Original subtitles

Tonight, on History's Greatest Mysteries.

The Hoodoo Sea, the graveyard of the Atlantic.

Or, as we know it more commonly today, the Bermuda Triangle.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Nearly a hundred ships and planes have vanished into

this enigma.

On tonight's mystery, the case that made the Bermuda Triangle famous.

The disappearance of Flight 19.

In December 1945, in the months after World War II, a squadron of U .S. Navy

torpedo bombers took off from Florida on a routine training mission and never

returned.

Where did they crash and why?

Somebody has to know the truth.

The only way we're going to solve this is to find an aircraft.

Over the decades, there have been countless searches, but now a possible

-changer.

Bridge, stand by.

You got time.

Three groups of investigators join forces in the biggest search for Flight

yet. Dead ahead. What is that?

Deep -sea explorer Rob Kraft.

leads the most advanced research ship of its kind. That's an aircraft.

No doubt.

Scientist and wreck diver Mike Barnett investigates new clues along the

coastline. We definitely have a mystery aircraft, definitely maybe.

And researchers David O 'Keefe and Wayne Abbott follow a trail of cover -ups,

conspiracy, and missing evidence.

Of course they're going to whitewash it.

From the deep.

We're looking for F -28.

To the swamps. That is a .50 caliber. All leading to a moment that could solve

the mystery.

Boom. Staring us in the face. A large propeller.

Flight 19 could be in this area. This could be one of them.

Have they finally found Flight 19?

Petro is a very unique ship.

We are outfitted unlike any other vessel. The ship itself is inherently

and built for deep water search operation.

It's February 13, 2020, day one of a search 200 miles off the Florida

coast.

Camera's coming up.

Underwater explorer Rob Kraft has led the research vessel RV Petrol deep into

the Bermuda Triangle.

An infamous area between Florida's coast, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.

Their hopes for finding Flight 19 are high.

Here's the bottom.

That is our waypoint. RV Petrol's mission is to seek out the great

the world.

using an array of advanced technology, including ultra -high -def cameras that

can be deployed to extreme depths.

Since 2017, Kraft and Petro have discovered over 30 World War II ships

and the final resting place of thousands of servicemen.

It's really about them and the service that these men gave for their country

paid the ultimate sacrifice.

It's part of the reason we do what we do.

And yet, this search will be Kraft and Petrel's greatest challenge.

This is the biggest search project we have and will undertake.

And the reality is, is there is no smoking gun here.

There is no one piece of evidence that is going to put an X on a map and say

they're here. It just doesn't exist.

You really kind of have to put yourself back in 1945 and try and understand what

these men were going through.

The case of Flight 19 begins on December 5, 1945, at the Fort

Lauderdale Naval Air Station.

It's 2 .20 p .m.

Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers prepare to take off on a training mission

designated Flight 19.

A choppy wind kicks up.

But visibility was unlimited with blue skies.

The mission should have lasted just over two hours.

Instead, these five planes, carrying a total of 14 men, disappeared.

Hours later.

A Martin Mariner rescue plane with a crew of 13 goes looking for them.

It too vanishes.

The Martin Mariner also failed to return to base.

It is so bizarre for us to try to comprehend.

Twenty -seven U .S. Navy sailors lost their lives. They disappeared in the

Bermuda Triangle, and there has still never been an adequate explanation for

what happened to them.

It was a routine training flight.

Just take off, drop some bombs, shoot a little navigation, and then come back to

base.

So what happened to Flight 19?

Did they crash somewhere near Florida's coast?

Did they get hopelessly lost, ditching far out to sea?

Or did they make it back to land, crashing in Florida?

This is not a needle in a haystack. This is orders of magnitude more difficult

than that.

I mean, this was the largest Navy search ever conducted.

And they found nothing out there.

Fully fueled, the EBM Avengers lost on Flight 19 at a range of 1 ,000 miles,

creating a massive potential search area.

No one has found anything.

So, really, all the cards are still on the table.

Aboard RV Petrol, Kraft has invited David O 'Keefe and Wayne Abbott.

to help narrow the search area.

And I think you're right. I think that would be the area that we have to start

at. David served in the Canadian infantry and is now a military

I did two and a half years in uniform with one of the most famous regiments in

Canada, which was the Black Watch of Canada.

I was recruited from there to actually work as part of the official historical

team. Going through old files and archives, that's my forte. That's what I

to do.

There's nothing like it.

Wayne is a historical investigator, obsessed with Flight 19 since he was a

I was early teens when Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out in the

theaters. And that was really the first time I heard about the story Flight 19.

And it's an iconic opening.

Scientists are going through the dusty Mexican desert.

All of a sudden you see five perfect...

planes from Flight 19.

Who flies greats like these anymore?

No one.

These planes were reported missing in 1945.

I don't understand.

In the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Flight 19 is abducted by

To find out what really happened, Wayne and David are helping Kraft dig into the

official report from the Navy Board of Inquiry that investigated Flight 19.

This is all we have, so this is what we have to use.

Nobody knew truly where the planes were.

But there is a lot of evidence within the Board of Inquiry report of radio

transmissions. And there's just great little tidbits of information.

According to the report, signs of trouble began an hour and a half after

takeoff.

3 .40 p .m.

Lieutenant Charles Taylor, the instructor leading Flight 19.

Radio's one of the other pilots saying he thinks they're lost.

Powers, do you copy?

I think we got lost that last time.

Back near Bort Lauderdale, another flight instructor, Lieutenant Robert

overhears Flight 19's radio traffic.

Both compasses are out. We're lost.

I'm sure we're over the Keys, but I'm not sure how far down.

Gotta get back to Lauderdale.

According to Cox, Taylor was convinced Flight 19 was over the Florida Keys,

off their flight path.

Cox instructed Taylor to fly northeast till they hit Miami, and then on to Fort

Lauderdale.

But they never made it.

Where were they?

The flight leader, Charles Taylor, is completely confused about his position.

The report says that at 1750, military time for 5 .50 p .m., the Navy

triangulated a rough position fix on Flight 19.

And what we can see from the rudimentary data that we have is that the flight is

actually progressing off the southeastern part of Florida.

Charles Taylor thought he'd gotten badly turned around and was over the gulf.

But the location fix puts them north of the Bahamas.

If Taylor did turn northeast, he would have been leading them even deeper into

the Bermuda Triangle.

This is the 1750 fix that the Navy put them at, and there is the 100 nautical

mile radius.

