Quick Facts

Location: A section of the Atlantic
Ocean bounded by Bermuda, Puerto
Rico and the east coast of Florida.

Reputation: A area where an
abnormally large number of planes and
ships disappear.

Reality: Statistics show the the number
of sunken ships and crashed planes in
this area is not more than would be
expected given the large amount of
traffic.


Famous Case: USS Cyclops a US Navy
coal ship disappeared in 1918.

Famous Case: Flight 19: Five US Navy
torpedo bombers got lost and went
down at sea on December 5, 1945.

Famous Case: SS Marine Sulfur Queen, a
commercial tanker, disappeared in
1963.

Famous Case: NC16002 a DC-3 airliner
disappeared on December 28, 1948.

The Bermuda Triangle (sometimes also
referred to as the Devil's Triangle) is a
stretch of the Atlantic Ocean bordered
by a line from Florida to the islands of
Bermuda, to Puerto Rico and then back
to Florida. It is one of the biggest
mysteries of our time - that perhaps
isn't really a mystery.


The term "Bermuda Triangle" was first
used in an article written by Vincent H.
Gaddis for Argosy magazine in 1964.
In the article, Gaddis claimed that in
this strange sea a number of ships and
planes had disappeared without
explanation. Gaddis wasn't the first one
to come to this conclusion, either. As
early as 1952, George X. Sands, in a
report in Fate magazine, noted what
seemed like an unusually large number
of strange accidents in that region.

In 1969 John Wallace Spencer wrote a
book called Limbo of the Lost specifically
about the Triangle and, two years
later, a feature documentary on the
subject, The Devil's Triangle, was
released. These, along with the
bestseller The Bermuda Triangle,
published in 1974, permanently
registered the legend of the "Hoodoo
Sea" within popular culture.


Why do ships and planes seem to go
missing in the region?
Some authors
suggested it may be due to a strange
magnetic anomaly that affects compass
readings (in fact they claim Columbus
noted this when he sailed through the
area in 1492). Others theorize that
methane eruptions from the ocean floor
may suddenly be turning the sea into a
froth that can't support a ship's weight
so it sinks (though there is no evidence
of this type of thing happening in the
Triangle for the past 15,000 years).
Several books have gone as far as
conjecturing that the disappearances
are due to an intelligent,
technologically advanced race living in
space or under the sea.

Kusche's Statistics

In 1975 Larry Kusche, a librarian at
Arizona State University, reached a
totally different conclusion. Kusche
decided to investigate the claims made
by these articles and books. What he
found he published in his own book
entitled The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-
Solved. Kusche had carefully dug into
records other writers had neglected. He
found that many of the strange
accidents were not so strange after all.
Often a Triangle writer had noted a
ship or plane had disappeared in
"calms seas" when the record showed a
raging storm had been in progress.


Others said ships had "mysteriously
vanished" when their remains had
actually been found and the cause of
their sinking explained. In one case a
ship listed missing in the Triangle
actually had disappeared in the Pacific
Ocean some 3,000 miles away! The
author had confused the name of the
Pacific port the ship had left with a city
of the same name on the Atlantic coast.
More significantly, a check of Lloyd's of
London's accident records by the editor
of Fate in 1975 showed that the
Triangle was no more dangerous than
any other part of the ocean. U.S. Coast
Guard records confirmed this and since
that time no good arguments have ever
been made to refute those statistics. So
many argue that the Bermuda Triangle
mystery has disappeared, in the same
way many of its supposed victims
vanished.


Even though the Bermuda Triangle isn't
a true mystery, this region of the sea
certainly has had its share of marine
tragedy. This region is one of the
heaviest traveled areas of ocean in the
world. Both small boats and
commercial ships ply its waters along
with airliners, military aircraft and
private planes as they come to and from
both the islands and more distant ports
in Europe, South America and Africa.
The weather in this region can make
traveling hazardous also. The summer
brings hurricanes while the warm
waters of the Gulf Stream promote
sudden storms. With this much activity
in a relatively small region it isn't
surprising that a large number of
accidents occur.

Some of the ones
commonly connected to the Triangle
story are:

1) The USS Cyclops Sinking

One of the first stories connected to the
Triangle legend and the most famous
ship lost in the region was the USS
Cyclops which disappeared in 1918. The
542 foot long Cyclops was launched in
1910 and served as a collier ( a ship
that carries coal) for the U.S. Navy
during World War I. The vessel was on
its way from Bahia, Salvador, to
Baltimore, Maryland, but never arrived.
After it had made an unscheduled stop
at Barbados on March 3rd and 4th to
take on additional supplies, it
disappeared without a trace. No
wreckage from the ship was ever found
and no distress signal was received. The
deaths of the 306 crew and passengers
of the USS Cyclops remains the single
largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history
not directly involving combat.


