Bermuda Triangle mystery still haunts - 40 years after Milwaukee's 440th Airlift Wing crew disappeared
Hoodoo
40 years after plane's disappearance, families have no answers
Dec. 17, 2005
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/dec05/378647.asp
The last words were innocuous: "Roger. Miami overseas, 6567."
It was probably Louie Giuntoli's voice. The 41-year-old pilot of the
C-119 Flying Boxcar sounded calm on the radio as he acknowledged
switching to a clearer frequency of 6567 kilocycles.
He didn't sound like a man in distress.
He didn't sound like a man about to disappear.
The crew from Milwaukee's 440th Airlift Wing was flying over the
Atlantic Ocean south of Florida on the heavily traveled Yankee Route.
Though maps don't identify the area as such, it's known as the Bermuda
Triangle. Another half-hour and the 10 men on board should have
arrived at their destination, Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas.
It was a clear night with good flying weather. When they didn't land,
radio traffic controllers started calling Plane No. 680. The crew
didn't answer.
Nothing more was heard from Plane No. 680. Nothing was found. Not the
men. Not their aircraft. Only a few scraps of debris that could have
been tossed out of the cargo plane.
It's as if they were just swallowed up by the turquoise waters.
That was 40 years ago. It's been four decades of silence. And pain.
For the families and friends and colleagues of the missing 440th crew,
their questions will never be answered. And even though the Air Force
Reserve wing in Milwaukee will soon close, Plane No. 680 hasn't been
forgotten.
All that is left now is a plaque dedicated to the crew that hangs at
the 440th headquarters and a C-119 plane painted exactly like the
missing aircraft that's on display near one of the facility's gates.
The loss left a hole in the 440th - an entire flight crew plus
experienced maintenance specialists. Kids grew up without their dads,
wives continued their lives without their mates, co-workers wondered
about the fate of their friends and colleagues.
Two brothers, different fates
It was a routine mission: drop off an engine and a maintenance crew on
Grand Turk Island, pick up bundles of concertina wire in Puerto Rico
and drop them off in the Dominican Republic. Then return home to
Milwaukee.
Dick Nugent was a loadmaster for the 440th, and so was his brother
Thomas. Dick Nugent had just finished a week of air drops at Fort
Benning, Ga., and since he had reached his allotment of military
flights, his 30-year-old brother took his place on Plane No. 680.
"He was my kid brother. I got off and he got on," said Dick Nugent,
now 72.
Dick Nugent knows he could just as easily have been on that plane on
that day, and it would be his brother Thomas who would be asking
questions four decades later.
"I wanted to go down there and help in the search, but they wouldn't
let me. It was awful hard to take," he said.
Phyllis Adams dropped off her husband, Milt, 36, a flight engineer, at
the 440th headquarters at Mitchell Field on June 5, 1965. It was a
Saturday. Her daughters, 14 and 8, and 7-year-old son came along.
"Well, myself and my three kids took him to the airport and he said
goodbye and he said, 'I'll see you in a few days.' And that was it,"
said Phyllis Adams, 73, who met her husband while she was on a date
with Milt's cousin.
Milt Adams disappeared not long before he would have celebrated his
10th wedding anniversary. Someone from the 440th called her the day
after she dropped her husband off and told her his plane was overdue
but that she shouldn't worry.
"Famous last words," she said.
She has thought of him every day since June 5, 1965. She has questions
that will never be answered. She has read the official accident report
and noted the number of pages that are missing or blacked out.
"Let me put it this way: That was a big aircraft. There were 10 people
on board. They had another engine on board. There was luggage,"
Phyllis Adams said. "You mean to tell me that if that plane crashed
that nothing was found?
"I don't buy it, I will never buy it."
Also on the plane that night: the co-pilot, 1st Lt. Lawrence F. Gares,
27, of Milwaukee; the navigator, Capt. Richard J. Bassett, 32, of
Milwaukee; and the maintenance crew, Raoul P. Benedict, 35, of
Milwaukee; Duane W. Brooks, 32, of Caledonia; Norman J. Mimier, 34 of
Muskego; and Frank Ellison, 41, of Muskego.
A 10th person, John W. Lazenry, was also on board. The Air Force
airman was picked up in Miami and hitching a ride to the Bahamas on
the Flying Boxcar, which got its name from the bulky cargo area
between the distinctive twin tails.
Crews used to joke that the C-119 traveled so slowly that the Earth
rotated underneath it.
Other planes vanished, too
The Milwaukee C-119 wasn't the first, the biggest, nor the last
aircraft to disappear in the Bermuda Triangle.
Though the triangle has been the subject of many books and TV
documentaries, Plane No. 680 is simply one more incident in a long
list of mysterious disappearances in the area loosely defined as
stretching from Bermuda to Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In 1945, 14 men in five TBM Avengers flying in formation on a routine
two-hour exercise on a sunny day disappeared after leaving Fort
Lauderdale, Fla. A PBM Mariner and its 13-person crew sent out to
search for the missing planes vanished, too. Six planes and 27 men.