Kraft uses the bearings to calculate Petrel's search grid.

It's an area more than twice the size of the state of Rhode Island, with an

average depth of 3 ,000 feet.

I mean, we're talking nearly 2 ,600 square nautical miles.

And we're looking for a target that is, you know, the wingspan on an Avenger is

50 feet.

Undaunted, Kraft begins the search.

it starts with some of the world's deepest diving autonomous underwater

or auvs able to reach depths of more than three miles

ready it's a drone that we program on the surface we tell it where we want it

go and what we want it to do and it goes and does its mission all by itself once

the auv nears the sea floor it follows a grid pattern and emits bursts of sonar

to create a detailed undersea map.

Any unnatural shapes it finds could be wrecks.

We have been lucky enough to find targets on the first dive in the past.

I do not feel that level of confidence here.

There we go. Dive one.

As the AUV begins the search, Petrel's chief technician and lead researcher,

Paul Mayer, reviews what an aircraft in deep water might look like.

Here is a 3D model of an F4F. This is in about 10 ,000 feet of water, so the

paint is still in very good condition.

This F4F Wildcat is part of the Petrel's 2018 discovery of the carrier USS

Lexington.

The team discovered 35 aircraft that went down with the ship.

In this deep water environment, low oxygen levels reduce corrosion.

These planes have been on the ocean floor for nearly eight decades.

Yet the paint still looks fresh.

On this particular aircraft, we have victory tallies here.

of how many Japanese planes were shot down. There's a bomb here, representing

that he did a bombing mission, and then the insignia of that flight crew.

If Flight 19 is in deep water, the chances of a positive identification are

high.

Thirteen hours later, in the dead of night, the AUV completes its first dive.

Kraft reviews the data.

He immediately spots something. It stands out. It's an extremely bright,

contrast target.

It could be something man -made. So we need to go put some eyes on those and

figure out what they are.

Could Rob Kraft's instincts be proven right yet again?

Is this Flight 19?

It's day two of the search for Flight 19, the Bermuda Triangle's greatest

mystery.

What happened to five torpedo bombers that disappeared in 1945?

Aboard RV Petrol, explorer Rob Kraft has detected a promising target.

It stands out. It could be something man -made.

To get a visual.

he deploys a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, fitted with an array of cameras.

You're going down.

You're in.

All right, we're ready for some thrusting.

Altimeter's on.

There you go, it's up.

We'll be just a meter off the bottom.

Sound speed's still 1522.

You know, it's the bottom.

I think you're about 70, 75 meters due north of this, Rudy.

Let's head over to the left. Did you see that?

Hold your heading right there, Rudy. Just hold there.

What is that?

That's the squid.

Oh, yeah.

Look at all that biology.

One, four, five. That is our waypoint.

We're just coming up on it now.

And it appears to be... You think it's a wheel?

No. It's a rock.

It's just some form of rocks.

It's just a geological anomaly.

Sonar this sensitive will produce some false targets.

Box ticked. Box ticked. On target. Bring it up.

But for craft, there is a silver lining.

It's not mountainous like we see in a lot of deep water environments.

So it's fairly flat, so we've got a pretty good chance of identifying these

targets.

But search operations must now be halted.

The weather has come up pretty fast and ahead of schedule.

We've got to get the vehicle up, get it on deck while we still have this window.

We're getting everything secured for sea because it's going to be a rough ride

in. Start running at 10 knots and it's going to get pretty lively out here.

Petrol is being chased back to port by the Bermuda Triangle's freak and

dangerous weather swings.

These sudden and violent storms, called white squalls, have sunk ships and added

to the Triangle's deadly reputation.

You had a lot of incidences where planes went missing, boats went missing.

So you have to respect it and you have to fear it.

The Bermuda Triangle borders some of the Earth's most powerful forces.

The Gulf Stream, the Atlantic's strongest current.

known to carry disabled ships and planes miles from their reported positions.

A mid -ocean area that is often eerily becalmed, trapping many a stranded

in a slow death grip.

And the triangle is a superhighway for hurricanes.

There's no doubt that this area is incredibly active. It is an area where

are anomalies.

that cannot be explained by physical science.

And nowhere else has so many eyewitness accounts of paranormal activity,

malfunctioning instruments, and strange lights attributed to aliens or the

supernatural.

The U .S. government recently revealed that in 2017, Navy pilots flying over

Bermuda Triangle captured UFOs on camera.

My gosh!

The facts are the facts. There are disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle

are unexplained. I don't think it's aliens.

But no one's ever really discovered the smoking gun.

While Kraft waits for the weather to calm,

Team members Wayne Abbott and David O 'Keefe head inland.

They are hunting for any evidence the planes crashed in Florida.

There is one possibility that the plane that night actually decided to split up

and go their own way.

And if that's the case, then it is a possibility that some made it back to

The theory that at least one plane made it back to land rests on cryptic

evidence of possible detention on Flight 19.

Intercepted radio calls indicate that one of the student pilots, possibly

Captain Ed Powers, disagreed with instructor Charles Taylor that the

lost over the Florida Keys.

Powers argued they were over the Atlantic.

He urged Taylor to fly west.

to fly west.

If we fly west, we will get home.

There was some dissension in the ranks, and a guy like Captain Powers said, you

know, Pruitt, Taylor, you've messed us around too long. I'm going to head

towards land, because I know where we are.

So that easily could have happened.

Wayne and David have recently tracked down new evidence that could back up

theory.

Just west of Barrow Beach, Florida, they've come to meet Graham

who is taking them back to the site of a vivid boyhood memory.

So how old were you at the time?

I was nine.

So this is similar to what you remember?

Yeah, it is. The first thing that you passed was the tail section, and then

probably another, gosh, 50 to 100 feet in front of there was the plane.

In 1962, years after the disappearance of Flight 19, a nine -year -old Graham

was brought here by his father to see a plane wreck.

Graham's father, a Florida judge, discovered the wreck while hunting and

reported it to the Navy.

He was told it was from Flight 19.

But the wreck was removed, and the Navy later denied any knowledge of the

incident.

What did your father do upon finding the wreck? The first place he called was

Patrick Air Force Base. They finally did pull the plane out, and there were

bodies in it.

Where did your father take this story, then? He finally kind of hit a wall, and

nobody talked to him anymore.

What really raises a lot of mystery about this plane is the Navy told him

this was part of Flight 19.

Unfortunately, no matter how much the judge went back to the Navy, he could

get any more information.

