Thomas Garner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gunner on PBM, July 10, 1945

Tom Garner’s disappearance is perhaps the best place to introduce the

strange disappearance of his flight to the public. This is one of those

rarely known aircraft disappearances that predate Flight 19. For the

information on this flight I am grateful to his brother, Don Garner, who

has generously lent several copies of documents, telegrams, and official communiqués sent to the family by the Navy. 
This was started by Don’s innocent request to find where there might be a Navy report on this. For over 55 years this incident was publicly obscure. Now thanks to Don and the Navy it can be told here.
Banana River  Naval Air Station was the center for US Navy training in PBM Martin Mariners, huge aircraft designed for long overseas flights and patrols. They were a crucial aircraft for the Navy in the Pacific; the “eyes” of the fleet because they could scout 1,00o miles ahead. They were also crucial for Air-Sea rescue since they could land and takeoff from the ocean. Because they carried so much fuel, they were often called “flying gas tanks,” and a part of preflight inspection was to pat the men down to make sure none had cigarettes or matches.
   Although the war was over in Europe, it was still raging in the Pacific and would not be over for almost two months to come.
   Considering the role of the PBM,  the Atlantic and Bahamas were considered ideal areas for training. Thousands of training flights went  over this area, and only now,  slowly and tenuously, are we beginning to uncover how many have disappeared.
   The date was July 9, 1945. It took off from Banana River in the evening and flew southeast over the Bahamas. At 9:15 p.m. its routine position report was picked up, stating all was well and that they were near New Providence Island. It was due back at base at 2:15 a.m. the next morning. After it failed to arrive, the Navy searched 10 days and never found any sign of the plane or crew.  
A small rain squall was reported on the plane’s route. That was about it. Nothing more. That is nothing for a big Mariner, and it was considered average weather, with good visibility and ceiling. If the pilot wished, he could even fly around it.
   But a day after, the families were greeted by surprise and dismay.   

Glen Lorraine Winder, S1cThe crew of the PBM Mariner
`Lt. (jg) J.B. White
`Wendell Eugene LaVoy,  Ens.
`Elliot Wesley Lewis, Ens.
`Eugene Sailey Boyer, S1c
`Bernard Zlotnick, S1c
`Thomas Cornell Oliver, AOM3c
`James Edward Eisley, AMM3c
`homas Arthur Garner AMM3c
`John Lewis Hurt, Sr. S1c
`Stephen Worobeck, S1c

  


The next telegram, dated 23 July, would bear the usual regrets. “Exhaustive search proves futile in case of your son. He chose a part in the defense of his country requiring courage, stamina, and skill which he has demonstrated in no small degree. My sincere sympathy goes out to you at this time. . . .Commanding Officer NAS Banana River.”
  What happened will always remain a mystery. But there are a few pieces of the puzzle that lead to some firm conclusions. First, one thing stands out—it was lost suddenly— the Mariner could land on water if an emergency arose; there would also be enough time to send an SOS. It was last heard from in the vicinity of New Providence (the island on which is situated the capitol of the Bahamas, Nassau) which is well traveled and should have produced some form of debris. It seems  a typical crash would have left some debris, some shred to wash up on a nearby island.
   If it had not been for wartime secrecy, the public would have been surprised by this and yet another  disappearance—a Privateer vanished over the Bahamas on July 18, 1945, during the search operations. No clue has been found for both incidents. The incident of the Privateer has been tersely reported before, such as by John Wallace Spencer, but it has never been placed into context until now.   

When I asked Don for information on a Bio, he hesitated a bit. “A young fellow joining the Navy at eighteen hasn’t made a lot of tracks that are interesting to hear about, unless he is some kind of sports star . . .which Tom wasn’t. Also, at age nineteen, he didn’t survive long enough to have much of a Navy career.” He promised to compile something and from this I could pick through what interested me. What he sent me, however, I think was rather well done. So in Don’s own words remembering his brother, I place it here verbatim.
In the Southwest, the “Roaring Twenties” were not good times for everyone. Although across Oklahoma and Texas oil was a booming business with fortunes pouring into the pockets of those who were in the right places, for most of the families of the people working in oil production, the wage earners, times were still hard. Typically they continued to endure with low wages, long working hours, and meager living conditions. Many lived in company houses, small four-room box-framed structures with electric lights, but with no other modern facilities, built on company property in the heart of the cluttered “oil-fields.” It was into such an environment, in a company house in 1926, that Thomas Arthur Garner was born, the fourth child in what was to be a family with six children.
 
Tom’s father worked for a rapidly growing oil-pipeline company that often relocated its employees, and at that time the company was constructing line and pumping facilities from Texas to the Great Lakes. When Tom was three years old his family was relocated from Oklahoma to a very rural pumping station location near Virginia, Illinois. That was only the first of several relocations for the family, and of several school changes for the children. For grade school, Tom started in Heyworth, Illinois and finished at Hawthorne School in Mattoon, Illinois. He started high school at Mattoon and graduated in 1943 from the high school of Vandalia, Illinois.Vandalia was a small town with a few family-owned mom and pop stores and almost no industry. Opportunities for employment there were flat at best. After his graduation from high school, Tom spent the summer taking a hands-on course in machineshop, learning to work with metal lathes and other metalworking shop tools. Then later he found a section gang job nearby with the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was hard work for a young man who was only eighteen.
   At the time, although World War II was winding down, the military draft was still very much in effect and Tom was at the age when his “Greetings” could have shown up with the next mail. So preferring the Navy, Tom decided to enlist. After boot camp he was given training as an Aviation Machinist Mate at the Whidbey Island Naval Base near Seattle. As a teenager, Tom had been a natural sharpshooter with a rifle, and when he was training at the Whidbey Island he broke the base record for firing a 50 caliber machine gun. After Whidbey Island he was assigned to the naval seaplane base at Banana River, Florida for further training. What happened to him from there will always be a mystery.
All of those who knew Tom remembered him as a happy-go-lucky, very gregarious type of young person. There were few things he enjoyed more than getting a bunch of guys together in a local field for a game of football or other group sport. He didn’t just enjoy people, he enjoyed a crowd. Of course there were times when he was into mischief, like most other young boys, but he was a very responsible young man, and was always popular with others around him.
   The middle and late thirties saw the nation still in the echoes of The Great Depression. You didn’t expect to see an airplane in the sky over a small midwestern town everyday, and to see one up close was really a treat. Tom was always fascinated by any airplane. In his early teens he had some old photo albums in which he collected any pictures that he could find in magazines, newspapers, or whatever, including the small calling card size pictures and descriptions that came in packages of “Wings” cigarettes. When he had some change for the balsawood kits, he often bought and assembled the models.
   Tom had always enjoyed everything about airplanes. Then apparently, and perhaps somewhat ironically, on July 10, 1945, he died in one. He was a crewmember of a U.S. Navy PBM Martin Mariner that left its Banana River base that evening for a routine night training flight. Sometime after dark it disappeared in the Caribbean Sea, one large seaplane with twelve young men. It will never be known why, how, or exactly where. An extensive search with both surface vessels and aircraft was started immediately and continued for ten days, but nothing was found. They were all gone without a trace.