Bermuda Triangle Mystery

Over the past 100 years, the Bermuda Triangle has seen what some say is a significant and inordinately high number of unexplained disappearances of planes, ships and people.

The Bermuda Triangle (also known as Devil's Triangle and Devil's Sea) is a nearly half-million square-mile (1.2 million km2) area ofocean roughly defined by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the southernmost tip of Florida.

Most everybody has heard of the Bermuda Triangle, but the expression has become so clouded with popular hearsay and sensationalism that few can really give an accurate account of what it is. The first gut reaction many people give when asked about the Bermuda Triangle is “I don’t believe in it!” Yet what is it they don’t believe in? The Bermuda Triangle is actually two things. First off, it is a geographic area of the North Atlantic Ocean located off the SouthEast coast of the United States. It generally lies in and around three nodal points: the island of Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It can hardly be denied that this area of the Earth does exist. But, of course, when most refer to the Bermuda Triangle they really mean the enigma of the Bermuda Triangle. This is the area’s great controversy. The enigma is that more ships and planes disappear in this area, in fair weather, more than in any other place in the world, for no readily explainable reason.

So the next question is why the name "Bermuda Triangle"? At the time of coining the term, the first name that came up was "Miami Triangle". But Florida objected saying that they would lose visitors to Miami with such name as people would fear to come there. So the next name taken up was "Puerto Rico Triangle". Puerto Rico too raised objections. Then it was the turn for the 21 square mile tiny island Bermuda which forms the third corner of the triangle. And no one seems to have bothered. Bermuda was then also known as the "Isle of the Devils" which fitted to the triangle concept quite well and therefore the final name "Bermuda Triangle" was coined.

Many theories have been given to explain the extraordinary mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil extraterrestrials, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices from the fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather (thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves, currents, etc.) bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators, and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators.

There are some skeptics who argue that the facts do not support the legend, that there is no mystery to be solved, and nothing that needs explaining.The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in the Bermuda Triangle at all. Investigations to date have not produced scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena involved in the disappearances. Thus, any explanation, including so-called scientific ones in terms of methane gas being released from the ocean floor, magnetic disturbances, etc., are not needed. The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.

The modern legend of the Bermuda Triangle began soon after five Navy planes [Flight 19] vanished on a training mission during a severe storm in 1945. The most logical theory as to why they vanished is that lead pilot Lt. Charles Taylor’s compass failed. The trainees' planes were not equipped with working navigational instruments. The group was disoriented and simply, though tragically, ran out of fuel. No mysterious forces were likely to have been involved other than the mysterious force of gravity on planes with no fuel. It is true that one of the rescue planes blew up shortly after take-off, but this was likely due to a faulty gas tank rather than to any mysterious forces.

Over the years there have been dozens of articles, books, and television programs promoting the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. In his study of this material, Larry Kushe found that few did any investigation into the mystery. Rather, they passed on the speculations of their predecessors as if they were passing on the mantle of truth. Of the many uncritical accounts of the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, perhaps no one has done more to create this myth than Charles Berlitz, who had a bestseller on the subject in 1974. After examining the 400+ page official report of the Navy Board of Investigation of the disappearance of the Navy planes in 1945, Kushe found that the Board wasn't baffled at all by the incident and did not mention alleged radio transmissions cited by Berlitz in his book. According to Kushe, what isn't misinterpreted by Berlitz is fabricated. Kushe writes: "If Berlitz were to report that a boat were red, the chance of it being some other color is almost a certainty." (Berlitz, by the way, did not invent the name; that was done by Vincent Gaddis in "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle," which appeared in the February, 1964, issue of Argosy, a magazine devoted to fiction.



Lost Planes & Ships in Bermuda Triangle

Here are some of the most amazing stories of planes and ships that disappeared while crossing the triangle area. As you visit the links, you will also see my findings behind such great mysteries of all times.

Flight 19: The Avenger planes of Flight-19 took off from the U.S Naval Base of Florida for a routine training session, but never returned.

PBM Martin Mariner: When the hopes for Flight-19 was quickly fading, two Martin Mariner planes were sent by US Navy to search them out. One came back, but strangely the other didn't. Read the full story.