As a researcher, you can't place too much faith in human memory. Human memory

becomes fallible immediately after.

You still needed some sort of concrete proof.

Do you have anything that came from the plane?

Yeah, I do. I do have pieces of the plane and some bits. You have pieces of

plane that your father found? Yeah, absolutely.

After his father died, Graham gave the plane pieces to a friend named Jimmy,

collects World War II memorabilia.

Jimmy has agreed to meet Wayne and David.

Are they about to uncover a piece of the legendary Flight 19?

Here it is.

Here we go.

Wayne Abbott and David O 'Keefe.

are part of a team of Bermuda Triangle investigators.

They're now in Florida to examine plane wreckage.

Here it is, fellas.

It was found on this spot and is allegedly part of Flight 19.

That's a .50 cal. That is a .50 caliber. Yes, this is an M2 aircraft .50

caliber. I believe it would have been mounted in the wing of the aircraft.

And this is the mount?

That would be the forward mount that would have attached to this portion of

gun.

David compares the parts to a schematic from a TBM Avenger manual.

Looking at this picture, if you look right there, there's the mount.

That is it.

The TBM -3 Avenger had .50 cal machine guns mounted on its wings.

This gun was used on many planes, but...

The small mount is unique to the Avenger.

Making it likely this gun came off the same kind of planes lost on Flight 19.

Are there any other markings on here?

There are.

The original markings from the factory, and there is a serial number.

All right, this is great. This is great because all of these were logged,

particularly when it came to armaments on planes.

And somewhere in the archives, there is going to be a log of this.

The big reason that having a machine gun is great is because it comes with a

serial number.

And with the serial number, we might be able to find out what plane this came

off of. We might be able to find out who the pilot and the rest of the crew

were.

This is the best piece of hard evidence.

we've ever come across as david follows the trail of the serial number

another member of the bermuda triangle investigation team seasoned

explorer mike barnett is opening up a new search his dive

team will focus on the waters along florida's coastline i've been working on

bermuda triangle or as i call it the bull triangle for 30 years

As a scientist, Barnett believes these disappearances have a rational

explanation. There's all sorts of theories about what's going on here,

it be paranormal phenomena, UFOs, time warps, Atlantis.

In the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another famous Bermuda

disappearance, the ship called the Cotopaxi, was set down by

in the Gobi Desert.

Barnett recently found the Cotopaxi and worked out what really happened.

The Cotopaxi was caught in a storm on November 30th, 1925.

She sank in just over 100 feet of water about 40 miles off the coast of Florida.

There's no need for additional drama. The weather can provide all the drama

ever would want. I mean, the weather can go from flat calm to raging, you know,

7 to 10 foot seas and 25 knot winds at a snap of a finger.

To find Flight 19, Barnett's using the same approach he used to find the

Cotopaxi.

Follow the fish.

Fish are after structure and habitat, and shipwrecks provide great habitat.

Shipwrecks are like mini reefs.

that make for rich fishing ground there are hundreds off florida's coast and the

fishermen who make their living off these wrecks can provide valuable leads

know where the wrecks are they don't know what the wrecks are but they know

there's something there i've worked with all sorts of commercial fishermen

whether it be draggers and trawlers or in this case i'm working with captain

jeff marinko who is a commercial spearfisher

Me and Barney have been friends for a long time, and we wanted to come out

and check out some wrecks off of North Florida that we've been talking about

years.

You know, a lot of these wrecks, a lot of people lost their lives. So anytime

you can identify something and finish the equation of what happened to it, I

think it's a good thing.

There's a mystery wreck the captain told us about.

No one knows what it is.

The dive team includes Jimmy Godomsky and underwater cinematographer Evan

Kovacs. What's the range, depth range?

130 to almost 200 feet of water.

They're rated to hit extreme depths of up to 500 feet, close to the limit for

human divers.

Just starting to mark the edge of the wreck now.

We're starting to see some stuff.

The bob's at 160, 165, and we're seeing the fish up to 140, so there's

definitely something here.

I'm ready when you are if you want to try to hook it right now.

they find not a plane, but a 200 -foot shipwreck.

Could this be an important piece of the Bermuda Triangle mystery?

Mike Barnett is part of a team of investigators exploring the legendary

Triangle.

Searching for a lost squadron of Navy bombers, they may have stumbled upon

another of the triangle's victims.

A massive shipwreck.

What is it?

We found a wreck that was about 200 feet long, about 24 and a half foot being.

We noticed it was carrying a very bizarre cargo, this white clay -like

We took a sample of that because we figured if we can identify the cargo.

Potentially, we can identify a threat.

Barnett's team heads to the surface to try to work out what they've found.

This is a sample of cargo.

It just looks like a white grayish clay, but it's just tons of it down there.

So I'm curious what this is.

After assessing the evidence...

Barnett matches the wreck to a famous unsolved Bermuda Triangle disappearance.

A cargo ship lost in April 1950 and never heard from again,

the Sandra.

The Sandra left Savannah, the 12 -man crew, and vanished.

Thought to have been swallowed by the legendary Bermuda Triangle.

We found a record of a vessel called the Sandra that was lost in 1950.

And it was carrying a cargo of DDT.

And when we actually analyzed the cargo, we found out it was kaolin clay, which

uses an insecticide or pesticide, as well as traces of DDT.

We know that then it left Savannah, Georgia, headed south along the North

Florida coast. It would pass right over where we were diving, where the mystery

wreck is.

And all the dimensions, all the machinery matched exactly what the

We put all this evidence all together.

Cumulatively, it was overwhelming that the mystery wreck was indeed Sandra.

For the Bermuda Triangle investigation team, it's a major discovery.

A 200 -foot ship, thought to be vanished forever, is now found.

But what or who buried Sandra and her 12 sailors in this watery grave?

Is there some unknown force behind this and so many Bermuda Triangle mysteries?

With the sensational discovery, these questions can now be investigated.

I mean, just serendipity, right?

We're trying to find information on another Bermuda Triangle mystery, and

stumble into another one, which just shows you that's what happens when you

out exploring out here. You just never know what you're going to run into.

But the mystery of DeSandra must wait.

Barnett is eager to return to his primary mission, finding the missing

Forced into port by severe weather, Petrel is heading back to sea.

Barnett joins team member Rob Kraft for the next leg of the expedition.

Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Mike Barnett is a NOAA marine biologist and an avid diver.

We're going to bring him on board and we're going to talk to him about the PBM

Mariner aspect of Flight 19.

