Bermuda Triangle

Bermuda Triangle.png
One version of the Bermuda Triangle area
Coordinates
25°N 71°W
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely-defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery. The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean islands. Cruise ships and pleasure craft regularly sail through the region, and commercial and private aircraft routinely fly over it.
Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors.

Triangle area

In 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote in the pulp magazine Argosy of the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle:[1] three vertices, in Miami, Florida peninsula, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda. Subsequent writers did not necessarily follow this definition.[2] Some writers gave different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from 1,300,000 to 3,900,000 km2 (500,000 to 1,510,000 sq mi).[2]Consequently, the determination of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them.[2] The United States Board on Geographic Namesdoes not recognize the Bermuda Triangle.[2]

Origins

The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in The Miami Herald (Associated Press)[3] by Edward Van Winkle Jones.[4] Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door",[5][6] a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine.[7] In it, author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." He also wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars."[8] Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region.[1] The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.[9]Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis' ideas: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973);[10] Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974);[11] Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974),[12] and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.[13]
Main Incidents

Ellen Austin

The Ellen Austin supposedly came across a derelict ship, placed on board a prize crew, and attempted to sail with it to New York in 1881. According to the stories, the derelict disappeared; others elaborating further that the derelict reappeared minus the prize crew, then disappeared again with a second prize crew on board. A check from Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of the Meta, built in 1854 and that in 1880 the Metawas renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared.[38]

Schooner Carroll A. Deering, as seen from the Cape Lookout lightvessel on January 29, 1921, two days before she was found deserted in North Carolina. (US Coast Guard)
USS Cyclops
Main article: USS Cyclops (AC-4)
The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not related to combat occurred when the collier USS Cyclops, carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of Barbados. Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory, many independent theories exist, some blaming storms, some capsizing, and some suggesting that wartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss.[39][40] In addition, two of Cyclops's sister ships, Proteus and Nereus were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage. In all three cases structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of sinking.
Carroll A. Deering
Main article: Carroll A. Deering
A five-masted schooner built in 1919, the Carroll A. Deering was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on January 31, 1921. Rumors and more at the time indicated the Deering was a victim of piracy, possibly connected with the illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and possibly involving another ship, SS Hewitt, which disappeared at roughly the same time. Just hours later, an unknown steamer sailed near the lightship along the track of the Deering, and ignored all signals from the lightship. It is speculated that Hewitt may have been this mystery ship, and possibly involved in the Deering crew's disappearance.[41]
Flight 19
Main article: Flight 19

US Navy Avengers, similar to those of Flight 19
Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The disappearance is attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel.
One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them, a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappeared. A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion[42] and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident.[43] According to contemporaneous sources the Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapour leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as for a potentially long search and rescue operation.
Star Tiger and Star Ariel
Main articles: BSAA Star Tiger disappearance and BSAA Star Ariel disappearance
G-AHNP Star Tiger disappeared on January 30, 1948, on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda; G-AGRE Star Ariel disappeared on January 17, 1949, on a flight from Bermuda to Kingston, Jamaica. Both were Avro Tudor IVpassenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.[44] Both planes were operating at the very limits of their range and the slightest error or fault in the equipment could keep them from reaching the small island. One plane was not heard from long before it would have entered the Triangle.[14]
Douglas DC-3
Main article: 1948 Airborne Transport DC-3 (DST) disappearance
On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3aircraft, number NC16002, disappeared while on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami. No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board was ever found. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found there was insufficient information available on which to determine probable cause of the disappearance.[45]
KC-135 Stratotankers
On August 28, 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic. The Triangle version (Winer, Berlitz, Gaddis)[1][11][12] of this story specifies that they did collide and crash, but there were two distinct crash sites, separated by over 160 miles (260 km) of water. However, Kusche's research showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report stated that the debris field defining the second "crash site" was examined by a search and rescue ship, and found to be a mass of seaweed and driftwoodtangled in an old buoy.[14]
Connemara IV
A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955; it is usually stated in the stories (Berlitz, Winer)[11][12] that the crew vanished while the yacht survived being at sea during three hurricanes. The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season shows Hurricane Ione passing nearby between the 14th and 18th of that month, with Bermuda being affected by winds of almost gale force.[14] In his second book on the Bermuda Triangle, Winer quoted from a letter he had received from Mr J.E. Challenor of Barbados:[46]
On the morning of September 22 Connemara IV was lying to a heavy mooring in the open roadstead of Carlisle Bay. Because of the approaching hurricane, the owner strengthened the mooring ropes and put out two additional anchors. There was little else he could do, as the exposed mooring was the only available anchorage. ... In Carlisle Bay, the sea in the wake of Hurricane Janet was awe-inspiring and dangerous. The owner of Connemara IVobserved that she had disappeared. An investigation revealed that she had dragged her moorings and gone to sea".