Mystery of Flight 19 and the Bermuda triangle myth - Fort Lauderdale

  

By Jane Feehan

One of the most enduring stories of Fort Lauderdale and World War II is that of missing Flight 19.

Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor led a squadron of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that took off from the U.S. Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, at about 2 p.m. December 5, 1945. This mission was to take 14 crewmen (an additional member remained ashore because of a hangover) on its last training flight. The planes were to fly 77 miles due east to Great Stirrup Key, then 84 miles north to Great Sale and back to Fort Lauderdale. Another squadron flew the same route 30 minutes ahead.

At around 4 p.m. Taylor radioed that both his compasses were not working. He said he was in the Keys but didn’t know how far down and wasn’t sure how to get back to Fort Lauderdale. The last discernible radio transmission at 5:25 p.m. estimated location  at about 200 miles north of Miami.

The dark blue 14,000-pound Avenger, built by Eastern Aircraft under license from Grumman, was the largest single-engine plane ever built; it proved to be a reliable aircraft during World War II. On the December 5 mission, Flight 19 had enough fuel until 8 p.m. that night. The planes would have sunk immediately if ditched into the ocean.

Avenger aircraft 
Florida State Archives

A decision was made to search for Taylor and the squadron two hours after the last communication.

A sixth plane with 13 on board tasked as a rescue team took off at 7:30 p.m. and also not heard from again. A ship's crew reported having seen a mid-air flame, possibly an explosion and later an oil slick. For five days hundreds of planes searched for the 27 missing crewmen. Nothing more was ever found of the rescue plane or the five Avengers of Flight 19.

The U.S. Navy assumes Flight 19 ran out of fuel east of Florida and sank in storm-churned waters. Lieutenant Charles Taylor was absolved of responsibility for its fate; bad weather was deemed as probable cause of the mystery. Some of his peers thought Taylor to be a poor navigator. A news story written years after the disappearance reported he once got lost flying out of a base in the Keys and wound up on a raft in the Caribbean for five days.

Flight 19 has been the subject of myth since 1945, and at times, attributed to Bermuda Triangle energies—especially after the idea was first floated in the Miami Herald, Sept. 17, 1950.  One certainty prevails: it hasn’t been the only flight – military or civilian – that’s gone missing in those waters or in other oceans of the world. 

See Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum, A salute to Flight 19:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2014/03/naval-air-station-fort-lauderdale.html

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami News, Dec. 5, 1985.

Palm Beach Post, Dec. 7, 1945.

Miami News, Dec. 7, 1945.

Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq15-1.htm

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, lost military flights, Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale during WWII, World War II in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale history, 

film researcher, Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian

Prohibition and the only legal hanging in Fort Lauderdale

Building circled  Coast Guard site of
Alderman
hanging 1929
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Rum running from the Bahamas to southeast Florida seemed an adventurous profession during Prohibition (1920-1933). That perception changed for South Floridians in 1927 when a federal agent and two U.S. Coast Guarders were murdered at sea after chasing down a boat carrying rum.

Aug. 7, 1927, Secret Service Agent Robert K. Webster was on his way to Bimini aboard Cutter 249 from U.S. Coast Guard Base Six in Fort Lauderdale to investigate a counterfeiting ring. Along the way, he and the crew stopped a suspicious-looking boat skippered by James Horace Alderman. 

Alderman and his mate, Robert Weech, denied they had liquor, but 160 cases--a small load--were found. After they were arrested and brought on board the cutter, Alderman found a gun and shot Webster and Boatswain Sidney Sanderlin in the back, severely wounded Machinist Victor Lamby (who died later that day) and shot cook Jodie Hollingsworth (who survived).  Alderman told the remaining Coast Guard crew he was going to take them out to the Gulfstream and make them jump into the sea. Weech broke a fuel line and threw a match into the patrol boat but it failed to ignite.

The Coast Guard crew managed to subdue the rumrunners when their boat wouldn’t start. With assistance from Base Six, the surviving Coast Guarders brought the two back to Fort Lauderdale where they were charged with piracy and murder.

It took two years to convict the rumrunners; Weech testified against Alderman and received a sentence of a year and a day. Alderman was sentenced to death by hanging. A new federal piracy law of the time required that the death sentence be carried out in the port city the “pirate” was brought. Broward County did not want to perform the execution, so the Coast Guard agreed to carry out the sentence.

While incarcerated, Alderman found religion and wrote a book about his life. His wife appealed to the White House for executive clemency three times but was denied (or ignored). As the hanging day approached, the media were blocked from covering the event.

