Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved Read Free Page B

and Lieutenant Taylor and his four trainee pilots headed out into the clear blue sky over a calm Sargasso Sea. Even though everything seemed set fair, some of the crew were showing signs of anxiety. This was not unusual during a training flight over open water. Less usual was the fact that one of the fifteen crewmen had failed to show up for duty, claiming he had had a premonition that something strange would happen on that day and that he was too scared to fly.

    And, within a few minutes after takeoff, something strange did happen. First, Lieutenant Taylor reported that the sea appeared white and “not looking as it should.” Then, shortly afterward, his compasses began spinning out of control, as did those of the other four pilots, and at 3:45 p.m., about ninety minutes after takeoff, the normally cool and collected Taylor contacted Lieutenant Robert Cox at flight control with the worried message: “Flight Control, this is an emergency. We seem to be off course. We can't make out where we are.”

    Cox instructed the pilot to head due west, but Taylor reported that none of the crew knew which way west actually was. And that too was highly unusual, as even without compasses and other navigational equipment, at that time of day and with the sun only a few hours from setting, any one of them could have used the tried-and-tested method of looking out of the window and following the setting sun, which will always lie to the west of wherever you find yourself.

    Just over half an hour later, Taylor radioed flight control again, this time informing them he thought they were 225 miles northeast of base. His agitated radio message ended with him saying, “It looks like we are … ” and then the radio cut out. By then they would have been desperately low on fuel, but the five Avengers had been designed to make emergency sea landings and remain afloat for long enough to give the crew the chance to evacuate into life rafts and await rescue.

    A Martin Mariner boat plane was immediately sent out to assist Flight 19 and bring the men back; but as it approached the area in which the stricken crew were thought to have been lost, it too broke contact with flight control. None of the aircraft and none of the crew were ever found, and the official navy report apparently concluded that the men had simply vanished, “as if they had flown off to planet Mars.” To this day, the American military has a standing order to keep a watch for Flight 19, as if they believe it was caught up in some bizarre time warp and might return at any time.

    At least, that is how the story goes. And it would have had a familiar ring for some, as it wasn't the first time a mysterious disappearance had been reported in the area. On March 9, 1918, the USS
Cyclops
left Barbados with a cargo of 10,800 tons of manganese (a hard metal essential for iron and steel production) bound for Baltimore. The following day, Lieutenant Commander G. W. Worley, a man with a habit of walking around the quarterdeck clad in nothing but his underwear and a hat and carrying a cane, reported that an attempted mutiny by a small number of the 306-man crew had been suppressed and that the offenders were below decks in irons. And that was the last anybody ever heard from Worley or any of his crew. The twenty-thousand-ton
Cyclops
simply vanished from the surface of the sea, into thin air.

    The conclusion at the time was that the ship had been a victim of German U-boat activity, but when investigations in Germany after the end of the First World War revealed that no U-boats had been located in the area, that theory was ruled out. Instead, speculation ranged from the suggestion—proffered quite seriously—by a popular magazine that a giant sea monster had surfaced, wrapped its tentacles around the entire ship, dragged it to the ocean bed, and eaten it, to the rumor, with UFO hysteria in full swing (see “The Famous Aurora Spaceship Mystery,” page 3), that the vessel had been lifted,