Barnett is most interested in a lesser known aspect of the Flight 19 saga.

The loss of the Martin Mariner search and rescue plane.

In the process of trying to rescue these five aircraft, another search and

rescue aircraft was dispatched to find them.

And it disappeared less than a half hour after taking off.

So in an instant, we've doubled the men that need to be rescued.

7 .30 p .m., about an hour since the last transmission from Flight 19.

A 13 -man rescue team goes after the lost flight, like firemen running into a

burning building.

Around 8 .30 p .m., the rescue plane suddenly drops off radar.

A passing freighter, the SS Gaines Mill, reported a large fireball in the skies

around that time.

Did the plane explode mid -flight?

No wreckage was ever found, and the true location of the incident is hotly

debated.

This is a site identified in 1989 during the search for Challenger debris.

Barnett thinks he may have found the missing mariner.

by digging through the archives of a seemingly unrelated event.

The 1986 explosion of the Challenger spacecraft.

Tragically exploded a few minutes after launch and trapped in the Atlantic Ocean

in several pieces. And there was a major effort to go out and search for this

debris. And they actually found what they identified as a DC -3, a twin

aircraft, in this area here.

Searching for the debris of the Challenger, NASA identified the wreck of

aircraft.

But the dive report states visibility was poor.

So did they get it right?

Could this actually be the missing mariner?

How far offshore is this?

This is about 30 miles.

Okay, let's get on the phone and call the bridge and give them that position.

Rob Kraft adjusts course to head towards Mike Barnett's provocative target.

It's early March, 2020.

Rob Kraft and Mike Barnett have taken RV petrol over the very spot where NASA

records document a mysterious aircraft wreck.

Next one will be 133 meters.

They suspect that it may be the PBM Mariner rescue plane that was lost along

with Flight 19.

We know the PBM was likely traveling at an altitude of 800 feet or so, so if it

did crash, we should have large chunks of wreckage.

Using the petrol sonar, they search the ocean floor for half a mile in every

direction and turn up nothing.

Yeah, there's nothing there.

Is the NASA data inaccurate, or did churning undersea currents destroy the

wreck?

Whatever the explanation, there's no plane here.

But for Kraft, this is still progress.

When you rule targets out, that can help you focus your search. X rarely ever

marks the spot.

As Kraft steers petrol back toward deeper water, Barnett prepares another

expedition along the coast.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, the other members of the team, investigators Wayne

Abbott and David O 'Keefe, have uncovered a provocative witness.

This is the first interview she's ever given.

Yeah, I mean, 75 years later, it's going to be hard to find any eyewitnesses.

And so she's about the closest thing we're going to get.

My father was Lieutenant Robert Cox.

He was in radio contact with Flight 19.

Colby Cox is the daughter of Lieutenant Robert Cox, the first to realize Flight

19 was in trouble on that fateful day.

Howard, can you copy?

I don't know where we are.

Cox was also the only person to have more than a fleeting contact with Flight

19.

Please identify yourself so someone can help.

Cox was sure he could find them, but he was low on fuel.

He requested to land and swap into a ready plane that was on standby.

This is FD -74 coming in low on fuel.

Request permission to immediately disembark and ready plane.

But his request was inexplicably denied.

Why wasn't Lieutenant Cox allowed to go back up after Flight 19?

It's very sad that Dad wasn't allowed to go back up. Did it weigh heavily on

him? My dad felt extremely strongly that he could locate the flight

if he were allowed to go back up, and he was... very frustrated that he

wasn't allowed to go back up.

What was the follow -up for your father then?

My mother was always convinced that this adversely affected my

father's career because my father told the truth.

Robert Cox is one of the most crucial characters in the whole Flight 19 story.

Now, Robert died a few years ago, and his story died with him.

But Colby Cox told us a story that is shocking.

There was a huge party on the base that night.

From what I recall Dad saying, they couldn't even find the base commander.

My father believed that the fact that there was that big party the night

definitely contributed to the loss of Flight 19.

If Lieutenant Cox did testify to this base -wide party the night before Flight

19 was lost, it's nowhere in the Navy's official report.

Did your father believe that they whitewashed, say, the Board of Inquiry?

Yes. Wow.

The Navy doesn't want to hear that.

I grew up as a Navy brat.

My father was in the service 24 years, and knowing what I know about the Navy,

Of course they're going to whitewash it.

Boy, did she just open up something.

Do you think that they would have sanitized the board of inquiry?

Well, it could have. I mean, let's just say the entire base was off its game.

They were all hungover.

Would the Navy really want that to come out?

Especially with the loss of 27 men.

Particularly with the loss of 27 men.

The amount of partying.

that was happening is a bit surprising, shocking, but also understandable.

My God, these guys just got home from fighting World War II.

It's official. It's all over.

It's total victory.

The guns of World War II fell silent in August 1945 after the final Japanese

surrender.

Cameramen and reporters of many countries record this historic moment.

Servicemen from all branches went from high alert...

to suddenly, unexpectedly coming home.

The American military did not look to the year 1945 and go, we'll wrap it all

then, and then we'll all go home. That was not the plan.

The American military had imagined a force of 305 ,000 American troops

participating in an amphibious landing on the Japanese home islands.

I don't want to say that they suddenly became unprofessional.

and that they neglected their duties and responsibilities.

But I am saying that there's a different set of priorities by December 5th,

1945.

Even if there was a massive base party the night before, the men of Flight 19

were experienced aviators.

Most had seen combat in the Pacific.

None more than Flight Instructor Charles Taylor.

His friends called him CC.

And he was from Texas, from Corpus Christi, and he joined the Navy in 1941.

He was a highly seasoned pilot.

He had combat experience, but he had also logged 2 ,500 hours of flying time,

mostly on the Avenger.

He ditched twice while in combat.

If there was anybody on Flight 19 who understood what it was like to land in

ocean, deploy the rafts, and survive, it seems to have been Charles Taylor.

So he was nowhere near in over his head.

There must have been something that really threw him off that day.

Could Flight 19 have run into something in the Bermuda Triangle that surprised

them? In aviation, when we look at accidents, when we look at reports, We

at things as a compound series of events.

An accident doesn't just happen with one thing.

Wayne and David have come to the Florida Aviation Academy.

They're meeting U .S. Air Force pilot and accident investigator, Lieutenant

Colonel Jason Harris.

We need to be able to gain experience from somebody who's been in the cockpit,

somebody who's been in situations like this before.

Jason has a way to give David a pilot's eye view of Flight 19.