A few civilians and Dr. Elliot M. Hendricks, a Fort Lauderdale physician and Public Health Service and Quarantine Officer for Coast Guard Base Six, witnessed the execution at the base’s seaplane hangar Aug. 17, 1929. It stands as the only legal hanging ever held in Broward County.

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

Miami News, Aug. 16, 1929, p.1, 2

Miami News, Aug. 17, 1929, p. 4.

Miami News, Aug. 9, 1929.

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2005.

Weiding, Philip and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966.

Willoughby, Malcom, Commander USCGR. Rum War at Sea. U.S Government Printing Office, 1964.

Tags: Florida Prohibition history, Fort Lauderdale Prohibition history, Fort Lauderdale history, Florida history Fort Lauderdale, rum runners, bootleggers, film researcher

Houses of Refuge, Fort Lauderdale and New River House No. 4

Courtesy of Broward County Historical Commission

By Jane Feehan

  

A swim to land after surviving a ship wreck did not guarantee seamen safety on Florida’s east coast during its early days. Human bones discovered over the years are testimony to onshore tribulations of those who managed to escape sinking ships. Florida was a wild, desolate place with sandy barrier islands that offered fresh water only to those with shovels who knew where to dig.

Survival odds climbed a notch or two in 1876 when the U.S government built five Houses of Refuge spaced 25 miles apart from the Indian River Inlet south to Cape Florida.

Patterned on the Massachusetts Humane Society’s Houses of Refuge, each Florida refuge was run by a paid keeper on a permanent basis. The keeper, paid $400 yearly, was tasked with providing food, water and shelter to the ship wrecked and to patrol coastal waters for wreck survivors.

“New River House No. 4” went up near today’s Hugh Taylor Birch State Park (Bonnet House).  In 1891 it was moved to the Bahia Mar area, site of one of the old forts (a fort marker sits there, near the base of a bridge over A1A). The first keeper of Fort Lauderdale’s House of Refuge was Washington (Wash) Jenkins. He was replaced seven years later by Edwin Ruthven Bradley.

One of these houses still stands on Hutchinson Island in Martin County and serves as The House of Refuge Museum.

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
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 *Bradley went on to secure a contact for mail delivery between Jupiter and Miami. As mail contractor, he shared delivery duties with Ed Hamiliton, known to us as the Barefoot Mailman who apparently drowned in the Hillsboro Inlet in 1887.

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Sources:

Broward Legacy, Vol 1, No. 1. Life Saving Station #4 by Eugene E. Wiley, 1974.

Weidling, Philip and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966. 

Broward County Historical Commission

Palm Beach Historical Society

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Florida history, houses of refuge, history of Florida

Broward County's Black-White teacher exchange and desegregation

By Jane Feehan

Though public schools in the U.S. were ordered to desegregate in 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education), they remained segregated for decades in schools across the nation and in Broward County, Florida.

When Broward County announced its Black-White teacher exchange program was a success in March 1966, it made news.

The pilot exchange program was conducted for a week, with no major problems reported William Drainer, Broward County elementary education supervisor. 

White teachers were sent to teach Black students, Black teachers taught in White schools. Sixteen elementary schools participated in the program.  Teachers, parents, and students favorably evaluated the exchange afterward, leading to plans for a second exchange weeks later at 16 different schools.

“A good teacher is a good teacher no matter where he teaches,” said Drainer. A teacher is a teacher.

Apparently the program did little to abate resistance to desegregation by parents and some county politicians. In August of 1966, Broward County did not (at first) sign federal guidelines for desegregation, jeopardizing $4.5 million in federal funds. A confrontation among different stakeholders brought the county back to the drawing board.

By 1970 there were four public school systems in the South that refused to bus students to desegregate: Dade and Broward counties in Florida and two counties in North Carolina. 

Miami-based attorney Ellis Rubin, on behalf of United Stand for America, Inc., filed a petition against busing in the court. The group, which was also headed by Rubin, contended that a recently adopted state law prohibited expenditures of state or county funds for desegregation purposes. 

Based on that reasoning, a judge granted temporary injunction to prevent busing. Eventually, Broward County received a $1.7 million federal grant to help pay for the school buses but lost that temporarily for noncompliance to federal requirements.

William Drainer, acting superintendent of Broward Schools in 1970, fully endorsed the transfer of 500 teachers and 3,000 students. Though his pilot program four years prior underscored a teacher was a teacher, it did not take into account politicians. 

The busing controversy was not resolved until the early 1970s. Today, many desegregated schools in Broward and Miami-Dade are once again minority schools.

