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This is actually the lead ship of Flight 19.
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Wow!
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The exact same plane as this is Flight 19.
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Yes.
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The final word to the men on Flight 19
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have been studied and pored over.
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Every sentence and word analyzed, in depth, by
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the Navy's after action report.
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And then of course, re-analyzed by armchair historians
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and hacky curse TV shows.
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Walk me through it.
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What happened to Flight 19?
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What's the deal?
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TERRY RUSH: It was a training flight for navigation training,
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believe it or not.
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So we just got back from the Sapona, which we dove on.
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That was their target.
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So we know they dropped their bombs on the Sapona.
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TERRY RUSH: Correct.
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What was their path after that?
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TERRY RUSH: Due east.
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Due east.
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For another 60, 70 miles.
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OK.
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Then make a turn to the north, northwest.
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What happened?
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It's a big mystery to this day.
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Right.
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Nobody knows exactly what happened to them.
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Nobody knows, but there are theories.
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Colleen Sterling is the LeBron James of aviation probability
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analysis.
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You maybe didn't know there was a LeBron James of that.
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After two years of searching for Air France Flight 447,
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Colleen was brought in as part of a small team
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to reanalyze the data.
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They found the wreckage in less than five days.
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COLLEEN STERLING: The first thing
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we did is looked at the 500 page Navy report that came out.
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The communications, all the radar hits that they had,
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and we wrote a chronology.
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The key transmissions, everything is map based, right?
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Right.
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COLLEEN STERLING: So I'll put like where they launched from
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and the time.
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And then I'll draw the line where they were supposed to go.
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And then I can calculate with the wind and their heading,
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how long it should have taken them to get
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to their first turn point. - Uh-huh.
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COLLEEN STERLING: I thought about that first turn point
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and then I said, well, where could
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they have gone from there?
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They were trying to go back to the northwest,
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but the wind was blowing them and they may have not
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made the turn sharp enough and might have got significantly
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blown to a different heading.
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Powers.
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What is your compass reading, Powers?
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I don't know where we are.
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Must have gotten lost after that last turn.
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NT-28, this is FT-74, what is your trouble?
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Oh, both my compasses are out and I'm trying to find
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Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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So this is the compass here.
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TERRY RUSH: That's the magnetic compass.
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That's the magnetic compass.
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So he would be looking at this. What else would he look at?
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TERRY RUSH: He would look at that and then he'd-- down
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on his instrument panel, you have what's called
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the gyrocompass here.
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That you set this with this knob to agree with this.
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To agree with-- to that.
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TERRY RUSH: This bounces around.
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Sure.
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TERRY RUSH: That one is very stable.
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COLLEEN STERLING: Taylor, who's the flight lead,
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was talking about the compass didn't look right.
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He started to get confused.
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Don't they know they have to get back?
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COLLEEN STERLING: Taylor thought that they needed
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to fly to the northeast because he thought they
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were over the Florida Keys.
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How did you think--
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COLLEEN STERLING: It's very hard to imagine
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him getting that lost.
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He didn't seem to have his wits about him on this flight.
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Then you hear them arguing on the radio.
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It's really sad.
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But--
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We've just passed over a small island
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and we have no other land in sight.
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Turn on your emergency IFF gear.
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Or do you have it on?
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IFF gear was off.
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I'm turning it on now.
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What's IFF gear?
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TERRY RUSH: IFF, that's an acronym for Identification,
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Friend or Foe.
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OK.
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TERRY RUSH: Right here, for example, see this says 1,200.
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And then IFF, they would have given him a code to squawk.
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To put as friend.
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TERRY RUSH: Put in there and it would
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be picked up on their radar.
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He didn't have it on.
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He didn't have it on.
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Should he have had it on?
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Especially if I want help in finding out where I am.
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Right.
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FT-28 to [inaudible] [inaudible] 3,
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one of the planes in the flight thinks if we went 270 degrees,
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we could hit land.
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TERRY RUSH: 270, that's due west.
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Somebody with a decent compass or somebody else is like,
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hey we just go 270.
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We're going to hit land eventually.
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TERRY RUSH: To get to their bombing target,
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they flew due east. - Right.
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TERRY RUSH: Well just fly due west and it'd take you back--
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[interposing voices]
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TERRY RUSH: --where you came from.
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Yeah, right.
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We'll hit land some point.
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TERRY RUSH: Yeah.
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FT-28 all planes in flight, change
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course to 0 90 for 1 minute.
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So now they're going--
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TERRY RUSH: Back east again. - Powers.
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Back east again.
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And if we just fly west, we would get home.
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Hold it.
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Head west.
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[inaudible]
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COLLEEN STERLING: Powers, who is the ranking guy on the flight,
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he kept saying we need to go west.
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Right.
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COLLEEN STERLING: And then it gets
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corroborated with a radar track that came from the Solomons
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aircraft carrier.
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And where did that see them?
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COLLEEN STERLING: The radar track
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showed aircraft going south.
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Huh.
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COLLEEN STERLING: Over land.
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There's a good chance that it could
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be somewhere in this mid-peninsula, east coast
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of Florida region.
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So that wouldn't surprise you at all.
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COLLEEN STERLING: No.
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The model supports that.
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Wow.
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We are now flying 270 degrees.
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We will fly 270 degrees until we hit the beach
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or run out of gas.
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[dramatic music]
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And now they know they're in trouble because it's like--
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TERRY RUSH: They're out of time.
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They're going to run out of gas.
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TERRY RUSH: Yeah.
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And they just don't have a clue where they are.
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When the first plane drops below 10 gallons,
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we all go down together.
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Everyone understand that?
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[dramatic music]