Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,6
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.
The search efforts that December night would only compound the tragedy when a long-range Martin Mariner, a “flying boat,” was launched and exploded in midair, killing its crew of thirteen volunteers.
Half an hour later, when Futch returned to the lab, I looked up from my second pass through his summary to say, “You believe Taylor’s version, don’t you? You think he was right about being over Florida Bay, not the Bahamas. That’s what this is all about.”
Straddling a lab stool, Dan gave it some thought before replying. “I’m not convinced of anything. But I find it damn interesting that a seasoned flight instructor who’d spent nine months flying the Keys would say, ‘I’m sure I’m over the Florida Keys,’ unless he was sure. But that’s just one piece of a mixed-up puzzle. There’s been so much misinformation printed about what happened that day and night—including the military’s official six-hundred-page report. And dozens of bullshit magazine stories and ‘documentaries’ that include outright lies. Hell, one of those so-called writers even claimed to have piloted a sixth Avenger on Taylor’s flight but survived. Which is total fantasy, but it’s still repeated today.”
“All because your nephew found this.” I touched the throttle assembly. “Or were you already interested?”
“It lit a fire under me, but that’s not the reason. I’m a pilot. I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve flown that Lauderdale–Bahamas route. And there wasn’t a single trip I didn’t think about those fourteen guys—plus the thirteen others who died trying to save them. They all volunteered for what