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale News, March 17, 1966

Palm Beach Post, Jul 16, 1966

Palm Beach Post, Jul 23, 1966

St. Petersburg Times, Jul 24, 1966

Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Dec. 22, 1969

Palm Beach Post, Aug. 26, 1970

 Tags: African American history, Broward County history,  Broward County in the 1960s, Broward County in the 1970s,

Trailblazer Dr. Mizell served African Americans of Fort Lauderdale, Belle Glade

By Jane Feehan

Dr. Von Delaney Mizell (1910-1973), familiar to many in Fort Lauderdale for providing medical care to his African American community and establishing the Fort Lauderdale NAACP chapter in 1938, also served as a voice for minorities in Belle Glade, near Lake Okeechobee.

Son of Dania pioneers, Mizell lived in Belle Glade (span unknown to this writer) where his wife, Ida, operated a nursing home. Dr. Mizell served as the home’s physician but also commuted to Fort Lauderdale to practice medicine.

In 1971, reporter Janice Gould of the Palm Beach Post, wrote of a funding controversy swirling about two hospitals - Everglades Memorial and Glades General – in Belle Glade. She interviewed Mizell about the hospitals. He claimed care for the poor there was inferior and substandard to that “received almost anywhere in the U.S.”                                                                                     

Mizell had applied to practice at Glades General once a year from 1962 until he was accepted as staff in 1970 – but not allowed to perform surgery, his specialty. Gould wrote that Mizell's background included studies at the University of Pennsylvania with a residency at Howard University. Other records indicate he also attended Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Decades before - 1938 - in Fort Lauderdale, Mizell, with Dr. James Franklin Sistrunk, founded Provident Hospital. The facility served the Black community until desegregation of Broward General Hospital and other facilities in 1964. Even so, neither doctor is mentioned in the first written history of Fort Lauderdale, Checkered Sunshine (1966). Mizell, according to news accounts (if not the city's first history book) never stopped speaking for those who needed the most help in Fort Lauderdale, or Belle Glade.

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Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 28, 1971

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~flgsbc/resources/biographies_q-s.html

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Great Floridians 2000




Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale African-American history, history of blacks in Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale gets "cosmopolitan" with ice plant - 1911

In 1911 the state of Florida  approved the charter of the Town of Fort Lauderdale. It was also the year of its first utility, the Fort Lauderdale Ice and Light Company. One of the town’s founders, Tom Bryan, proposed the formation of the company as a way to provide ice for railroad cars of vegetables bound for the north. Electricity would power machinery to make the ice and additional power would go to consumer use. Few houses were wired for electricity but it was a start. The story below amusingly refers to a "cosmopolitan air" as one benefit of the project.

The Miami News (March 20, 1911 edition)

 FT LAUDERDALE TO HAVE ICE PLANT SOON

“Watch us grow.” This is the slogan at Fort Lauderdale and Progresso. This section is to have an up-to-date ten ton ice plant at once … in a very few weeks the residents here will have these modern improvements, which together with the other many evidences of progress will lend to this flourishing town a cosmopolitan air not heretofore anticipated by even the most optimistic promoter.

It was just the beginning of Fort Lauderdale's "cosmopolitan" image; telephone service was to make it debut in 1914. Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
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Other sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Weidling, Philip J. and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags: Florida history, Fort Lauderdale Centennial, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale

The Liston-Clay fight in Miami Beach, a star is born

Feb. 25, 1964 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

It was announced in December 1963 that a matchup between boxing champ Sonny Liston and the brash Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) would be held at the Miami Beach Convention Hall in February, 1964. 

The attorney representing Liston was Martha Jefferson Louis, wife of famed boxer Joe Louis. Miami millionaire Bill MacDonald and boxing promoter Chris Dundee were instrumental in bringing the historic fight to Miami Beach.

MacDonald guaranteed the pugilists $625,000 for the “live gate,” revenue derived from the sale of seats that sold for $20-$250. With 16,000 seats in the hall, a sellout would garner $1.1 million. Liston would get 40 percent, Clay, 22 ½.  MacDonald needed $800,000 to break even. Closed circuit TV would generate even more money after Theater Network Television took its 15 percent. 

MacDonald’s expectations merged with differing expectations for the outcome of the fight.

Some thought the pairing a mismatch; Clay, at 22, was thought to be too young—not ready—to beat the powerful and ferocious Liston, nicknamed “Big Bear.” About 30 years old (he was not sure of his birth date), Liston had a 35-1 record with 24 knockouts.

“No one could ever convince me that anyone could beat Sonny Liston,” said Dick Cami, one-time boxing manager and owner of Miami Beach’s Peppermint Lounge. “He had it all—the weight, the jaw, the punch and the reach ... he had unusually long arms.”