Whoa, Dave.

There we go. Geez, I didn't realize you weighed that much.

They're lifting off in a flight simulator programmed for December 5,

Are you ready? Let's go.

So we'll go ahead and start climbing on up.

Perfect.

We know that the weather report here in Fort Lauderdale on that day was cavoo.

Clear skies, visibility unrestricted.

But the naval report shows that offshore, conditions quickly

that is almost standard in this part of the country, that there might be clear

weather here on the landmass, but the flight conditions over the entire route

the flight were not.

In a time before GPS and with limited aerial radar, pilots relied on visual

landmarks to correct for course drift.

Flight 19's first landmark was a small island called Chicken Shoals.

With poor visibility, Jason thinks Flight 19 was unable to find Chicken

Shoals. Wow.

It comes in at first. You don't realize how quick you can lose your visibility

and your reference points.

Absolutely.

Unable to find the small island, Taylor would have turned to his compasses to

stay on course.

The Avenger had two.

But turbulence and poor weather could lead both to read incorrectly.

Even in a simulator.

The feeling of being lost leads to a pilot's worst enemy, panic.

This is it. This is serious. We're lost.

And we have no idea where Chicken Shoals is, where our intended target is.

This is not a good feeling. It's not.

When you look at the transcripts on Flight 19, you begin to realize that

the flight instructor,

was clearly panicked because he was lost.

You're running out of fuel.

It's in the middle of the night. You've got rain potentially.

You've got cloud cover. You've got turbulence.

You've got winds.

You've got instruments that you no longer can trust.

I'd be panicked.

I don't care how much experience I have as a professional pilot.

Those are a recipe for disaster.

From the simulator, Jason reconstructs one possible scenario.

Unforecasted bad weather closes in, reducing visibility and causing Flight

drift from their planned route.

As panic sets in, Charles Taylor distrusts his compasses and leads the

further out to sea towards certain doom.

So there's the possibility that there was a lot of weather that day. There was

lot of stress.

What I think happened is that these guys got lost.

If Jason's right, that means Flight 19 is most likely deep out to sea.

But now, on land, Wayne and David have uncovered a clue that could flip the

whole case on its head.

You have been misinformed about me. I'm very much alive, Georgie.

Was there a survivor from Flight 19?

Flight 19.

It's the most legendary Bermuda Triangle disappearance on record.

David O 'Keefe and Wayne Abbott are part of a team trying to finally solve this

mystery.

They're now hunting for clues in the stories of the men who disappeared that

night.

This is about 14 men that took off that day and never came home. 14 families

that had to deal with that. Not to mention the other 13 men lost on the

Mariner that went out to rescue them.

27 men died in one night.

That's the real story.

The trails led them to the suburbs of New York City.

For years, I've been hoping that we could speak to somebody from the Panessa

family. Yeah, they've got that one piece of cryptic evidence we have to take a

look at.

Wayne and David are meeting Bill Panessa.

Hi, how are you? Good. Dave O 'Keefe. Bill Panessa. Nice to meet you. Hey,

Wayne Abbott.

Bill's uncle was Flight 19 radio man George Panessa.

I've got something to show you that's going to be piquing your interest.

Today, Bill is the keeper of a family secret.

Is this all related to George? All related to George that my Aunt Lou, who

the matriarch, took very good care of in communication. I also have some of his

effects from Florida where he disappeared and also from the Pacific.

Even a stencil from his locker? No way.

George was my dad's brother, and George was the youngest of the brothers.

My dad was in the Army. George was Marines, flight aviator, gunner and

bombardier.

The disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle always hung over the family.

And it's something we have always, you know, wanted an answer.

And his flight book, this was from the Pacific.

He was on patrols. He was on convoy duty, dive bombing. They were attacking

Japanese -held islands, strafing. I mean, he saw some heavy combat.

What has the family said about the night of December 5th with you?

Well, they really thought there was a miscommunication. How could men who were

experienced, seasoned pilots, get lost?

Whatever happened, they wanted an explanation, ironclad, that tells them

this happened to a group of servicemen that went through the Pacific Theater

came back to die in the Atlantic Ocean.

In December 1945, as families around America prepared for their first

together again after years of war, the Panessas received a series of telegrams.

Your son is missing.

The search has been discontinued.

Your son was killed.

And then, the day after Christmas, they received a telegram that appeared to be

from George.

One telegram that threw everybody for a loop was on December 26th, my

Uncle Joe received this telegram.

So this is a bit strange.

You have been misinformed about me. I'm very much alive, Georgie. And he spelled

it G -E -O -R -G -I -E.

That was his signature.

The telegram was allegedly sent by my uncle, and he signed it G -E -O -R -G -I

-E. He was the only person that signed his name like that.

So it was like, wait a minute, we got a letter from the government saying...

He's lost at sea, presumed dead, and we've given up on the search because

been over ten days.

And yet we get a telegram from Georgie, alleged, that he's fine.

Which one do you want to believe?

This mystery telegram leads to so many questions, with the strangest question

being, did George survive?

George Panessa was Captain Ed Powers' radio man.

Some speculate Powers realized flight instructor Charles Taylor was heading

wrong way and turned west toward land, ultimately crashing somewhere over

Florida.

If so, could Panessa have survived?

Was there discussion in family, like who would have done this as a hoax?

No, no, no, no. This came from Florida. It came from a Western Union in Florida

near the base. So this all had credence of it's original, it's authentic.

It might not have been sent by Georgie, but it was sent by somebody.

Any frustration or hurt or anger even over this? I think hurt from the

standpoint of there wasn't any satisfactory answer, that it seemed to

-up.

In the end, nobody had an answer.

So you know what we're trying to do here is try to get down to the truth, the

truth of what happened. And if we do succeed, what would the truth mean to

in this?

Well, it would finalize everything for a family, for myself.

But I think I already know the outcome, but it would be nice to, you know, to

find the planes.

I really feel for the Panessa family because we don't really know what the

situation was.

Whether that was a hoax, it kind of goes down as a hoax.

But why would anybody do that?

You know, why?

I mean, I kind of lean on believing it.

In other words, that, you know, maybe he deserted, maybe he had enough, maybe he

wanted to get out.

Maybe our search in land will discover something that ties that together.

The Panessa telegram could add more weight to the theory that one or more of

planes somehow made it back to land.

Could this clue connect to the plane Graham Stikeleather's father allegedly

found in 1962?

While Wayne and David may be on the verge of a major breakthrough.

