I mean, the, the sort of background notes for this go more than a hundred pages. Muddying the waters is the fact that researchers found Navy records that suggest the wreckage discovered in the . Maddow: After the crash of Trip 19, Senator Ernest Lundeen was given a state funeral in Minnesota. In his 1980 book The Disappearance of Flight 19, probably the most authoritative and thorough book on the subject, author Larry Kusche found that Charles Berlitz had fabricated more radio messages to make it sound as though the planes were having all sorts of inexplicable equipment failures and experiencing unprecedented meteorological conditions. Telling him the whole thing was, quote, "a witch hunt". FT-74 returned to Ft. Lauderdale. By morning, they probably never saw one another again. He's crying. And what exactly the Senator was carrying with him when he stepped on board that flight. A Martin PBM Mariner suspended from a ships stern crane. Maddow: One local farmer told a wire service that the human remains, quote: "were so badly mangled, I don't see how they could ever be recognized.". covering 2223nm in 19 hours, 12 minutes, for an average speed over the . The fleet, known as Flight 19, took off from a Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida almost 77 years ago, on December 5, 1945. . The Old Time Radio Scripts Page! Maddow: This is a story of treachery, deceit and almost unfathomable actions on the part of people who are elected to defend the constitution, but who instead got themselves implicated in a plot to undermine it. By. "in radio logs, Peter Leffe has. Maddow: A newspaper called PM had published an expos describing a scheme in which sitting members of Congress were helping an agent of Hitler's government distribute German propaganda in quantity all over the United States. Hart: When the FBI agents who are sent to the scene recover his body, they find a draft of the speech that he was going to give just a few days later. A search and rescue plane flying at 500 feet of altitude has only a 50% chance of spotting a raft on the sea from 1 mile distant. Senator Lundeen gets to work early that day. comments: this was backwards from the direction they should have been flying and put them heading further out into the open ocean how the flight leader could have thought he was over the Gulf of Mexico, west of Florida remains a mystery to this day. Flight 19, five Grumman Avengers with 14 aviators aboard, lumbered out of the Navy base at what today is the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on a blustery afternoon on Dec. 5,. Senator Ernest Lundeen quickly became one of the loudest and most confident voices inveighing against the U.S. joining the fight. The winds would have blown them further east, away from land, while the currents of Gulf Stream would have carried them northeast and out into the central Atlantic. An example of this are the records in Record Group 313: Records of Naval Operating Forces. Painter: We walked through this cornfield and parts of bodies was strung along the cornstalks, and everything like that. HistoricWings.com :: A Magazine for Aviators, Pilots and Adventurers, A Magazine for Aviators, Adventurers and Pilots, Published on December 5, 2012 As the day wore on into evening, the usual Florida winter storms rolled in that day they came with a vengeance. As an example of this method, using the information from the Board of Investigation, it references the Gulf Sea Frontier and Commander, Training Command, Atlantic Fleet as being contributors of reports in the investigation and recipients of copies of the investigation. We had hundreds of planes out looking, and we searched over land and water for days, and nobody ever found the bodies or any debris. A Navy board of investigation was also left scratching its head. ), Unidentified pilot: Dammit, if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit. (Ed comments: This was the only voice of reason, one of the inexperienced pilots who recognized that they were still off the east coast of Florida in fact, based on even rudimentary navigation, that was the ONLY possibility. However if you read books that concentrate on the mystery angle of the disappearance, he is shown in a very different light. Steven J. Ross: They dont call themselves right-wing fanatics. This episode was written by myself, Mike Yarvitz, and Kelsey Desiderio. Maddow: The aeronautics board report concluded that the multiple witnesses who described abnormally loud roaring engines right at the time of the crash, those witnesses were onto something. The full episode transcript for Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | Episode 1: Trip 19. I am over land but its broken. We have no other land in sight. (Ed. Based on radio communications with the air station, the first leg of the flight and the bombing practice took place according to plan. Both series are arranged by the Navy Filing Manual. Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five General Motors TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945, after losing contact during a United States Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Fort Lauderdale is 20 miles further, your first port after Miami. Maddow: This was just days after Senator Lundeen was buried and Drew Pearson just drops this bombshell. On tonight's can't-miss Expedition Unknown on Discovery, Josh Gates follows the . Creating a radius that would define a search area, this may be a massive undertaking but is still less than searching the whole ocean. He said it was signed by the lone flight attendant on board. Then on Monday, on Labor Day, he's got a big speech that he's planning to deliver. Radio Reporter: Today, Saturday August the 31st. They let him out of the cold car. Government 'must take responsibility' to end industrial dispute. That one, we think we know. It was riveted in their mind. Flying boats were notoriously accident-prone, and were even nicknamed flying gas tanks for their propensity for catching fire. The Training Mission comments: winds at altitude were about 30 to 35 knots from the west, in other words, the winds were pushing the planes out into the open Atlantic east of the Bahamas.). The tragic, mysterious crash of a commercial airliner in the summer of 1940. The Senator's secretary stays to make sure that hes safely boarded the plane and then she leaves to drive back to D.C. Then as she makes it back to the Capitol, the news comes through. In brief, for those unfamiliar with the story, Flight 19 was a training flight of five Grumman TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers that took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, FL on the afternoon of December 5, 1945. February 5, 2009 10:19 am. Scripts are listed by the first noun in the title. 081352 Continue reading "Full Audio Transcript" There was also a more general horror among the public over what up to that point was the single deadliest civilian air crash in U.S history. There have been relatively recent reports that the FBI's investigation of the crash technically remains an open case. Could have been. Over the next few hours, the planes would make a series of errors. Ernest Lundeen went to Ortonville, Minnesota to give a speech on foreign policy, but this angry crowd turned up and force-marched him out of the venue after he'd only spit out about two sentences of his speech. Im sure Im in the Keys, but I dont know how far down., Taylors claim didnt seem to make sense. Maddow: Perhaps most importantly, this is also the story of the Americans mostly now lost to history who picked up the slack in this fight, who worked themselves to expose what was going on, to investigate it, to report on it, ultimately to stop it. Flight 19 was a squadron of five TBM Avengers: a single engine aircraft manned by three crew (pilot, turret gunner and radioman/bombardier). Nancy Beck Young: He was on the run for not only his political life, but his actual life. There's a storm rolling in, but the flight is cleared for takeoff after a slight delay. These two series have not been processed or described, so the record dossiers would be the finding aids. Maddow: So, the Senator seems to have been in a near-panic about being exposed in the days leading up to him stepping on board that flight a flight in which he, quite literally, was carrying a speech that was written for him by a Nazi agent who had just been exposed in the press. Flight 19 Disappearance: 5 December 1945, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We have a flight plan update for you and some P37 block data, if you're ready to copy. Im over land, but its broken. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Here he is with producer Kelsey Desiderio: Kelsey Desiderio: So, obviously we don't know exactly where the plane came down, but do we have any rough idea, in terms of where we're standing, where did it happen? But soon there was also something else. Between when the article came out and the plane crash, Lundeen's papers show he received a letter from the German agent telling him to not worry about the press being onto them. This is the original radio log of Earhart's last communications with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Itasca . Maddow: In the hours and days that followed the crash of Trip 19, which killed Minnesota Senator Ernest Lundeen and 24 other people, there were a range of reactions across the country. Among the newly added series of digitized records to the National Archives Catalog is National Archives Publication M1657: Folder A17: Fort Lauderdale-5 TBM Crash-December 5, 1945 THRU PBM-1946, , a single reel of microfilm that is part of the series, in the Records of Naval Districts and Shore Establishments (Record Group 181) that are in the custody of the. All planes close up tight, he said. What was he doing? Others blame the loss on some mysterious phenomenon in the Bermuda Triangle. comments: This almost certainly puts him at the northern edge of the Bahamas), FT-28: Can you have Miami or someone turn on their radar gear and pick us up? So, Ernest Lundeen knew the cost of taking an unpopular stance in elected office. She doesn't know what has made him so upset. And so you have to scratch your head. A massive search was immediately launched but nothing was located. Flannery: I think that the coincidence defies the probabilities, Lundeen: Reason? He was about 15 at the time. . The temperature was 67 degrees. Including: who else was on-board along with Senator Lundeen when the plane crashed. 