Could the "Lost Patrol" have Crashed into the Okefenokee in 1945?

By Jack Mays

            World War Two had ended just 4 months earlier. It was December 5, 1945 and five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida on what was expected to be a routine training flight. Instead, the bombers and their crews, 14 men, never returned. The episode became the central theme in the Bermuda Triangle legend when it was widely assumed the planes and crew ditched in the Atlantic, never to be heard from again.

            Now, 55 years later, in 2000, a new theory has emerged. Could the planes and crew have mistakenly turned back toward Fort Lauderdale and ran out of fuel over the mysterious Okefenokee Swamp and crash landed into the morass of wilderness. The planes had about 5 hours of fuel onboard. The black waters and muck in the 400,000-acre wilderness would have swallowed up the heavy planes and crew instantly. No search was ever done of the Okefenokee. Instead, the navy searched thousands of square miles of the Atlantic, losing a PBM Mariner search plane with a 13-man crew in the futile search. No trace of the Mariner was found, adding to the mystery. A History Channel Television episode, This Week in History, produced by Jonathan Grupper, dealt with that theory in a showing on December 1, 2000.

            Here's what is known, according to the Navy, written by Michael McDonnell in Naval Aviation News in June 1973:

 Five Avengers are airborne at 2 o'clock on a bright sunny afternoon. The mission is a routine two-hour patrol from Fort Lauderdale, Florida due east for 150 miles, north for 40 miles and then return to base. All 5 pilots are highly experienced aviators and all of the aircraft have been carefully checked prior to takeoff. The weather over the route is reported to be excellent, a typical sunny Florida day. The flight proceeds. At 3:45 p.m. Fort Lauderdale tower receives a call from the flight, but instead of requesting landing instructions, the flight leader sounds confused and worried. "Cannot see land," he blurts. "We seem to be off course."

            "What is your position?" the tower asks. There are a few moments of silence. The tower personnel squint into the sunlight of the clear Florida afternoon. No sign of the flight. "We cannot be sure where we are," the flight leader announces. "Repeat: Cannot see land."

            Contact is lost with the flight for about 10 minutes and then it is resumed. However, it is not the voice of the flight leader. Instead, voices of the crews are heard, sounding confused and disoriented, "more like a bunch of boy scouts lost in the woods than experienced airmen flying in clear weather. "We can't find west. Everything is wrong. We can't be sure of any direction. Everything looks strange, even the ocean." Another delay and then the tower operator learns to his surprise that the leader has handed over his command to another pilot for no apparent reason.

            Twenty minutes later, the new leader calls the tower, his voice trembling and bordering on hysteria. "We can't tell where we are…everything is…can't make out anything. We think we may be about 225 miles northeast of base…." For a few moments the pilot rambles incoherently before uttering the last words ever heard from Flight 19. "It looks like we are entering white water…We are completely lost."

            Over the Okefenokee that night of December 5, 1945, it had been raining and the skies were overcast. People in the town of Folkston were in their homes, still celebrating the homecoming of their sons and husbands who were being discharged from the Armed Forces, some after 4 years of battle action.

            The churches were practicing their Christmas musical presentations and merchants were rejoicing over their Christmas sales prospects with hundreds of items that were non-existent during the ration years of the war.

            Pack Stokes, owner of Stokes Motors, the town's Chrysler Dealer, was looking forward to a few new 1946 model Plymouths and Chryslers. His last model sold was a 1941 Plymouth. The war effort had taken all the succeeding models.

            Stapleton's Rexall Drug Store had stocked up on new Christmas gifts, watches, pen and pencil sets, makeup kits and candies. Across the street, Dr. W. D. Thompson and his wife, Vera, had put up new Christmas decorations in their Folkston Pharmacy. It was good to be getting back to business as normal after four years of deprivation and sacrifice.

            Warplanes over Folkston had been a common sight as Navy Trainers from Jacksonville Naval Station daily flew training flights over the city. A flight of 5 Torpedo Bombers headed toward the Okefenokee would have been nothing unusual. It was a favorite flight pattern for the Jacksonville based pilots. Army planes from the Waycross Air Base and Valdosta also flew over the swamp on a daily basis.

            As confused as the pilots of Flight 19 were, a slight wrong turn on the return to Fort Lauderdale would have taken them over the Okefenokee as they headed west.

            When the planes ran out of fuel, all were instructed to ditch the planes when the first ran out of fuel. The pilots could have easily mistaken the overcast Okefenokee as the Atlantic Ocean and plowed into the murky swamp and disappeared forever. Naval authorities never contemplated such a possibility. Had they crashed landed in the Okefenokee, the heavy Torpedo Bombers would have sunk almost instantly in the soft surface. The area was almost inaccessible to man.

            Even today, sophisticated search instruments could possibly detect five heavy warplanes, even under the surface of the swamp. It's an interesting theory and one that should be investigated for the families of the 14 crewmen aboard those 5 World War Two torpedo bombers.