are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter. for information on our schedule of upcoming programs and the keep up with the latest history news. all we can come american history tv is featuring fort lauderdale florida. the city is named after major william lauderdale. he built a series of forth in the area after the second seminole war. c-span cities tour staff recently visited many sites great. learn more about fort lauderdale american history tv. collects the thing about the devils triangle is there are all kinds of things that have happened. flight 19 was a regular navigation mission, training mission. they would take off from the base and flight 19 would go used

outdoors the bahamas, there was an area where they would drop bombs. they would continue on another 70 miles or so in them would take a turn north very that they would go 100 miles, and make it turned back west towards fort lauderdale. the net result was that ever came back. the what he knows what happened to them. >> december 5 flight 45 -- flight 19 took off. there were 14 men total. they were supposed to take off and go east, and halfway on that leg there was a blue pointer and as they continued east, they made the next turn, another 70 miles to head north, northwest. after that turn, the leader of

the flight said to his trainees i think we are lost. we made a wrong turn, we need to go back to where we made that turn. along the coast, another pilot was flying any heard the conversation and said this is at 274, his call sign. he said you guys are having problems. he said yes, we seem to be lost, the compasses are out. i'm sure i'm over the florida keys. there no way he could be over the florida keys. initially, he identified himself as being out of miami. the reason he did this was it was the first group to fly out of fort lauderdale. he visually is looking down over these islands thinking he is over the florida keys, which is probably a mistake because i don't know he could get just north of there to the keys in a short. of time.

thinking he headed north. if he had due north, he would be going out into more open water. was getting later in the day, there was a front coming through. this is a december when it gets dark early. the accommodation of all those things these five planes became very confused, lost, and no one could communicate with them because the pilot who had been flying along the coast said i'm flying south, let it come down to you guys back. the instructor said no, we're fine. if he had done that, he wouldn't have found them, and he got because the radio transmission was getting worse and worse. his thoughts were that this fellow is and where he is should have been, he's going north out into the open water or it in lands and goes to the tower and says do you hear what is happening out there, i know where these guys are we me take the ready plane out and find them. they would let him take the ready plane. this all went on, started to get dark. they should have run out of gas about 7:00 and they did hear

some chatter between the planes, but nobody ever really communicated with them after that. they sent rescue planes out looking for them and one of them disappeared, with 13 men on board here it pretty much everyone is convinced that blew up. two ships witnessed an explosion when they went dark. the next morning, it started a huge search, 200 something planes and ships, all of and down the east coast and never found anything. they never found wreckage, flotation, nothing. it remains a mystery to this day. people are still looking, there are still a lot of different theories about what happened to them. one thing we found out about the training here was usually there were five trainer planes in the instructor planes. so six planes. on this picture there are six planes ready to go on a mission. the pilots and their instructor would go into this first floor of the tower, 10 feet, there's

another picture on the wall. get their instruction as to what the training mission was, given the plane and take off. one of the training planes had no oil pressure, can get the plane started. so that plane didn't go. otherwise it would have an six planes lost set of five planes lost. these of the controls right here, the place where they drop their bombs for practice. they did that on flight 19, that puts them on course really should have been. we have models in pictures, but there is an encrusted stick from inside the cockpit the pilot stick to control the plane. i was found in the ocean when they brought up the avenger. that crash they thought might even flight 19, but hasn't been proved to be true yet. the fellow they gave that to his john mayer. he is still actively pursuing what happened to flight 19. he donated that to the museum. members of the crew, by looking

at our website, they've read that we don't have pictures of this fellow war information, we have had three families send us pictures. this is one of the families of the men who was lost. this is the actual parchman said to his family signed by president truman. they have given that to the museum. it's also his logbook and pictures of him and fort lauderdale. all this just because they read in our website we didn't have information about it. we get a lot of information about people because it away, this will museum is almost the flight 19 museum. we all learn new things every day. it's not like we consider ourselves experts. but we look at everything and listen to everything and put things together. there is a letter from a fellow who is training out of miami who went out on a training mission the same day, same time. as he was coming back in the miami, it was cloudy and windy late in the day. all of a sudden he is over the city of miami about 40 minutes

faster than he thought he should have been. you couldn't figure out how that would happen. another letter was about in the beginning of the day december 5, the training group out here flew out of the mid-atlantic in west palm beach. morrison feels like what are you doing? and they say they were coming back from a training flight and they hit the wrong airport. there is a french publication that wrote the first article about the bermuda triangle or devil's triangle. it is still unsolved. there is a lot of good information that suggests it went down in the everglades. or they went out of the swamp in georgia. i think most people to really look at it think they went down about 100 miles off daytona. there's a fellow named john mayer who has devoted 40 years looking into this. he has written a great book about it. at his own expense, he has hired people to bring up an avenger

they found at the bottom of the ocean. when the challenger blew up. they were scouring and looking for pieces and they saw plane. they recognize it is probably a navy avenger. there was some suggestion, 90% certainty this was one of the flight 19 planes based on the numbers on the engine which were incomplete. but he was convinced that's what it went down. he was convinced that's when they went down before they brought this plane of. he continues to search. there just recently been articles have been written about a plane that was found just inland off sebastian way back. the fellow that found it called the navy and said there's a crash site here in the navy came out and took the plane of the two bodies that were there. i never told anybody what the plane was, if it was part of flight 19 or not. they are actually pursuing that information right now.

we just had an article a few weeks ago about it. people are still looking. >> throughout the week in, there can history tv is featuring fort lauderdale, florida. our staff regionally traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about fort lauderdale and other stops on the twoour at www.c-span.org. you are watching american history tv come all weekend, every weekend, c-span3. >> allied forces liberated the nazi concentration camps. for the next several weeks on american history tv, we will hear holocaust stories from those who live them. these interviews are part of the oral history collection at the united states holocaust memorial museum in washington dc. next, gerda weissmann klein talks about how the 1939 german invasion of whole and drastically changed your life