While the sinking of the Cyclops remains
a mystery, the incident could have
happened anywhere between Barbados
and Baltimore, not necessarily in the
Bermuda Triangle. Proponents of the
Bermuda Triangle theory point to the
lack of a distress call as evidence of a
paranormal end for the vessel, but the
truth is that wireless communications
in 1918 were unreliable and it would
not have been unusual for a rapidly-
sinking vessel to not have had a chance
to send a successful distress call before
going under.

2) SS Marine Sulphur Queen Vanishes

The SS Marine Sulphur Queen, a tanker
ship carrying molten sulphur,
disappeared off the southern coast of
Florida in 1963. The crew of 39 was all
lost and no wreckage from the tanker
was ever found. While the
disappearance of the ship is mentioned
in several books about the Triangle,
authors don't always include that the
Coast Guard concluded that the vessel
was in deplorable shape and should
have never gone to sea at all. Fires
erupted with regularity on the ship.


Also, this class of vessel was known to
have a "weak back", which means the
keel would split when weakened by
corrosion causing the ship to break in
two. The ship's structure had been
further compromised by a conversion
from its original mission as an oil
tanker to carrying molten sulphur. The
conversion had left the vessel with an
extremely high center of gravity,
increasing the chance that it would
capsize. The SS Marine Sulphur Queen
was all-in-all a disaster waiting to
happen and it seems unfair to blame its
demise on the Bermuda Triangle.

3) The Disappearance of NC16002

NC16002 was a DC-3 passenger plane
that vanished on the night of December
28, 1948, during a flight from San
Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida.
The weather was fine with high
visibility and the flight was, according
to the pilot, within 50 miles of Miami
when it disappeared with its three crew
members and twenty-nine passengers.

Though no probable cause for the loss
was determined by the official
investigation, it is known that the
plane's batteries were not fully charged
on takeoff and this may have interfered
with communications during the flight.
A message from Miami to the plane that
the direction of the wind had changed
may have not been received by the pilot,
causing him to fly up to fifty miles off
course.

4) The Fate of Flight 19

Video: The Fate of Flight 19

The tale of Flight 19 started on
December 5th, 1945. Five Avenger
torpedo bombers lifted into the air from
the Naval Air Station at Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, at 2:10 in the
afternoon. It was a routine practice
mission and the flight was composed of
all students except for the Commander,
a Lt. Charles Taylor.

The mission called for Taylor and his
group of 13 men to fly due east 56
miles to Hens and Chicken Shoals to
conduct practice bombing runs. When
they had completed that objective, the
flight plan called for them to fly an
additional 67 miles east, and then
turn north for 73 miles and finally
straight back to base, a distance of 120
miles. This course would take them on a
triangular path over the sea.
About an hour and a half after the
flight had left, Lt. Robert Cox at the
base picked up a radio transmission
from Taylor. Taylor indicated that his
compasses were not working, but he
believed himself to be somewhere over
the Florida Keys (the Keys are a long
chain of islands south of the Florida
mainland). Cox urged him to fly north
toward Miami; if Taylor was sure the
flight was over the Keys.


Planes today have a number of ways
that they can check their current
position including listening to a set of
GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) in
orbit around the earth. It is almost
impossible for a pilot to get lost if he
has the right equipment and uses it
properly. In 1945, though, planes flying
over water had to depend on knowing
their starting point, how long and fast
they had flown, and in what direction.
If a pilot made a mistake with any of
these figures, he was lost. Over the
ocean there were no landmarks to set
him right.


Navigational Confusion

Apparently Taylor had become confused
at some point in the flight. He was an
experienced pilot, but hadn't spent a
lot of time flying east toward the
Bahamas which was where he was
going on that day. For some reason
Taylor apparently thought the flight
had started out in the wrong direction
and had headed south toward the Keys,
instead of east. This thought was to
color his decisions throughout the rest
of the flight with deadly results.
The more Taylor took his flight north to
try to get out of the Keys, the further
out to sea the Avengers actually
traveled. As time went on, snatches of
transmissions were picked up on the
mainland indicating the other Flight
19 pilots were trying to get Taylor to
change course. "If we would just fly
west," one student told another, "we
would get home." He was right.