Back on RV Petrol.

Frustration is mounting among the Deep Sea team members.

That was a bad idea.

That was a terrible idea.

It's now mid -March 2020.

Rob Kraft and the crew have been scouring the Bermuda Triangle for weeks,

looking for any sign of the Avengers.

Nothing. Nothing but a barren wasteland.

Kraft knew this search would be a slow grind.

But there is some good news at last.

They have detected a promising new target.

It's around 1 ,000 meters or so, so it's not going to take long to get the ROV

down there.

We should be able to get a good look at this and decide whether it's one of our

planes or not. Over there.

Yep.

We'll start pushing towards the target, Rob, yeah?

Yeah.

Dead ahead. What is that, Rudy?

There's something.

As the target comes into view, it's clear it's definitely man -made.

And it's clear, it's definitely not a plane.

Most likely, it's a fridge thrown overboard as trash.

Well, it's an adventure.

You know what an adventure is?

What? It's a poorly planned vacation.

The team can still joke.

They've proven they can detect even the smallest objects.

And Rob Kraft is convinced that all they need to do is finish mapping their

prime target area.

To date, we've covered about 210, 220 square nautical miles. So it's really

the beginning of this search.

It's just going to take a lot of time to cover it all.

Breaking news tonight, the U .S. and Canada closing their borders as the

coronavirus pandemic deepens.

But time is something Rob Kraft has just run out of. The World Health

Organization has officially named it COVID -19.

A wave of states are issuing stay -at -home orders tonight, recognizing the

measures needed to control the virus. So we've had to cut the mission short.

There's a bit of craziness going on with this coronavirus, so we're going to

shut it down right now and give everybody a chance to get home so they

rested up and we can get back out here.

Petrel is driven to port by the pandemic and locked down.

But with the discovery of a provocative new target, the search is just heating

up.

A team of investigators are on the hunt for the Bermuda Triangle's most famous

disappearance.

Flight 19.

The COVID pandemic has thrown a wrench into the offshore search.

But on land, David O 'Keefe and Wayne Abbott are now following up on a

tantalizing clue.

A .50 caliber machine gun that could be from Flight 19.

You've attempted to cross -reference the serial number.

with the reports written at the time. That's what I was planning to do. The

problem is trying to find the reports.

The gun was allegedly recovered by a Florida judge in the 1960s.

Naval officials initially told the judge that the plane was part of Flight 19.

But the Navy later denied any knowledge of the incident.

The gun is the only evidence of the crash.

But after an exhaustive search, David has failed to uncover any record of this

serial number.

I'm not going to call it a cover -up or anything, but the judge tried to get

information out of the Navy once they cleared the wreck, and he came up empty.

Yeah, I can understand the 1960s. It was still kind of fresh. It was new. There

were security classifications. 75 years later?

I mean, it should be relatively easy to get our hands on this information if it

still exists.

Typically, .50 caliber machine guns were carefully tracked, so the missing

serial number raises eyebrows.

Is there something the Navy is hiding?

Or is there a less conspiratorial explanation for why David has been

locate the records?

This is December 1945.

There's a big giant war machine that is starting to gear down.

And who knows, you know, who knows whether, you know, the people on the

took their eye off the ball a little bit. You know, you're no longer at war.

you want to do is get home.

Maybe your record keeping is not as good as it was.

David still believes the serial number records are buried somewhere.

But a definitive answer won't come anytime soon.

The pandemic?

has shut down the archives we are now locked down

we're shut out so for the time being this remains one heck of a mystery and

news for rob craft has gone from bad to worse the pandemic has forced rv petrol

off the water for seven months and counting we had no idea that it was

have the impact that it did The boat went into the dry dock, period.

And so right now, it's unavailable.

Hopes of finding the missing Avengers are dwindling.

But Rob Craft has never been one to go down without a fight.

With Petrel's high -tech tools off the table, He has assembled an ad hoc team

go after a provocative new lead, codename Target 77.

This target was discovered by another survey, and it was an incidental target.

It was not something that they were actually looking for.

While the target is outside Kraft's primary search area, it is well within

Flight 19's range.

And the sonar image matches the wingspan of a TBM Avenger.

It's the right signature and sonar. It's the right size.

It is definitely something we need to go look at.

Rob Kraft and Petrel's lead technician, Paul Mayer, are teaming up with Micah

Eldred and Dan Taylor on this expedition.

So what do you have on this target? We found this target doing a big survey out

here with an AUV, and this is going to be the first time we've got an ROV on it

to see what's there.

Excavate a little bit there.

Dan and Micah are modern -day treasure hunters.

Look at that.

They search for lost ships, some known to have gone down with cargo worth

millions of dollars.

There's not a lot of people in the world that do this, particularly in the deep

ocean because it's so expensive.

For us, not independently wealthy, we needed to find targets that could

potentially find commercial cargo that would be of value.

Micah and Dan were conducting sonar scans in an area known for colonial -era

shipwrecks when they stumbled across what looked like an airplane, where an

airplane should not be.

I was like, okay, what's this airplane doing out here? It's not on a flight

where you would go with a single -engine aircraft.

We came to the conclusion that this could be one of those Avengers.

With Petrel's future uncertain,

This could very well be Kraft's best shot to find the lost squadron.

We have to go identify this target, and this is all we can do right now. This is

our last chance.

As Kraft and the Go America head toward the mystery wreck in deep water,

back on shore, Mike Barnett is meeting Wayne Abbott and

David O 'Keefe to review a new series of targets.

Well, I think our investigation has run its course, you know, for now.

And I think it's up to you and Kraft to get out there and search that deeper

water. Yeah, I think, you know, Rob's got a very worthwhile target he's going

be looking at.

And I've got a cluster of aircraft that we're going to check out. Oh, a cluster

of plane wreck. That's what we're looking for.

When this fisherman told me he's got three or four aircraft within about five

miles of each other.

No way. It's just a pretty tight cluster when you're talking about 80 miles

offshore.

So we're going to focus on that now.

Barnett's intel for this cluster of plane wrecks comes from spear fisherman

Marinka.

Warp speed, there's no secrets in the ocean.

And I feel if it's in traveled water, somebody has a number for a Flight 19

wreck.

It's just a matter of when it lands on the right hand.

The team begins their descent.

This time, they hit Peter.

The unmistakable outline of an aircraft.

Could this be Flight 19?

Deep in the waters off Florida's coast, Mike Barnett is part of a team of

investigators. out to solve the Bermuda Triangle's greatest mystery.

