They Flew Into Oblivion

In 2005 a national spotlight was placed upon a mystery of aviation because of They Flew into Oblivion. Having an early and still-unfinished copy of the manuscript, Larry Landsman, SCI-FI Channel's determined Special Projects Director, pushed for a special documentary to be produced by NBC News Productions and then lobbied Congress through Podesta-Matoon, the nation's third largest and influential lobbyist, for formal recognition of the subject of this book in Congress. This culminated in a Resolution in Congress sponsored by Republican E. Clay Shaw of Florida, which passed overwhelmingly on November 17 at 420-2 votes. This recognition was unique in that it honored 14 US Navy airmen who had vanished 60 years before. They were not war heroes. Nor were they on some crucial mission. The war had been over for months, and the flight was merely on a routine training run off the east coast of Florida. The total disappearance of the "Lost Squadron," "Lost Patrol" or, as it is most frequently called, Flight 19, was a bizarre case if for nothing more than the very number of aircraft that vanished. Paradoxically, however, little is known of the actual incident and the 14 aviators who vanished. Rather than being subjected to serious journalism as in the case of Amelia Earhart or Glenn Miller's disappearance or the destruction of the Hindenberg, Flight 19 became buried in the popular enigma of the "Bermuda Triangle." Any recounting of it was but a vignette designed to link it with the many others that had vanished. Author Gian J. Quasar, the man considered the leading expert in the world on the Bermuda Triangle, however, pulls the flight from the Triangle's clutches to reveal it as a military blunder, a tragedy and an irony. Like an absorbing detective read, They Flew into Oblivion leads the reader through the case and its aftermath and then follows the author on his solution of its mystery and his search for its final resting place. The result is to lay bare the incident once and for all. The trail stops at a federal refuge that will allow no examination of its contents for fear it might disturb the alligators . . . and for fear Flight 19 is indeed inside.