Tudor Star Tiger: Star Tiger, a Tudor Mark-IV aircraft disappeared in Bermuda Triangle shortly before it was about to land at the Bermuda airport.

Fight DC-3: The flight DC-3 NC16002 disappeared when it was only 50 miles south of Florida and about to land in Miami.

Flight 441: The flight 441, a Super Constellation Naval Airliner disappeared in October 1954.

C-54 Skymaster: Apparently it seemed to be a sudden thunderstorm that had disintegrated the plane. But there was much more to the story.

Mary Celeste - The Ghost Ship: Known as one of the ghost ships of Bermuda Triangle, Mary Celeste had many misadventures even before her mystery voyage in 1872. Find out the full story.

Marine Sulphur Queen: This 524-foot carrier of molten sulphur started sail on Feb 2, 1963 from Beaumont, Texas with 39 crew. It was reported lost in Florida Straits on February 4.

Ellen Austin: The Ellen Austin, an American schooner, met with another ship in Bermuda Triangle. The other ship that was moving in full speed, strangely had nobody on board.

USS Cyclops: Disappearance of the carrier ship U.S.S. Cyclops in Bermuda Triangle has been one of the greatest mysteries of the sea.

USS Scorpion: USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a Nuclear powered submarine of United States Navy that disappeared in Bermuda Triangle area in May 1968.

Well-known Disappearances

Many Bermuda Triangle Web sites include long lists of missing ships and planes. But many of those were nowhere near the Triangle when they disappeared or they turned up later with rational explanations for their disappearances. For example, the Mary Celeste, found floating in 1872 with not a person on board and everything exactly as they had left it, is on nearly every list of losses blamed on the Bermuda Triangle. But in reality, it was many hundreds of miles from the Triangle at the time.

Here is a sampling of the some of the most notable incidents. As you'll see, some of these have reasonable explanations although they're still attributed to the strange and unknown powers of the Bermuda Triangle.

The U.S.S. Cyclops, 1918

During World War I, the U.S.S. Cyclops served along the eastern coast of the United States until January 9, 1918. At that time, she was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service. The Cyclops was scheduled to sail to Brazil to refuel British ships in the south Atlantic. She set out from Rio de Janeiro on February 16, and, after a brief stop in Barbados from March 3 to 4, was never seen or heard from again. All 306 passengers and crew were gone without a trace.

A U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger

U.S. Navy Avengers Flight 19, 1945

The most famous Bermuda Triangle story is the mystery surrounding five missing Navy Avengers in 1945. The story of Flight 19 is usually summarized this way: a routine patrol set out on a sunny day with five highly experienced student pilots. Suddenly, the tower began receiving transmissions from the flight leader that they were lost, compasses were not working, and "everything looked wrong." They were never seen again, and extensive Navy investigations turned up no clues to explain the disappearance.

Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor led the mission, which included several planned course changes. They departed at 1:15 p.m. on December 5, 1945. At 3:00 p.m., Lieutenant Robert F. Cox was flying over Fort Lauderdale, Florida when he heard a signal that he thought was from a boat or plane in distress. He called Operations at the Naval Air Station to report what he had heard. Cox told Taylor to fly with the sun at his left wing and up the coast until he hit Miami. Taylor then said that they were over a small island with no other land in sight. If he was over the Keys as he had said, however, he should have seen several islands as well as the Florida peninsula.

With less than two hours' flying time until they ran out of fuel, Taylor described a large island to Operations. Assuming this was Andros Island, the largest in the Bahamas, Operations sent Taylor a heading that would take him to Fort Lauderdale. Apparently this heading was correct, because once Flight 19 assumed the new course, Taylor's voice began coming in stronger over the radio. Taylor, however, didn't believe this course was right and after a few minutes said that they "didn't go far enough east. Turn around again and go east. We should have a better chance of being picked up closer to shore." With this move, transmissions began to weaken as they flew out of radio range in the wrong direction. For unknown reasons Taylor ignored the standard flying procedure of flying west if over water and east if over land.

Two PBM-5 Mariner seaplanes went out to search the area, but one exploded soon after takeoff. The other never located Flight 19.


In short, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery by a kind of communal reinforcement among uncritical authors and a willing mass media to uncritically pass on the speculation that something mysterious is going on in the Atlantic.