Flight 19, a squadron of torpedo bombers that disappeared in 1945.

Going down the water column, we actually had great visibility.

We got down on the marine life, came out, looked at us, realized they can't

us, and they headed back to the wreck.

So we followed them, and that's when we found an aircraft wreck.

Any initial dive that I do on a new wreck site, I want to try to gather as

information as possible.

The problem with an aircraft, three blades versus four blades, basic size,

many engines.

But as we look a little bit closer, the site's dominated by a large turbine jet

engine.

And so this is not World War II vintage. This is not what we're looking for.

But this aircraft has a story to tell.

Diving on sites like this, you have to keep your emotions in check.

There could be very well a fatality associated with these sites.

It's definitely a jet engine fighter aircraft, most likely from the 1960s or

70s, maybe even more recent.

Odds are the U .S. Navy probably has a report of this craft site right here, or

at least an event in their vicinity.

Barnett identifies the wreck as an F -8 Crusader.

at one time the fastest vehicle in the world.

Naval records reveal a deadly 1966 incident that's likely tied to this

The Navy lost contact with a Crusader on patrol in this area, later finding

only an oil slick and some floating debris.

The cause of the crash remains unknown.

Barnett will report his discovery to the Navy, who can more fully investigate

and inform the family.

While this wreck is not from Flight 19, it's proof that Mike's intel is good and

his approach is working.

Just going out blindly and diving in the water is not very productive.

Every hour you can spend in the library, in the archives, speaking to commercial

fishermen, every little piece of that puzzle can come together to solve the

mystery.

Back aboard Go America, shipwreck investigator Dan Taylor believes the key

the triangle mystery is a bizarre subsea anomaly.

Methane bubbles.

Naturally occurring gas seeps are not uncommon.

But Dan's seen evidence that in the Bermuda Triangle, they can be lethal.

On one of our surveys, we discovered huge crater -like formations.

We had no idea what these things were. The largest one was 600 meters across.

There is growing scientific consensus that when subsea methane deposits

they can create a massive bubble with the potential to displace water and sink

ships. A 600 -meter gas hydrate bubble.

would create a bubble on the surface of the ocean that's miles, miles wide.

If you were a vessel and a bubble birthed underneath you, then you would

simply fall off the planet into the abyss and the water would swallow you.

Some even speculate they can create lethal turbulence and down aircraft.

Could this explain the disappearance of Flight 19?

Or is this another far -fetched explanation for what may have been a

simple disaster?

This story took on a life of its own, and people were connecting it to aliens

and vortexes and, you know, different dimensions.

Paranormal and supernatural explanations have proliferated. They include subsea

crystal pyramids, alien abductions, time warps, and vortexes to

alternate dimensions.

When Flight 19 disappears out over the Bermuda Triangle, people want some

explanation. They want something better than the crew made a navigational error

because that seemed so hard to reconcile.

To lose someone for something so common and banal is just a little bit too

painful. But if you lose them to supernatural forces, suddenly it all

sense.

Everybody's looking for the one reason why they got lost, the one reason they

didn't come home.

But it doesn't work that way. There are plenty of different reasons, all playing

off of each other.

And the only way we're really going to solve this is if we find an aircraft.

On board the Go America, that's exactly what underwater explorer Rob Kraft is

hoping to do.

He has teamed up with modern -day treasure hunters Micah Eldred and Dan

to investigate Target 77, a wreck the size of the Avengers from Flight

19.

It looks really good. It's the same size as an Avenger, so we got a pretty good

shot here.

They are 300 miles offshore in the heart of the Bermuda Triumph on a vessel that

has been retrofitted, for deep sea exploration rough conditions

make it challenging to launch the remotely operated vehicle or rov

the boat's pitching and rolling quite a bit so as soon as you pick that heavy

vehicle up off the deck it starts swinging and uh once that happens you

really stop it you've got to set it down and try again all right

She didn't want to go, did she?

Ahead, the ROV detects the unmistakable outline

of an aircraft.

Wing, wing, nose, tail.

That's an aircraft.

No doubt.

Will this aircraft finally unlock the mystery of what happened to Flight 19?

In the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, underwater explorer Rob Kraft watches as

remote vehicle approaches a mysterious plane wreck.

He's searching for the Triangle's most famous victims.

Five Avenger torpedo bombers that vanished without a trace.

Visibility is really bad.

The current's really strong. Trying to push me to port.

You're on it.

There it is.

There's the prop right there.

That's a cockpit to the left the windshield there Looks like it's

white doesn't it? Yeah stripes Yeah

It's not our bird Well,

we definitely have an airplane

We've got some paint markings on this aircraft that indicate that it's

commercial, it's not military.

So it's not an Avenger.

From the yellow and white paint, it's immediately clear that this is not

19.

So what is it?

And how did it end up here?

You can see the shapes and how this lines up with the window. Step down

here. This little triangular window here, it's a real unique feature on this

airplane.

The team identify the aircraft as a Cessna Guidemaster.

A ditched Cessna can float hundreds of miles before sinking.

This wreck is most likely tied to an accident report from 1982.

The pilot ran out of fuel and ditched overseas before being rescued by the

Guard.

We were excited to come out and rule out this target. It needed to be done.

You know, we were always hoping to find an Avenger, but this would lead us to

believe or reaffirm our theory that the flight is much further to the west.

So it is kind of a bittersweet ending.

Now, their last chance of finding an adventure lies with Mike Barnett.

So guys, I think we have an opportunity for one more dive before the weather

really shuts us down for good. He and his team have been exploring a cluster

plane wrecks off the North Florida coast.

They're racing to hit one last target before weather closes the door for the

season.

But it may already be too late.

We have a hurricane to the east of us. We have a hurricane to the west of us.

Here we are stuck in the middle.

Being out there in 25 knots, 30 miles offshore, that's what's caused a lot of

these shipwrecks out here. We don't want to become one of them.

There's only a short window before dangerous weather moves in.

Barnett's team decides to take advantage of the calm before the storm and go for

it.

As the divers descend,

Captain Jeff Marinko closely watches the surface.

With typical scuba diving, there's actually bubbles coming up that we would

follow.

However, when they're doing closed circuit rebreathers, there's no bubbles

follow. So basically, I just have a timer running, approximate bottom time

they're trying to do.

The team has only about 30 minutes on the seafloor.

But to Jeff's surprise,

They resurfaced way too early.

Something has gone wrong.

