The following article was published by The Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel, Wisconsin, USA, Dec. 17th, 2005
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."
