?”

What I wanted to ask was
where
the throttle had been found. But such a question is a breach of protocol in every branch of saltwater discipline: fishing, diving, and salvage recovery. So I tried to narrow it some by adding, “The planes ditched in the Atlantic, from everything I’ve heard. Even Palm Beach, where the Gulf Stream sweeps in close, it still had to be within a few miles offshore.”

Futch was smiling—he knew I was getting into it. “The Atlantic is another ‘fact’ that’s never been proven. Keep reading. I’ve got a box of Pine Island grapefruit promised to the ladies aboard
Tiger Lilly.
And a bag of stuff your sister wanted from the Bahamas. I’ll be back in fifteen and tell you what’s on my mind.”

I don’t have a sister. The man was referring to my cousin, Ransom Gatrell, who introduces me as her brother because I’m her closest blood relative. The woman is quirky, wonderful, and sometimes tricky. Rather than correcting him, I’d offered good advice. “Don’t let Ransom talk you into anything stupid. What’d she make you sneak through customs this time?”

Futch dismissed the question by motioning to the stack of research. “I tried to separate confirmed facts from the bullshit and then summarize—all numbers in civilianspeak so it would be easier to share. Read through it and see what you think. Oh, there’s one more thing”—he paused in the doorway—“there was no moon that night. You’ll understand what I mean. And military logs confirm the planes all left Lauderdale with a full load of fuel.”

My curiosity spiked.

So I read, skimming through bios of the fourteen dead airmen, then a weather report out of Miami dated 12-5-47 that suggested flying conditions were
not
ideal as commonly believed. On that long-gone day, there were scattered squalls along the coast, some generating winds in excess of fifty knots, with clouds that limited ground visibility to less than a thousand feet. Worse, after sunset—which was at 5:36 p.m.—a massive cold front was expected from the northeast. Instead of ideal conditions, the fourteen aviators had, presumably, been aloft when a meteorological collision had occurred: a high-pressure mass met a low-pressure phalanx of thunderstorms.

I leafed through two pages of diagrams, several maps, then began to read more carefully.

The first indication the squadron was in trouble came ninety minutes after takeoff, 3:40 p.m. A senior flight instructor in an unassociated aircraft intercepted a radio exchange that suggested Flight 19’s pilots were confused about their location and their heading. The senior instructor reported hearing the following from one or more of the squadron’s pilots: “I don’t know where we are . . . We must have gotten lost after that last turn . . . Anyone have suggestions . . . ? What’s your compass heading?”

After several attempts, the senior officer made brief contact with the squadron’s flight instructor, Lt. Charles Taylor. Reception was poor, often garbled, but the senior instructor reported Taylor as saying, “Both of my compasses are out. I’m sure I’m over the Florida Keys, but I don’t know how far down. And I don’t know how to get to Lauderdale.”

According to logbooks, the instructor told Taylor, “Put the sun on your port wing and fly north until you see Miami”—good advice IF the squadron was over the Keys.

Later, investigators would conclude that Taylor had badly misjudged his location. How could five planes have gone so far south when their mission consisted of a route that took them due east, then northwest, then southwest? Investigators were quick to dismiss the possibility, even though Taylor had served as flight instructor in Miami and Key West during the previous nine months and had logged nearly two hundred hours flying over Florida Bay and the Keys.