00 00 02 19 CC We confirm inboard cut-off. We pick up the first messages to and from the lead aircraft, going by the call sign Fox Tare Two Eight (FT-28). We tried to confirm those reports one way or the other. The rest of the transmissions were heard by ASRTU-4. Most had about 60 hours in type and 300 hours total time overall. APPAir traffic control tower at Los Rodeos Airport PA RTPan Am aircraft radio transmission PA . Radio Reporter: In this country now, in the nations capitol at Washington. It seems as if the leader was flying with seriously impaired judgment and was somehow lacking in normal pilotage skills, which is bizarre given that he had 2,500 hours of total flight time to his name. What do you make of that? Now, of course, there were no survivors of the crash to tell anyone anything about what had happened on board the plane. The most likely scenario is that the planes eventually ran out of gas and ditched in the ocean somewhere off the coast of Florida, leaving any survivors at the mercy of rough seas and deep water. creativerse programmable villager 1 min read. This tool uses JavaScript and much of it will not work correctly without it enabled. Maddow: Senator Lundeen knew from experience that his stance against the U.S. joining the war in Europe might be politically unpopular. For Training Command, Atlantic Fleet are the, Confidential, Restricted and Secret General Administrative Files, 1944-1945, Confidential and Unclassified General Administrative Files, 1941-46. . 081335 AA11 20 Right Boston Sector: American 11 turn 20 degrees right. We are not the first generation of Americans to have to contend with such a fundamental threat. The air station is directly on your left from the port. (Ed. At that, the flight leader stepped in and took over the navigation. Hart: We have a number of the biggest figures in American politics in this period, they all fall under the spell of this sort of Nazi propaganda operation. It means they know something they don't want us to know. Having not crossed Florida, nor gone south and around the Keys, a flight that would have taken an hour or so, more time than they had been aloft before they had started flying NE and E, the evidence is clear that the flight leader was seriously lost. 2 seconds ago bainbridge basketball. What really happened to Flight 19? We couldnt. comments: These instructions would have made sense if the flight had been over the Keys, but if over the Bahamas, it was the equivalent of vectoring the flight out over the open seas. The board also concluded that neither the pilot nor the co-pilot were actively controlling the plane when it crashed. It was in perfect repair, it had passed all its checks. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Video: Final radio transmission of Flight VH-MDX before it disappeared. I must keep my planes intact. (Ed. True, they probably had instrumentation failure through most, if not all of the flight, but, the report does list the fishing vessel crew witnessing the bombing way-point and reporting so, stating that the aircraft continued east. It was a speech that was full of praise for Germany under Hitler. In the Casualty Assistance Branch Ships, Stations, Units, And Incidents Casualty Information Records in the Records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel (Record Group 24), there are casualty reports filed under NAS Fort Lauderdale (Box 109) and under NAS Banana River (Box 108). Something close to confusion over the emerging reports about all these odd circumstances surrounding the crash. These files include correspondence from the Casualty Assistance Branch regarding the circumstances of the losses and any legal changes to their status. Maddow: Beyond the apparent indestructability in that speech surviving a plane crash, beyond its pretty remarkable content, there was something else notable about that speech. This is the transcript released today of cockpit and radio communications from US Airways Flight 1549, which landed in the Hudson River on Jan. 15 after striking a flock of geese. The mystery angle of the crash 20 degrees Right also left scratching its head:! 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