The Associated Press reported Liston stood to earn $1.6 million in a fight that may not last three rounds. Liston had anticipated no more than three rounds. Others mused it would be a good fight because Clay, “the Louisville Lip,” had already won 19 fights, 15 by knockouts. He was fast on his feet and fast with the punches.   Clay, 1960 Olympic Games light heavyweight gold medalist, already known for his dramatic outbursts (and poetry), claimed he would win in eight, five or three rounds. In any case, he planned to “upset the whole world.”

Sparring for the Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1964 fight began immediately. The two snarled at each other when meeting up accidentally at Dundee’s Fifth Street Gym where Clay was training with Angelo Dundee. Messages were exchanged before the big event with Liston claiming Clay was “his million dollar baby.” Clay’s poetic yet taunting prediction began with: Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat; If Liston goes back an inch farther he’ll end up in a ringside seat.

Liston and Clay knew how to display both sides of their personalities. The Big Bear, a guest at the Casablanca Hotel on Miami Beach, played unofficial entertainment director, shaking hands and hamming it up by the pool lifting women into the air while husbands snapped pictures with their Brownie cameras. Ed Sullivan introduced Liston and Joe Louis sitting together in the audience at the Deauville Hotel for the Beatles' appearance on his show.*

Clay worked just as hard to let the world know who he was.

Ali in 1978,
Courtesy of the Maryland Stater

“To know Cassius, like the saying goes, was to love him,” Cami said.  Before the fight, Clay came into the Peppermint Lounge to visit (but never drink) with singer Dee Dee Sharp who had recently recorded the hit Mashed Potatoes. “He was in every sense of the word a gentleman and definitely not a womanizer,” recalled Cami.  One night the young fighter asked Cami if he could park his bus outside the lounge.

“He had a bus with a giant picture of him on each side and the 79th Street Causeway (where the Peppermint Lounge was located) was a perfect place for it to be seen," Cami said.

Clay’s public relations campaign continued. A few days after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Beatles stopped by the Fifth Street Gym where he playfully lifted one or two of them off their feet for the press.

The days for playing hard and training harder quickly slipped away as the main event approached.

During weigh-in the morning of the big day, the two continued the taunting. Clay’s outbursts were so wild that he was later fined by the Miami Boxing Commission. They eventually got down to business. Clay, at 6’3” weighed 210 pounds while 6’ 1” Liston weighed in at 218 pounds. The reach of the Louisville Lip was two inches shorter than that of the Big Bear. The fight was on.

Liston, a 7-1 favorite, came out like a bear for the first three rounds, but suddenly lost advantage to the younger Clay. The Louisville Lip landed a punch that left a deep gash beneath Liston’s eye. It bled heavily and later needed eight stitches. When the bell rang for the seventh round, Liston remained in the corner; his shoulder was reportedly injured. Clay was declared heavyweight champ of the world.  “I am the greatest,” the 22-year-old yelled. He had indeed upset the world. He was the greatest.

The outcome did not prove as pleasant for Bill MacDonald. Only 6,297 seats were sold out of the 16,000 in the hall. A news story reporting Cassius Clay had joined ranks with the Black Muslims turned spectators away who took a dim view of the group. Others reported seeing Clay with Malcolm X.

Whatever the reasons, the live gate brought in only $402,000; Liston (who died in 1970) reportedly received $367,000. MacDonald was mentioned as a defendant the following year in a law suit resulting from the fight.

After the historic fight, Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali. According to Cami, Angelo Dundee told him efforts by the Black Muslims to fire him and hire one of their own were spurned by Ali. The young fighter was smart; he remained loyal to the trainer who helped him earn his title.

Ali fought his last match in 1981, ending a career of 61 fights with 56 wins and 37 knock outs. The fighter who took control over his own image from the beginning became as mellow and majestic as an aging lion. Once one of the most recognized faces on the globe, Muhammad Ali died June 3, 2016 at 74.  Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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* It was a banner year for Miami Beach: the Beatles, the Liston-Clay fight and then the Jackie Gleason Show announced its plans to broadcast from the city.

Miami News, Dec. 6, 1963

Miami News, Dec. 10, 1963

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 23, 1964

Palm Beach Daily News, Jan. 7, 1965

Kleinberg, Howard. Miami Beach: A History. Miami. Centennial Press (1994)

Tags: Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, Liston-Clay fight 1964, Miami Beach in the 1960s, Dick Cami, Peppermint Lounge, film researcher, boxing history, Miami Beach history