The Devil’s Triangle & Fraudulent Western Research, Part 1 Mark Hatmaker

 

[Bear with me through Parts 1 & 2 as we set the stage for the Revelation in Part 3. While, initially, this may seem to be nothing more than an exploration of the hallmark case of The Bermuda Triangle, it has a direct link to a blackmark on Western Historical Research. Now, dig in, as I’ve been putting this together for a long time, a lotta work here and the revelation, well, stay with me, you’ll see.]

Date: December 5, 1945, 2:10 p.m.

Location: Naval Air Station [NAS] Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Mission: Flight 19 comprised of 5 Avenger torpedo bombers crewed by 14 men head east over the Atlantic.

This is a training mission for the crews in the last stages of the training curricula.

The mission is headed by the more experienced Lt. Charles Taylor; the other 4 pilots possess less experience than Lt. Taylor.

Note: The 5 pilots had been recently transferred from the Keys, which they knew well. This mission was to take them towards the Bahamas over ocean they were less familiar with.

Mission Purpose: Practice bombing run at Hens and Chicken Shoals which lie 56 miles off the east coast of Florida.

Flight Path: 56 miles to the target, then continue eastward for an additional 67 miles, then north for 73 miles, then bear west southwest for 120 miles to return to the NAS in Fort Lauderdale.

Plotted on the map, the flight path is triangular.

3:40 p.m.

Lt. Robert Cox, pilot and flight instructor on another run, is about to land at the NAS in Fort Lauderdale when he overheard a radio transmission addressed to someone named Powers. [Powers was Captain Edward Powers, one of the Flight 19 pilots.]

Lt. Cox overheard Capt. Powers reply: “I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.”

Lt. Cox heard no immediate reply to Capt. Powers, so he established contact with Lt. Taylor, the Flight Leader, the man heard by Cox contacting Powers in the initial message.

Taylor told Lt. Cox that his compasses were not working and “I’m sure I’m in the Keys, but…I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.”

Lt. Cox not knowing Flight 19’s flight plan and assuming Lt. Taylor was correct advised: “If you are in the Keys fly north.”

Note: Lt. Taylor was mistaken. Flight 19 was not in the Keys. That was not part of their flight plan. Fort Lauderdale is 90 miles North of the Keys. No part of their triangular flight plan has them bearing South until well after the 140 miles eastward trek of the bombing and post bombing run.

Lt. Taylor, unfamiliar with the Bahamas is presumed to have mistaken this location for the Keys.

Lt. Cox, acting on good faith, advised the Northward turn.

When Lt. Taylor compounded the error of location with a turn northward from the Bahamas he would be leading the crews further out to sea.

Lt. Taylor was not necessarily operating incompetently. Spotty transmissions and poor communications were compounding the situation.

Overheard communications amongst the Flight 19 crews reveal dissension with Lt. Taylor’s “We’re in the Keys, let’s fly North” assessment.

The dissension rose to a point where the crews were urging Lt. Taylor to turn over command to one of the other student pilots.

He refused.

4:30 p.m.

Lt. Taylor radios a question that is received by the Port Everglades Boat Facility, an Air Sea Rescue Unit near Fort Lauderdale.

The question they received was: “Do you think, as my student does, that we should fly west?”

The Port Everglades Boat Facility, not knowing Flight 19’s location does not advise on course and simply logs the communication.

Note: If Flight 19 had flown West at this time [4:30 p.m.] they would have saved themselves.

4:45 p.m.

A transmission is heard from Lt. Tayor stating that he was leading Flight 19 north northeast for a short time, then due north “to make sure they were not over the Gulf of Mexico.”

Note: They left Fort Lauderdale due east. To be over the Gulf they would have had to have flown due West 110 miles passing over the landmass of Florida itself, a readily recognizable landmark.

Mistaking the Bahamas for the Keys led Lt. Tayor to assume he was over a body of water 110 miles in the opposite direction.

By this point, personnel on the ground were becoming concerned about Flight 19.

The day is turning to dusk and atmospheric interference was further deteriorating radio transmission.

One snippet that did get through was this complaint between two of the student pilots: “If we would just fly west, we would get home.”

[This would indeed have saved the crews.]

In contrast, Lt. Taylor had them fly north and then veer slightly east—even further out to sea.

5:15 p.m.

Lt. Taylor is heard by the Port Everglades Boat Facility addressing his pilots, “We are now heading west.”

He further counsels that they should all “join up”, as soon as one of them ran out of fuel, they would all go down together.

5:29 p.m.

The sun sets [it is December if you will recall.]

Darkness adds to the confusion.

Radio transmission has deteriorated all day long.

5:50 p.m.

The ComGulf Sea Frontier Evaluation Center is not certain, but may have pinpointed Flight 19’s position.

They have it plotted east of New Smyrna Beach, Florida and far to the north of the Bahamas.

6:00 p.m.

Brief radio contact is established with Flight 19.

Lt. Taylor is advised to switch to emergency frequency 3,000 kilocycles.

He refuses fearing that he and the other planes would fall out of communication.

