Army & Navy: Flight into Mystery

A crisp, 20-knot wind was blowing over Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the sun was shining brilliantly when Lieut. Charles C. Taylor led his flight of five Navy torpedo bombers out over the Atlantic. To Instructor Taylor, combat-wise veteran of vast Pacific Ocean spaces, the routine navigation problem was simple. That was the last seen of him.

Taylor, his four student pilots and nine enlisted men (most of them marines) vanished. Horror was added when the first search-rescue plane, a flying boat with a crew of 13, also vanished; a passing ship reported that...