The tide on the bottom was running really hard.

Storms were really stirring things up. It was really green water.

Yeah, so the hook had pulled out. It had no sign of the wreck on the bottom. So

we had to abort the dive and come up and try for another run at it.

A whipping bottom current ripped out the line, securing the boat to the dive

target. And they missed the wreck.

With their weather window closing fast, the team can't afford another miss.

This station's a little tougher, but that's been the theme of this, hasn't

It's just been one hurdle after another. First COVID, now there's hurricanes.

It just doesn't stop.

All right, let's try this again.

This time, everywhere Barnett looks, fish, a sure

sign he's close.

That's them. They're on it for sure.

Good.

Below, the wreck comes into view.

But what is it from?

One of the first things we see is there's this big chunk of debris metal

could have been from anything.

It could have been garbage pitched off a ship.

It didn't really speak to me of an airplane.

The next thing we come across is a large section of flat metal with rivets.

Looking through a rustle on the top, I saw what appeared to be black rubber.

I'm saying to myself, Maybe this is a tire.

Time is our enemy right now. The clock is ticking. We've got to find something

to reveal what we're diving on.

Then boom.

Right there, staring in the fade, a large propeller.

And right next to it was the engine.

We are excited. We are stoked.

We know we have an aircraft.

We have a World War II vintage aircraft.

Now we want to find proof positive of what this aircraft is.

We want to find that smoking gun.

And then we move on a little bit farther, and we see this round piece of

wreckage with, in the middle of it, teeth, like for gears.

I'm thinking to myself, this looks like a turret.

Emotions are running off the chart.

Could this be an Avenger?

Barnett meets up with Rob Craft and Paul Mayer.

to share the exciting discovery we checked out some targets and i can show

some of the footage we've definitely found an aircraft it spread out pretty

and it's been busted up pretty good obviously this aircraft had a really bad

i mean its ending was catastrophic to find out what the mystery wreck is

they're joined by roy stafford a former navy pilot and world war ii aircraft

expert got a three blade prop And his ball turret, which looks to me like it's

definitely a ball turret. Sounds like you got a lot of convincing clues there.

At first, I wasn't sure, you know, because there's so many World War II

that had three -bladed props.

You know, the wreckage was kind of dispersed.

One by one, Roy identifies each piece.

The wing.

The propeller and double radial engine.

the gunner's turret with a pane of bulletproof glass.

But it is the first piece of wreckage that reveals what the aircraft is.

This structure, almost overlooked on the dive, is a landing gear.

And the design is unique to the Avenger.

It was a perfect match because the TBM sat real high and, you know, had a

torpedo bay underneath it.

You know, you take the landing gear, the bulletproof glass, serrated teeth on

the gears of the turret, it's all there.

I'm actually 100 % at this point that it's a TBM.

Roy looking at the footage, he's pointing out multiple things. He's

this and this and this, and we're like...

So it's an Avenger. He said, oh yeah, without a doubt it's an Avenger. And

was just exciting to know.

You've made some amazing discoveries here. You found an Avenger. You've still

got some other targets. And based on what we know, Flight 19 could be in this

area. It could be one of them.

It's an enticing discovery.

A TBM Avenger torpedo bomber on the edge of the Bermuda Triangle.

Where all indications are, Flight 19 went missing.

After 75 years.

Has Mike Barnett finally found the legendary lost squadron?

December 5th, 1945.

Five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers and a Martin Mariner rescue plane

fly into the Bermuda Triangle and disappear.

Seventy -five years later, no trace of them has ever been found.

That may be about to change.

Mike Barnett's been invited to the Washington Navy Yard to share a

discovery with Dr. Robert Neeland.

So this first one here, obviously, is a three -blade propeller.

Neeland heads underwater archaeology in the Navy's History and Heritage Command.

He and naval underwater archaeology expert Augustin Ortiz review Mike's

So I see here you're counting cylinders.

How many were you able to count there? I think I saw seven, definitely two rows.

This really looks positive that this could very well be an Avenger, but is it

one of the Flight 19 Avengers?

That's the question we need to answer.

To be able to actually identify it to a specific one is really tough because

it's broken up, it's very corroded. So you're looking for something that will

tie it to a specific aircraft.

The one thing they know for sure is where it was found.

Could the wreck's location match any known crashes?

We found the record of PBM aircraft 73379 set.

within the crash zone of this wreck site.

The Navy's records, now declassified, reveal a botched carrier landing in

February 1945, just three miles from Barnett's discovery.

Luckily, the pilot was able to escape.

We can't say for 100 % that this is that aircraft without doing more exploration

to see if there's some sort of marking that identifies it.

Without identifiable markings, there's no way to be certain this plane is tied

to the carrier crash.

And key questions remain unanswered.

Why is an aircraft that ditched while trying to land broken into scattered

pieces like this?

And what are the other nearby plane wrecks?

There are other wrecks in this general area, and we don't know what those

are. That's really exciting, and we look forward to continuing to work with you,

and we'd be very interested to see what you find next.

If the nearby wrecks are also Avengers, that would strengthen the case that

Barnett has indeed discovered Flight 19.

This story with Flight 19 is important for the Navy to see resolved.

Because it highlights the sacrifice and service that military personnel have

done. If it's other Navy aircraft out there, we need to know where these are

located.

With the dive season closed for the year, Barnett must wait to explore the

nearby targets.

For the moment, the Bermuda Triangle still holds its grip on this mystery.

But the team is more determined than ever to find the planes.

It's going to be a lifelong pursuit.

We're not going to stop until we find the Martin Mariner and hopefully Flight

19.

If the Avengers crashed in shallow water, Mike Barnett is convinced he can

them all.

And the investigation still cannot rule out the possibility some of them made it

back to land.

We've been able to check off some of the boxes.

There's a lot of them here, and there's still more to check, but we've been able

to get rid of some of them.

Wayne Abbott and David O 'Keefe believe...

The archives still hold secrets.

Just when we think we're answering one question, a whole bunch of others pop

But that's the mystery of Flight 19.

And Rob Kraft was only able to map out a fraction of his primary search area. We

spent a lot of time and effort to make sure that we were doing the right thing,

and I think we were.

If the planes are in deep water, Kraft is sure he can find them. We need to go

back and resume the search where we were before.

Despite the challenges, the team believes they've come closer to finding

19 than anyone else.

And it's just a matter of time before the mystery is solved.

Officially, Flight 19 is still out there.

But the net could be closing fast.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.