By 4:45 P.M. it was obvious to the
people on the ground that Taylor was
hopelessly lost. He was urged to turn
control of the flight over to one of his
students, but apparently he didn't. As it
grew dark, communications
deteriorated. From the few words that
did get through it was apparent Taylor
was still flying north and east, the
wrong direction.
At 5:50 P.M. the ComGulf Sea Frontier
Evaluation Center managed get a fix
on Flight 19's weakening signals. It
was apparently east of New Smyrna
Beach, Florida. By then communications
were so poor that this information
could not be passed to the lost planes.
At 6:20 a Dumbo flying boat was
dispatched to try and find Flight 19
and guide it back. Within the hour two
more planes, Martin Mariners, joined
the search. Hope was rapidly fading for
Flight 19 by then. The weather was
getting rough and the Avengers were
very low on fuel.

Two Martin Mariners were supposed to
rendezvous at the search zone. The
second one, designated Training 49,
never showed up, joining the 5
Avengers as "missing."
The last transmission from Flight 19
was heard at 7:04 P.M. Planes searched
the area through the night and the
next day. There was no sign of the
Avengers.
Nor did the authorities really expect to
find much. The Avengers, crashing when
their fuel was exhausted, would have
been sent to the bottom in seconds by
the 50 foot waves of the storm. As one
of Taylor's colleagues noted, "...they
didn't call those planes 'Iron Birds' for
nothing. They weighed 14,000 pounds
empty. So when they ditched, they went
down pretty fast."

What happened to the missing Martin
Mariner? Well, the crew of the SS Gaines
Mill observed an explosion over the
water shortly after the Mariner had
taken off. They headed toward the site
and there they saw what looked like oil
and airplane debris floating on the
surface. None of it was recovered
because of the bad weather, but there
seems little doubt this was the remains
of the Mariner. The plane had a
reputation as being a "flying bomb"
which would burst into flame from even
a single, small spark. Speculation is
that one of 22 men on board, unaware
that the unpressurized cabin contained
gas fumes, lit a cigarette, causing the
explosion.


Missing Avengers become the Triangle's
"Lost Squadron"

So how did this tragedy turn into a
Bermuda Triangle mystery? The Navy's
original investigation concluded the
accident had been caused by Taylor's
navigational confusion. According to
those that knew him he was a good
pilot, but often navigated "flying by the
seat of his pants" and had gotten lost
in the past. Taylor's mother refused to
accept that and finally got the Navy to
change the report to read that the
disaster was for "causes or reasons
unknown." This may have spared the
woman's feelings, but blurred the
actual facts.

The saga of Flight 19 is probably the
most repeated story about the Bermuda
Triangle. Vincent Gaddis put the tale
into the same Argosy magazine article
where he coined the term "Bermuda
Triangle" in 1964 and thetwo have been
connected ever since. The planes and
their pilots even found their way into
the science fiction film classic, Close
Encounters of the Third Kind.
Where is Flight 19 now? Well, in 1991
five Avengers were found in 750 feet of
water off the coast of Florida by the
salvage ship Deep Sea. Examination of
the plane's ID numbers, however,
showed that they were not from Flight
19 (as many as 139 Avengers were
thought to have gone into the water off
the coast of Florida during the war). It
seems the final resting place of the lost
squadron and their crews is still a real
Bermuda Triangle mystery.


SOURCE - http://www.unmuseum.org/mob/triangle.htm

But one of the weirdest incidents
involved pilot Bruce Gernon.

In 1970 he was flying from the
Bahamas to Florida when his plane
entered an odd cigar-shaped cloud.

Inside, Gernon found that he was
surrounded by a strange electronic fog
that made his compass spin wildly.
The plane passed through safely.

But, bizarrely, Gernon suddenly
discovered that he was over his
destination half an hour before he
should have been – suggesting that the
aircraft had somehow travelled in time.

The theories: Rogue waves, waterspouts
as well as the presence of mysterious
magnetic fields have all been blamed
for the unnerving incidents in the
Bermuda Triangle.
Some scientists have suggested that
methane bubbles floating to the surface
in the area could disrupt water
buoyancy and produce potentially
explosive air pockets.

A wilder theory suggests that the area
is the location of the lost city of
Atlantis and that energy from crystals
used to power it are responsible for
destroyed ships and planes.
It sounds far-fetched until you learn
that a rock formation in the style of a
pavement was found in seas near the
Bimini Islands in 1968.
UFO hunters think that the lack of
wreckage or survivors in most cases
suggests alien abduction.

Whatever happens in The Bermuda Triangle,no one can be so certain!