Flight 19

Five Avengers, then the rescue plane too. "Everything looks wrong," said the last transmission.

December 5, 1945: five Navy Avengers vanished on a training flight from Fort Lauderdale; the Mariner flying boat sent to search exploded mid-air (a known fault of the type). The Navy's board first cited instructor disorientation, then amended to 'cause unknown' after the family objected. Documented: the 500-page investigation. Flight 19 became the founding artifact of the Bermuda Triangle (coined by Gaddis, 1964, industrialized by Berlitz, 1974) — a documented tragedy of compasses and fuel converted by retelling into a doorway.