With deteriorating signal, interference from Cuban coastal commercial radio and the inability of other coastal stations to receive the Fort Lauderdale training signal easily this decision essentially shuts Flight 19 off from the world.

Consider: Darkness. Radio Silence. A Flight Commander certain he is flying over a completely different body of water.

6:04 p.m.

Lt. Taylor is overheard ordering the other pilots to “turn around and go east again.”

Note: This order takes Flight 19 further out to sea.

6:06 p.m.

He repeats the order stating: “I think we have a better chance of being picked up.”

Lt. Taylor at this point is still under the impression is over the Gulf of Mexico.

[In Part 2 we will cover the Rescue Efforts, The Tragedy, The Investigation, Where the Legend Begins to Intrude and finally, discuss what all this has to do with Western Research. Stick with me, I promise the story is an infuriating jaw-dropper.]

Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life, Not Just Readin’ About It

The Black Box Warehouse

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker

 

Gunslinger by Ed Gorman

 

No lead-off quote; more about that in a moment.

This is an anthology of Western Stories, the full title being Gunslinger and Nine Other Action-Packed Stories of the Wild West.

In this volume we are treated to nine stories ranging from the late-80s thru the 90s and two non-fiction essays: “On Roy Rogers” and “Writing the Modern Western.”

Gorman is an author I have read much of and yet, and be advised this is the reader’s fault, he leaves very little impression on me.

Don’t get me wrong, the craft is there. There is a smoothness of tale that is undeniable.

There is simply some disconnection between this smoothness of a journeyman’s offerings and this reader that simply does not click.

I would easily rate the stories here as solid B’s top to bottom and yet, as I finished each one, I had to rouse myself to move on to the next.

All the elements are there but there is a remove there [to my eye], something that says, “Hmm, this is a skilled craftsman concocting what a good Western story should be” as opposed to the lived-in crispness of air from an author who has lived outdoors.

Gorman writes with a correctness to the genre that raises it above formula, but it strikes me that it is an “expertness” borne of research. There is an authenticity lacking as we find when Frank O’Rourke causally mentions the tang in the air after a brief rain, or Frank Bonham gets the naturalness of men sizing each other up no matter the encounter.

Gorman has craft. Gorman has skill.

If you have a fondness for Gorman, jump all over this volume and you will find much to enjoy.

Any fault in the volume here is likely on my end.

Sam Chance by Benjamin Capps

 

Chance mused about the way the young colored man found a place among them. “We three are not really southerners,” he thought, “certainly the Mexicans are not, and this is not really anything like the South at all.” This was that West he had thought about as bigger than the North and South put together, a place where an ex-slave could be a top hand or an ex-sergeant could be anything he was big enough to be.

This 1965 Spur Award Winner for Best Novel is, indeed, a fine work but there is a curious remove to it. A distance between the reader and the protagonist Sam Chance.

Capps knows his ranching, his cattle lore, his Texas history and politics. As evidenced in his 1964 novel Trail to Ogallala, that extensive knowledge rendered that narrative more as a cattle-drive procedural, rife with “How to” info than narrative drive. [That novel is also reviewed in this blog.]

This novel has a similar, “In the know” veracity to it, but it also is packed with incident. So much incident that it plays as a condensed epic.

It spans from the Civil War to 1922 and my page count has it at 261.

That may be the trouble. Capps has packed so much into this novel that he left the episodes and plot points intact, but we never really know much about Sam Chance himself. His character, his relations.

Sure, we are introduced to a raft of characters, but all seem there to speed along an expansive yarn.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fine novel, but it seems that it could easily be double its size so that we garner a bit of emotional resonance and not lose an ounce of that precious lore he is so knowledgeable with.

Nuggets of lore like the following.

Chance had trouble with prairie fires that fall. Some of them were set by spiteful farmers, whose crops had failed; some were set by careless cowhands; some were possibly set by nothing more than a steel shod hoof against a stone, for the grass was dry and thin like tinder. They usually fought the fires without water. They fought them by killing a cow and ripping her open for a drag. They would pull the carcass along the fire front by ropes from neck to saddle horn and from hind legs to saddle horn. It was hot, exhausting work for man and horse, dangerous when wind whipped the fire. The horses would give out, from nervous fear as much as from the work, and have to be relieved. The men worked on through it, breathing smoke through the bandanas, eyes smarting.

And that is the novel in a nutshell. A paragraph telling of a marvelous truth of the Western life. An incident that would easily make a chapter in prime McMurtry.

This is a good novel, and it is a rare thing to say, but at twice the length it might have been a great novel.

Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

 

At one time or another most of us at the Creek have been suspected of a degree of madness. Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity, and we are all individualists here.

This 1942 novel of rural Florida is rife with life, redolent with place. Observations and anecdotes abound picking out what is common to all human experience and perhaps rendered all the more noticeable as we garner it from a background of so few human characters.

Every human we encounter in Cross Creek has a story to tell about ourselves.