Gone.
In 1948, a DC-3 with 31 people on board disappeared while flying from
Puerto Rico to Miami during the Christmas holiday. The DC-3 signaled
Miami air traffic controllers when it was about 50 miles away. Then
nothing.
Gian J. Quasar, author of "Into the Bermuda Triangle," said aircraft
have vanished as radio tower controllers watched them. Many
disappeared in good weather, many were being tracked on radar when the
signal was suddenly lost, and quite a few have been lost in relatively
shallow water.
"One thing is in common: They don't send out (a distress) signal,
there's no indication they had an impact, and they all vanish," Quasar
said. "One or two you can dismiss, but we're talking about hundreds"
of disappearances.
Planes and ships were sent out to look for Plane No. 680, but nothing
was found during the days-long search of 54,000 square miles - no oil
slick, no life rafts, no debris. A few months later, Milwaukee
newspapers reported that the Air Force eventually found a wheel chock
with the plane's number, and near Grand Rock Cay in the Bahamas, part
of a box lid with "ION KIT" stenciled on it - from a "Contact Mission
Kit" - turned up.
The discovery of debris is not mentioned in the 104-page Air Force
investigation report obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information
Act. Seventeen pages have been deleted from the report released to the
public, and numerous pages are blacked out because of personal
information about the crew and testimony from military officials.
Osbee "Sam" Sampson watched his friends get on the C-119 that day,
joked with them as he did on many other missions and saw them take off
at 10:51 a.m. A maintenance crew member who later became a loadmaster
and flew the same routes as the crew that disappeared, Sampson packed
four yellow 20-person life rafts and 20 one-person life rafts on the
plane for his friends in case something happened. Along with Sampson's
buddies, the life rafts were never seen again.
"Frank Ellison, I remember his last words to me. He told me to behave
myself. I told (Nugent), 'I hope they put enough food on the plane.'
Man, he could eat," said Sampson, now 69. "There wasn't a time when I
flew through the Bermuda Triangle that I didn't think that could
happen to me. There wasn't anything you could do about it."
The flying crew was seasoned, with thousands of flight hours between
them, and the maintenance crew were experts at their jobs, whether it
was propellers or engines. So if there was a mechanical problem on the
flight, there were plenty of people to take care of it.
Plane No. 680 landed at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida at 5:04
p.m., spent two hours and 43 minutes on the ground and took off at
7:47 p.m. ascending to 9,000 feet as it headed south to the Bahamas.
The radio chatter was routine. Then silence. Radio controllers in
Miami, New York, San Juan, Puerto Rico and Grand Turk Island tried to
find Plane No. 680 and asked each other if anyone had heard from the
crew.
The investigation report notes the time the Flying Boxcar would have
run out of fuel.
"It has to be an explosion or something for them not to say anything"
on the radio, said Sampson, noting that with all of the gear on board,
he was surprised that so little debris was discovered. "Even if you're
having trouble, you switch on the radio so they can track you. There
had to have been a big bang."
Word began to spread through the 440th the next day, a Sunday, that
one of their planes was missing. Instead of going to church, many
members went to the air wing's headquarters to talk, ask questions and
comfort each other.
Some visited the families of the missing. Most held out hope on that
first day and for the next few days that the crew would be found, said
Joe Davis, 73, who spent three decades with the unit.
Their lockers at the 440th were left untouched for months.
'There's got to be an answer'
This is what went through Davis' mind: Maybe they panicked, but that's
not likely since they were an experienced crew. Maybe it blew up, but
if it did, there would have been a lot of debris. Maybe there was an
engine failure and they tried to make an emergency landing on the
water, but there would have been debris. Maybe they were shot down by
a Cuban plane, but no oil slick was found.
"I think at the time everybody went through every scenario," said
Davis, who coincidentally sold Benedict a $10,000 life insurance
policy. "The hardest thing to dispel is there's got to be an answer.
"The crew was highly qualified. That's what makes it all harder that
there was some scenario that they couldn't handle."
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Article sidebar captions for "click to enlarge" thumbnail images on
the webpage:
Bermuda Triangle
For more than 10 years, the 440th Air Wing in Milwaukee has had a
C-119 Flying Boxcar on display at the unit, commemorating the
anniversary of the disappearance of a 440th Air Wing plane in the
Bermuda Triangle. Ten men and the C-119 were never heard from again
while flying from Florida to Grand Turk Island near the Bahamas.
Photo/Rick Wood
A plaque with the names of the 10 missing crewmen from a 1965 flight
of a C-119 Flying Boxcar through the Bermuda Triangle are on display
inside the 440th Air Wing.