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The Bermuda Triangle — CoverUps.com

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a strange region in the western part of the North Atlantic where many aircraft and ships have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

A Deadly History

The earliest recorded ship known to have been claimed by the Bermuda Triangle was the vessel Rosalie in 1840. The most recent ship was a yacht by the name of Connemara IV in 1956.

The first reported airplane disappearance was an eerie event known to have occurred on December 5, 1945. On a routine two-hour patrol off Fort Lauderdale, Florida, five Avenger fighters disappeared completely, after reporting to the control tower that their instruments were going crazy... everything was wrong, strange... even the ocean looked strange. The men in the tower were puzzled... the planes should have been able to see the sun, now set low in the sky. Radio contact became more difficult. Finally, a Martin Mariner plane with a crew of 13 headed out to the fighters’ last known position. Twenty minutes later, witnesses reported a bright orange flash in the sky. No trace was ever found of any of the planes.

In April of 1952, pilot Gerald Hawkes had a strange experience in his plane while flying from Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport to Bermuda, and lived to tell about it. In a clear-skied, windless late afternoon, Hawkes began his trip. Suddenly, his plane dropped 200 ft, like he was falling through a lift-shaft in the air. His plane then shot up again. The pattern repeated, as if a giant hand were moving his plane up and down, up and down. Worse still, because of instrumentation problems, he couldn’t make radio contact with either Florida or Bermuda, and had no idea where they were. Luckily for Hawkes, he eventually made contact with a radio ship, and was able to get his bearings. Hawkes thought that perhaps he was "caught in an area where time and space seem to disappear."

Journalist Vincent Gaddis wrote a book, "Invisible Horizons", about mysterious occurrences at sea. In it, he speculated that there may be "a space-time continua that may exist around us on the earth, interpenetrating our known world."

Some believe that on the surface of the earth there are whirlpools "where gravity and terrestrial magnetism are weaker for some unknown reason. Aliens from outer space may know of these whirlpools and pick up humans from them for further study."

Biologist Ivan Sanderson made an interesting discovery while examining a map of the world; it seemed that all the areas at sea where strange disappearances had been recorded were shaped like lozenges and surrounded the globe in two rings, each located between 30 and 40 degrees C, both above and below the equator. These places were 72 degrees C apart. Interestingly, earthquake specialists discovered that Sanderson’s "lozenges" matched their own maps of seismic disturbance areas, which exist in a kind of trough encircling the core of the earth, which "determined the direction of seismic activity."

They concluded that if these strange phenomena were caused by whirlpools, they could well have been perfectly normal events caused by the earth’s natural tendency to "burp" on occasion.

Charles Berlitz wrote a book on the Bermuda Triangle, and speculated about the possible explanations of the disappearances involving UFOs, space-time warps caused by magnetic vortexes (a la the Philadelphia Project), and intelligent aliens, etc. While low on scientific analysis, the book became hugely popular.

Some important clues to the Bermuda Triangle can be gleaned from the experiences of those who escaped its clutches. In 1964, on a return trip from Nassau on his way to Miami, Florida charter pilot Chuck Wakely noticed a faint glow around the wing tips of his plane at 8,000 feet. As the glow increased in brightness and became almost blinding, his electronic instruments went haywire, forcing him to fly manually. The glow gradually decreased in strength and he was able to regain control of his instruments.

In 1966, tugboat captain Don Henry was on his way from Puerto Rico to Fort Lauderdale on a clear afternoon. Suddenly his compasses began to spin wildly. A strange darkness descended on his boat and he lost sight of the horizon. Water flowed towards him from all directions, and the boat's electrical power failed in the dense fog. Luckily his engines kept going and he was eventually able to see his way past the fog. Looking back, he saw that it was densely concentrated in a solid block, "a bank." Inside it, the sea was boiling. Beyond it, the sea was calm.

The fact is that our earth’s magnetic field isn’t "symmetrical and precise," but has many convolutions, eddies and abnormalities, tied perhaps to enormous movements in the earth’s molten core. Such fluctuations in our magnetic field might cause symptoms similar to those described by the tugboat captain and the charter pilot.

All of this merits further investigation. With satellites spinning 150 miles above the earth, scientists are ideally situated to observe these bursts of magnetic activity and might learn to predict them ahead of time, which would prevent such frightening and tragic incidents in the future. We can hope.

Selected Sources:

The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved
by Colin Wilson & Damon Wilson
Running Press Book Publishers (2000)

Mysteries of the Unexplained
by Reader's Digest Association
Pleasantville : Reader's Digest Association;
Second Edition (1988)

PHOTOGRAPHS

Hover your mouse over the pictures below for captions.

