By Ken Kaye, Staff writer 11:05 a.m. EDT, April 18, 2014

The mystery of Flight 19 remains unsolved. Yet, as a result of the quest to unravel that riddle, another bewildering aviation case has just been cracked.

New evidence led two aviation sleuths to believe that a TBM Avenger found in the Everglades 25 years ago might have been flown by the commander of the "Lost Patrol," the five Navy torpedo bombers that vanished after takeoff from Fort Lauderdale in 1945.

But a photo of the Avenger's bureau number instead proves the plane was flown by Ens. Ralph N. Wachob, 26, of Fort Lauderdale, a Naval Reserve officer who developed vertigo during a navigational exercise. He crashed in far western Broward County and was killed on March 16, 1947 – 15 months after Flight 19 disappeared and popularized the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.

"We have positively identified the unknown Everglades Avenger, thus solving a decades-old mystery," said Andy Marocco, a California businessman and a Flight 19 aficionado, who pieced together the puzzle. "It just wasn't the Avenger we were hoping for."

Aviation experts estimate that between 50 and 100 military and civilian aircraft have crashed in the Everglades over the past several decades and have yet to be found – or positively identified. An air boat group that occasionally finds wrecks says some of the planes are noted on maps as hazards to navigation.

Marocco and fellow Lost Patrol enthusiast, Jon Myhre, a former Palm Beach International Airport controller, initially were convinced Wachob's plane was the TBM-3 Avenger flown by Lt. Charles Taylor, the Flight 19 leader. 

They based their theory on the Navy's official Flight 19 accident report that said the planes might have turned southeast after being spotted over North Florida. After the Sun Sentinel ran a story about their theory, Minerva Bloom of the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum sent Marocco several photos of the 1989 wreckage of the TBM-3 Avenger.

Marocco found the bureau number of the Everglades plane, 53118, from one of the photos and ran it through Navy aircraft history and accident databases. It verified that Wachob, not Taylor, was the single occupant of the plane.

"That is amazing, that we now have a name and can put that particular wreck to rest," Bloom said.

Experts saw the same number in 1989, but it was mislabeled, Marocco said.

Wachob, the pilot of the doomed plane, encountered heavy rain while on a training flight from Miami toTampa with two other planes. He lost sight of the flight leader, got disoriented and crashed. The other two planes returned to Miami, Marocco said.

Navy officials recovered Wachob's body and investigated the accident. In May, 1989 – 42 years later – the wreckage of his plane was spotted by a Broward Sheriff's helicopter pilot.

"Based upon accident records, it seems that the identity of the Avenger was known to the Navy at one time," Marocco said. "It was just forgotten about for many decades."

Hoping for clues in the Lost Patrol case, Marocco and Myhre asked the Broward Airboat, Halftrack and Conservation Club of Davie to hunt for the wreckage of the Avenger. While searching, the group last week stumbled on another vintage warplane.

"We just happened to see the landing gear sticking up out of the sawgrass," said Brett Holcombe, the club's president. "We also found the tail section and two wings. But the motor, we couldn't find."

Rick "Boog" Mears, a club member, initially discovered the plane in far western Broward near the Palm Beach County line. Based on photos by the air boaters, Marocco identified the plane as a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, a single-engine attack plane.

He still is trying to identify its specific mission and pilot.

The air boaters didn't remove any of the wreckage because the Navy plans to look into the matter.

"It's considered a sunken or terrestrial military aircraft, so we're definitely going to be interested in knowing about it," said Paul Taylor, spokesman for the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C. 

Marocco, head of Aeroquest.org, a volunteer aviation organization, said the group now plans to "investigate other historical WWII aircraft wrecks that may be in the Everglades or elsewhere in Florida."

Meanwhile, he's not abandoning his theory that some of the Flight 19 planes might have crashed in the Everglades.

"There's still plenty of land in the Everglades, where a small plane like an Avenger could have crashed and still waiting for us to discover," he said.

kkaye@tribune.com or 561-243-6530.

By Ken Kaye, Sun Sentinel
2:32 PM EDT, April 5, 2014

When five Navy torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale in December 1945 and failed to return, they created one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time and popularized the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.

