Road to No Return. The Bermuda Angle

I-95 Exit 22s in FL To: FL 848, Stirling Rd, Cooper City, Florida


This area near Fort Lauderdale is considered the bottom angle of the notorious Bermuda Triangle.  The Bermuda Triangle’s apex is at Bermuda about 700 miles off Virginia's coast and runs southeast to Puerto Rico and thence north and west to this area before rising back north by east to Bermuda in the middle of the North Atlantic.  Over hundreds of years ships and even aircraft have disappeared in this vast yaw of ocean. Frankly, given all the traffic,  that should not be any surprise.


Locally, Merle Fogg Airport opened on an abandoned nine-hole golf course on May 1, 1929. At the start of World War II, it was commissioned by the United States Navy and renamed Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale. ​

The base was initially used for refitting civil airliners for military service before they were ferried across the Atlantic to Europe and North Africa. Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale later became a main training base for Naval Aviators and enlisted naval air crewmen flying the TBF and TBM Avenger for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps aboard aircraft carriers and from expeditionary airfields ashore.


Then something weird happened.  Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale was the home base for Flight 19. ​ There were many airmen involved in that lost flight. 

Flight 19 consisted of  the five TBM Avenger aircraft that disappeared in December 1945, leading in part to the notoriety of the Bermuda Triangle. Right after the end of World War Two,  radio signals with and between the five planes abruptly went dead.

​Then silence. Total silence.

According to historical lore, the planes were swallowed up by the Bermuda Triangle. They and their crews never were heard from again. ​

#NASFortLauderdale #Flight19 #BermudaTriangle #UnitedStatesNavy  #NAS #NASFort #MerleFogg ​

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