Lowe: Bermuda, History Triangle Claims Local Navy Man

It went down 70 years ago, on December 5, 1945…

Three months after the signature end of World War II, five TBF Avengers Torpedo Bombers thundered down the runway of the Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale and lifted into the air for a training flight into what is known as the Bermuda Triangle.

One of the pilots – a fresh young face needing hours to maintain his Navy Pilot status – was Navy Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi. Bossi was to turn 21 on Christmas Day later that month. However there would be no celebration.

Because what was about to happen would become the genesis for the Bermuda Triangle mysteries that continues to this day. Replete with monsters, time travel, aliens and endless conspiracies from which movies, books and careers have been made and lost.

Bossi’s niece, Susan Lyons, lives here in Kansas City and spoke with me about Flight 19, the family’s loss and the legend that grew up around the tragedy.

“My mother came from a family of nine brothers and sisters and Joe was loved by them all,” she says. “Our family was very proud of Joe and my mother and grandmother kept all of the documents related to the flight and his death that they could.”

That includes pictures of Joe with other pilots and gunners, letters, newspaper and magazine articles, notifications from the Navy and the personal detritus that accompanies family tragedies and lives from that time long ago which those now gone would have remembered and revered.

Avenger Torpedo Bomber

Susan tells me the mystery of Flight 19 has always revolved about the instructor of the Flight, Lt. Charles C. Taylor.  Taylor had previously lost two Avengers prior to this event, one was ditched at sea after it ran out of gas while Taylor attempted to land on a Carrier.  The other Avenger also went down into the sea while Taylor was escorting an officer from a Carrier to Guam.

Clouds, low visibility and confusion as to exactly where they actually were, contributed to the crash, which left Taylor and his companion in the ocean for 33 hours in 10 ft. swells with only a mirror to signal for help. They were picked up by a Destroyer.

Taylor’s third mishap, would make him famous and draw more attention than his first two, but confusion and fuel shortages would again, be part of the story.

If you look at a map of the Bermuda Triangle, it starts in Southern Florida, heads South East to San Juan, then almost due North to Bermuda and back South West back to Southern Florida. 

Flight 19 ascended into the air at 2:08 p.m. December 5, 1945.

The training mission, without going into a great deal of detail, was mundane and typical.  The actual flight, was to proceed along the lines of what we now know as, “The Bermuda Triangle.”

About an hour into the flight, the pilots practiced dropping their ordnance on the way to San Juan, then on North to Bermuda and back to NAS Ft. Lauderdale.

After dropping the torpedoes, and heading North, radio operators on land, heard Taylor say his compasses had gone out and he was “confused” as to where they were.  It was 3:40 p.m. and Flight 19 were just south of Bermuda on the Northern leg of the journey.  Yet Taylor thought he was South of Florida and in the Keys.  Seriously.

The gunner in Taylor’s Avenger was a good friend of Robert Kaplinsky‘s.  Kaplinsky put in 30 years in the Navy and Lyons has a video of him explaining why his friend died. At 24 minutes in, he says, Taylor was drunk on his ass the night before and tried to get out of work that day but was denied.

Kaplinsky’s explanation rings true to me because I’ve watched to dozens of videos and read dozens of accounts of this tragedy.  Bear in mind, the Florida Keys are almost two hours South East of Bermuda and Flight 19 hadn’t been in the air two hours.

Yet Taylor said he recognized the Keys out of the cockpit before bad weather hit (a serious storm out of Georgia with 75 miles an hour winds at 6,000 feet and 40 miles an hour winds at 2,000 ft.

In spite of Taylor’s success in ditching Avengers and surviving, they were known as bad aircraft to have to ditch in. For example, President George Bush flew an Avenger, had to ditch and was the only survivor.

Taylor was hung over and unfit for command that day. He flew Flight 19, North East further into the Atlantic and bad weather. Ensign Bossi, among others on the flight, were heard exclaiming that, “If we just go West, we’ll get home!”

Susan has a letter from Charles Taylor’s mother that explains her views on the tragedy.

A letter Taylor’s mother had used to try and exonerate her son’s reputation with the Navy.  It worked and who knows, in spite of what you hear, there is no categorical resolution to the mystery at this date.

There are many, many wrecks on the ocean floor of the Triangle – from 1942 to 1945 alone the Navy lists the loss of 95 pilots.  Ninety-five pilots in just 3 years And NOT in WWII, but in training.

Susan tells me, her Uncle Joe is remembered at the WWII Memorial Campanile at the University of Kansas.  I bet he was a great kid.