Now two aviation sleuths, who have spent more than 25 years trying to crack the case, have a compelling new theory: They believe that a torpedo bomber discovered in western Broward County in 1989 belonged to the lead pilot of Flight 19 and that some of the other planes also crashed on land.

"The circumstantial evidence we've amassed is pretty conclusive," said Jon Myhre, a former Palm Beach International Airport controller. "Nobody had connected the dots before."

Without knowing each other, the two men independently studied the "Lost Patrol" from various angles to calculate where the planes might have gone down while on a routine training mission.

Myhre, of Sebastian, wrote a book, Discovery of Flight 19, about his investigation. After reading it, Andy Marocco, the other enthusiast, called Myhre, and they began collaborating.

"It all started falling right in line," Marocco said.

Marocco, a California businessman, was the one who discovered new information that might break open the 68-year-old mystery. He went to the National Archives and obtained the Navy's 500-page "Board of Investigation Report on the loss of Flight 19."

In it, he found that the USS Solomons aircraft carrier, while off the coast of Daytona Beach, picked up a radar signal from four to six unidentified planes over North Florida, about 20 miles northwest of Flagler Beach.

That was at 7 p.m. on Dec. 5 1945, or about an hour and half after Flight 19 was due back at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale — today, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

While at an altitude of about 4,000 feet and flying about 135 mph, the planes then made a turn to a compass heading of 170 degrees, or southeast, important details never before been factored into the Flight 19 disappearance, the two men said.

Based on the southeast course, Myhre and Marocco recalculated that at least one of the single-engine, eight-ton planes would have crashed within miles of where the torpedo bomber was found 25 years ago.

That wreckage was spotted by a Broward Sheriff's helicopter pilot in the Everglades about 10 miles west of the Alligator Alley toll booth and about one mile north of the highway.

At the time, several experts, including Myhre, concluded the plane could not have come from Flight 19 because it was too far from where the Navy had received its last vague fix on the squadron, about 150 miles east of Daytona Beach, over the Atlantic.

Myhre and Marocco now say it's fully possible the USS Solomons was tracking the Lost Patrol. Because it was night and there was bad weather, the pilots probably had no idea they had meandered over land, Marocco said.

To bolster their case, they checked photos of the cockpit of the 1989 plane and determined it was a TBM Avenger-3, the exact model flown by Lt. Charles Taylor, the commander of Flight 19.

From an Internet search, they say a rubber heel found at the wreckage site came from a size 11 or 12 dress shoe that would fit a man at least 6 feet tall. "Charles Taylor was 6-foot-1," Marocco said.

Meanwhile, the Navy has no record of a TBM-3 Avenger missing in or around Florida between 1944 and 1952 — other than Charles Taylor's plane from Flight 19 — further leaving open the possibility the Everglades wreck belonged to Flight 19.

Until now, most military and history buffs believed the 14 crew members of Flight 19 perished when their planes ran out of fuel and crashed in the Atlantic.

Because the planes disappeared without a trace, Flight 19 bolstered the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, the area between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, where hundreds of planes and ships have purportedly vanished.

To confirm their theory on the Lost Patrol, the two men need to re-inspect the plane in the Everglades and find Navy bureau numbers on its wings that would match up with those on Taylor's torpedo bomber.

The problem is they can't find the wreckage.

They fear hunters, air boaters or others who roam Everglades may have taken pieces of the wreckage as souvenirs, particularly after its discovery was publicized in 1989. Still, they hope someone with an interest in digging up history will help them financially to mount an expedition.

"To this day we still can't find an exact location," Marocco said. "But if we find that plane again, I think we'll be able to positively identify it."

What happened to the other planes? Marocco thinks they scattered in different directions — while over Florida — in hopes they would pick up a homing signal to either an aircraft carrier or an airport. He noted two of the planes were flown by Navy crews, three by Marine crews.

"I think they scattered, based on their allegiance to their military unit," Marocco said. "The three Marine planes went toward the Gulf of Mexico and the two Navy planes went south. I think they all ran out of fuel and crashed."

Myhre and Marocco say to this point, the Navy has been of little help in determining whether the Everglades plane was part of Flight 19.

Paul Taylor, spokesman for the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C., said the Navy needs more information.

"We're open to hearing more about the theory and welcome the gentlemen to forward their findings to us for closer examination," he said.