Bermuda Triangle
Over centuries ships, aircraft, people and civilizations disappeared. Most disappeared without a trace.
Two of the great mysteries coming to mind are Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle.
The Bermuda Triangle
The "Bermuda Triangle" or "Devil's Triangle" is an imaginary area located off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States of America, which is noted for a supposedly high incidence of unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft. The apexes of the triangle are generally believed to be Bermuda; Miami, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The US Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name. The US Navy does not believe the Bermuda Triangle exists. It is reported that Lloyd's of London, the world's leading market for specialist insurance, does not charge higher premiums for vessels transiting this heavily traveled area.
The unexplained disappearances have been used to provide credence to the popular belief in the mystery of the "Bermuda Triangle." Many are content to attribute this phenomenon to time warps, the lost island continent of Atlantis, the supernatural and the paranormal - extraterrestrials and UFO's. The "Bermuda Triangle" is said to be one of two portals, used by "human-like" aliens, to travel from their planet to ours.
Most people, researchers and investigators, however, believe that the causes of the disappearance of planes and ships have been unnecessarily mystified. Natural forces at work in this region, any of which could, if the conditions were right, bring down an airplane or sink a ship.
The Bermuda Triangle is in fact notorious for it's unpredictable weather. There are long periods of calms that are interrupted by storms and hurricanes. If you compare the losses in this area to other areas with such weather, the rate of loss is less mysterious. Another researcher Lawrence David Kusche came to this conclusion; "In an area with frequent tropical storms, the total disappearance of some ships was not unlikely or mysterious."
What some people say about the mysterious Bermuda Triangle
Ships and aircraft reported missing in the Bermuda Triangle:
Over the last 25 years alone more than 75 airplanes and a thousand yachts and commercial ships with their passengers and crews disappeared without trace in the Deadly Triangle.* According to Gian Quasarin in his book Into The Bermuda Triangle. The first ship report dates back to 1780. Despite modern navigation, communication, and search-and-rescue systems, ships and planes continue to disappear without trace into that mysterious region of the North Atlantic.
The most famous US Navy losses which have occurred in the area popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle are:
U.S.S Cyclops
The ship disappeared in March 1918, taking with it all 306 crew and passengers. It is believed the ship probably sank in an unexpected storm.
Flight 19
It wasn't until 1945 that the world's attention was focused on the mysterious realm. In December, an entire squadron of Navy bombers vanished somewhere off Florida.
Flight 19 was the designation of a training exercise that took place on December 5, 1945 from Ft Lauderdale Naval Air Station, Florida, involving five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers with a total of 14 men on board, which disappeared under still unknown circumstances. No survivors were found and the five bombers were never recovered.
Several aircraft were dispatched to search for the Avengers and guide them back if they could locate them. Two of the searching aircraft were Training 32 and Training 49, a pair of big PBM-5 Martin Mariner seaplanes which took off at 19:37 from Banana River Naval Air Station at Cocoa Beach, Florida (now Patrick Air Force Base). Training 32 headed due east out toward the Bahamas, while Training 49 followed the Florida coast north before turning northeast out into the Atlantic.
Training 49 radioed a routine message to its base a few minutes later, but was never heard from again. The loss of Training 49 was attributed to a mid-air explosion.
The lives of 27 men: the fourteen men aboard Flight 19, known as "Lost Squadron", as well as the 13 men aboard the search and rescue aircraft Training 49 ( PBM patrol plane) sent to find them and 6 plains were lost.
SS Marine Sulphur Queen
This civilian tanker SS Marine Sulphur Queen carrying bulk molten sulfur which sank in February 1963. Although the wreck of Marine Sulphur Queen has not been located, a life preserver and other floating artifacts were recovered.
A final word from K. Kemper
Since the days of early civilization many thousands of ships have sunk and/or disappeared in waters around the world due to navigational and other human errors, storms, piracy, fires, and structural/mechanical failures. Aircraft are subject to the same problems, and many of them have crashed at sea around the globe. Often, there were no living witnesses to the sinking or crash, and hence the exact cause of the loss and the location of the lost ship or aircraft are unknown.
A large number of pleasure boats travel the waters between Florida and the Bahamas. All too often, crossings are attempted with too small a boat, insufficient knowledge of the area's hazards, and a lack of good seamanship. To see how common accidents are at sea, you can examine some of the recent accident reports of the National Transpor-tation Safety Board for ships and aircraft. One of the aircraft accident reports concerns an in-flight engine failure and subsequent ditching of a Cessna aircraft near Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas on 13 July 2003.
This is the type of accident that would likely have been attributed to mysterious causes in the Bermuda Triangle if there had been no survivors or other eyewitnesses of the crash. A significant factor with regard to missing vessels in the Bermuda Triangle is a strong ocean current called the Gulf Stream.
It is extremely swift and turbulent and can quickly erase evidence of a disaster. The weather also plays its role. Prior to the development of telegraph, radio and radar, sailors did not know a storm or hurricane was nearby until it appeared on the horizon. For example, the Continental Navy sloop Saratoga was lost off the Bahamas in such a storm with all her crew on 18 March 1781. Many other US Navy ships have been lost at sea in storms around the world. Sudden local thunder storms and water spouts can sometimes spell disaster for mariners and air crews.
Finally, the topography of the ocean floor varies from extensive shoals around the islands to some of the deepest marine trenches in the world. With the interaction of the strong currents over the many reefs the topography of the ocean bottom is in a state of flux and the development of new navigational hazards can sometimes be swift.
It has been inaccurately claimed that the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on earth at which a magnetic c ompass points towards true north. Normally a compass will point toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 60 degrees at various locations around the World. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, navigators can find themselves far off course and in deep trouble.
Although in the past this compass variation did affect the "Bermuda Triangle" region, due to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field this has apparently not been the case since the nineteenth century.
The Pacific Ocean east of Japan is another part of the world where mysterious disappearances take place and has been dubbed the "Devil Sea" by Philippine and Japanese seamen. Noted for tsunami, the area is considered dangerous by Japanese shipping authorities. Tsunami, often erroneously called tidal waves, are huge waves created by underground earthquakes. These seismic waves have very long wave lengths and travel at velocities of 400 miles per hour or more. In the open sea they may be only a foot high. But as they approach the continental shelf, their speed is reduced and their height increases dramatically. Low islands may be completely submerged by them.