Old Aunt Martha Mickens, with her deceptive humility and her face like poured chocolate, is perhaps the shuttle that has woven our knowledge, carrying back and forth, with the apparent innocence of a nest-building bird, the most revealing bits of gossip; the sort of gossip that tells, not trivial facts, but human motives and the secrets of human hearts. Each of us pretends that she carries these threads only about others and never about us, but we all know better, and that none of us is spared.

The rural life, the frontier life as seen by one who actually lived it as opposed to how many from congested areas might see it.

Folks called the road lonely, because there is not human traffic and human stirring. Because I have walked it so many times and seen such tumult of life there, it seems to me one of the most populous highways of my acquaintance. I have walked it in ecstasy, and in joy it his beloved. Every pine tree, every gallberry bush, every passion vine, every joree rustling in the underbrush, is vibrant. I've walked it in trouble, and the wind in the trees beside me is easing. I have walked it in despair, and the red of the sunset is my own blood dissolving into the night's darkness. For all such things were on earth before us, and will survive after us, and is given to us to join ourselves with them and to be comforted.

Rawlings has a sincere gift. I’ve never encountered such a novel way to describe the annoyance of mosquitoes.

One would think that exposed neck, arms, the face would suffice the hungriest of insects. But the mosquito is a Freudian, taking delight only in the hidden places.

Rawlings’ limns the life of early rural Florida with such skill I feel the richer for having visited on the page, and the poorer for not having visited in actuality.

We at the Creek draw our conclusions about the world from our intimate knowledge of one small portion of it.

Old Boss said, “The Creek don't amount to anything. The people don't amount to anything. But if you're sick and have no money, they'll cook for you and fetch it to you, and they'll doctor you, and if you get past their doctoring, they'll send for a doctor and pay his bill. And if you die, they'll take up a collection and bury you. I figure it's just as close to heaven here as any other place.”

Easy A.

“Grandpa and the Miracle Grindstone” by Joe David Brown

 

Women were still weeping over the graves at Gettysburg when my grandpa came to Walesburg. Nobody ever quite figured out where he came from or why he came. He just showed up one night in a blue-serge store-bought suit and eased his way into Jere Higham's place. Grandpa walked quietly to the end of the bar and put down his Bible. He didn't have to call for silence, because it followed him through the long smoky room like a hound dog.

Grandpa cleared his throat and began to speak. “Boys, I'm you’re new preacher,” he said, “and I aim to give my first sermon right here.”

A couple of General Lee's men still in uniform, began to laugh. Grandpa didn't even glance that way. He just reached under his long coat and pulled out two long-barreled cavalry pistols and slapped them on the bar.

“Either I speak,” he said, “or these do!”

This 1956 short-story by Mr. Brown is a mini-marvel. He is also the author of Addie Pray, which became the charming Oscar-winning film, Paper Moon about a 11-year-old con artist and her older partner.

The story feels like a Southern shaggy dog story, that morphs into one of tough-minded faith, and right before one suspects that it may turn mawkish ala a lesser episode of The Waltons, Mr. Brown kicks his moral into high gear and leaves us with both a fine story and a firm sense of the kind of boot-strappin’ faith that likely sustained many of pioneer spirit.

Damned, well done.

I will now be tracking down more of Mr. Brown’s work.

Do You Fear The Wind by Hamlin Garland

 

I’d like to offer a poem by Hamlin Garland, the author of Main-Travelled Roads [reviewed favorably on this blog.]

It is a bracing bit of Western thought, in his case, Mid-Western thought.

May you enjoy!

Do You Fear The Wind by Hamlin Garland

Do you fear the force of the wind,

The slash of the rain?

Go face them and fight them,

Be savage again.

Go hungry and cold like the wolf,

Go wade like the crane:

The palms of your hands will thicken,

The skin of your cheek will tan,

You'll grow ragged and weary and swarthy,

But you'll walk like a man!

“Enter Ramona, Laughing” by Wayne Ude

 

“As usual in the evening, Ramona Laughing sits on a stool at the bar’s end farthest from the door and stares at her hands, spread out before her on the polished bar top. They are small hands, like her grandmother's, but useless: good only to excite a man. Ramona's glass is neglected, half filled with warming beer. The bar as yet is quiet; it will fill up later, and Ramona may or may not notice: she also is quiet tonight. Some nights she may be feverish in her conviviality, and others sullen, almost murderous in her silence. She once stabbed a man, though not seriously, and it is widely agreed that he should have known better.

This 1975 story from Ude was selected by Jon Lewis as one of the 100 Best Western Short Stories of all time. It was a devil to track down; I found it in the fall 1975 issue of Transatlantic Review. It was later collected into a slim anthology of like stories titled Buffalo and Other Stories.

This story clocks in at a mere 5 pages, but damn does it pack a whole lotta livin’ in that brief page count.

It captures despair, loss of connection with tribal culture, smalltown barroom desperation and a bit of “Taken for granted” indigenous mysticism.

In short, a mini masterpiece of observation, well worth a read by the mature reader who appreciates that the genre can do so much more, be so much more than formula.

Review in a single word: Superlative!