Flight 19

flight 19

Flight 19 Avengers, FT-28, FT-36, FT-81, FT-3, FT-117 and at the top PBM-5 Bu. Nu. 59225 (squadron number 49) – Found at Wikipedia

“We should be landing at Treasure Cay Airport in about ten minutes.”

Lori couldn’t relax knowing they were flying into weather that was nothing like the forecast.

“I’m sure the pilot is competent.” Zach chided his wife on her former career as a Navy combat pilot. She never could relax when flying commercial. “It’s just a little fog.”

“The weather was supposed to be partly cloudy. Does that look like partly cloudy to you?”

He bent over her to look, giving her a quick kiss which made her smile.

“Fog’s clearing. What are those?”

She looked again. “Flight 19.” The pilot of their chartered plane wouldn’t know what the five aircraft were holding a parallel course, but she did. ATC Marsh Harbor must be going nuts.

“An antique air show?”

“Nope. Those five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers disappeared over seventy years ago. I’ve got to talk to our pilot.”

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google Maps image and location to inspire the creation of a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 149.

Today, the Pegman takes us to Treasure Cay, Bahamas. Wikipedia wasn’t particularly revealing about the location, and while the larger environment of the Abaco Islands has an interesting history, I felt a bit lazy this morning and decided not to do all that much research.

The Bahamas are on the northern edge of the Bermuda Triangle, and while I don’t believe the triangle really is some sort of mystical or otherwise mysterious portal to other times or dimensions, I thought I’d give Flight 19, five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared in the triangle on 5 December 1945, a way to finally get home, albeit almost 73 years late.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

28 thoughts on “Flight 19

    • I haven’t seen Close Encounters since it was first released in the theaters, but there have been a number of fictional tales featuring both the triangle and Flight 19, so I guess I’m simply adding to the canon. Thanks.

      Liked by 1 person

  1. This is great! Really enjoyed this story. Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle really captures the imagination. I have flown into this airport many times, including when the weather was like in your story. But my brush with the mysterof it happened when I was in a small plane. The pilot pointed out a wave-lashed rock in the middle of nowhere and said his brother used to be the lighthouse keeper there–until he vanished. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/great-isaac-cay

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  2. Most cool. I love what you did with this story. That would be incredible to see those Avengers still flying and not crashed at all, stuck in some kind of temporal stasis. There’s a real story there if the pilots survived and land. The world they know has changed so much

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  3. I like the way you brought Flight 19 into the story. I like even more the reversal of conventional roles, making her the Navy combat pilot. You tell the story fluently and well, James. Nice one!

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  4. Nice take on the prompt and I read the comments too – and I did not know this was a myth – I thought maybe the bermuda triangle was some type of force of air…

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