The powerful warm waters of the Gulf Stream can cause sudden weather changes in the Bermuda Triangle, spelling trouble for ships and aircraft.

The Bermuda Triangle has a triangular shape with ends — geometry teachers would call them vertices — in Miami, Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. Within this triangle of water, compasses often act strangely. In normal conditions, most compasses don't point directly north toward the North Pole. Instead, they point to something called “magnetic north,” which is in Canada. In the Bermuda Triangle, however, a compass will often point directly to the North Pole. Might this explain why so many ships and planes lose their way?

Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail solo around the world in 1895, was considered one of the best sailors of his time. His boat, The Spray, was an old fishing boat that he had rebuilt, and the story of his circumnavigation, "Sailing Alone around the World", remains a classic in sea literature. In 1909, Slocum left the East Coast of the United States and headed to Grand Cayman for the winter. He was never heard from or seen again. He wasn't declared legally dead until 1924.

On December 28, 1948, an airborne transport DC-3 with 29 passengers and three crew members disappeared on a scheduled flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida. Controllers in Miami heard transmissions from the flight during the night, including a report that it was 50 miles south of Miami. Nothing was heard after that. The aircraft has never been found.

They went on a routine patrol in 1945 but ended up feeding the legend of the Bermuda Triangle when five planes and 14 crewmen disappeared. They are heroes and ghosts. More than a dozen Navy and Marine pilots flew off into history and mystery, never to be heard from again. Flight 19 — The Lost Patrol — consisted of 14 crewmen in five Avenger torpedo bombers that took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale on December 5, 1945.

A tanker carrying a load of molten sulphur, the SS Marine Sulphur Queen, disappeared off the southern coast of Florida in February 1963. The ship and its 39-member crew were lost without a trace. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, it was in questionable shape and perhaps not seaworthy — fires were commonplace and the ship was known to have a "weak back," meaning the keel would likely split if weakened by corrosion. When it was converted from its original purpose as an oil tanker to carry molten sulphur, a high center of gravity resulted and a vulnerability to capsizing in rough seas.

On January 30, 1948, a British South American Airways Tudor IV plane flying from England to Bermuda disappeared without a trace. Capt. B. W. McMillan reported enroute that he expected to arrive in Bermuda at 5:00 a.m. The official accident report suggests the aircraft's heater was unreliable and may have failed. To keep temperatures warmer, investigators thought the pilot may have chosen to fly at a lower altitude. But doing so would have left little time to maneuver or signal for help in case of an emergency.

A Tudor IV aircraft like the Star Tiger, the Star Ariel left Bermuda on January 17, 1949, with a crew of seven and 13 passengers en route to Jamaica. Capt. J. C. McPhee reported early on that the flight was going smoothly. Shortly afterward, a more cryptic message came when he reported that he was changing his frequency. Nothing more was heard. No hint of debris or wreckage was ever seen. After its disappearance, British South American Airways stopped production of the Tudor IV.

Businessman Donald Crowhurst set sail from London on October 31, 1968 in the Teignmouth Electron, intent on winning the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. He got off to a slow start and was plagued with problems. Instead of turning back he reported incredible times and progress. Fearing his deceptions would come to light, Crowhurst jumped overboard with his fraudulent logbook and drowned. The Electron was found abandoned in the Bermuda Triangle in July 1969.

During World War I, the USS Cyclops, commanded by Lt. G. W. Worley, carried coal for the U.S. Navy and stayed mostly on the U.S. East Coast until 1918, when it was sent to Brazil to refuel Allied ships. With 309 people onboard, it left Rio de Janeiro in February and reached Barbados in March. After that, the Cyclops was never heard from again. The incident stands as the single largest loss of life in U.S. Naval history not involving combat.

In 2015, Hurricane Joaquin became the deadliest Atlantic storm since Sandy. But Joaquin didn't even brush the U.S. coast. The most powerful Atlantic cyclone in five years took its victims at sea — 33 men and women onboard an American ship called El Faro. She was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

Scientists speculate that hexagonal clouds creating “air-bombs” with winds of up to 170mph could be responsible for hundreds of unsolved incidents at sea. The storms are said to be so powerful that planes can be torn from the skies in an instant and ships battered without mercy. Researchers further note that large-scale clouds of this nature regularly appear over the western tip of the island of Bermuda, ranging in size from 20 to 55 miles wide.