Bermuda Triangle legend

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.

To see how common accidents are at sea, you can examine some of the recent accident reports of the National Transportation 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.

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.

The Event: THE STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT 19


When: December 5, 1945


Where: The Bermuda Triangle, off the coast of Florida


The Mystery: Flight 19 should have been routine. It was a normal training flight from the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.--5 TBM Avengers, torpedo bombers equipped with excellent navigational and radio equipment. One plane had a crew of 2; the others had 3 men each. Their planned course was a triangle--160 mi. east, 40 mi. north, then southwest back to the base.


At 2:02, the 1st plane took off, and soon they were all flying in formation at a speed of 200 mph.


The 1st sign of trouble came 1 1/2 hours later. By that time, they should have returned to based. Instead, there was a weird radio message from the flight commander. "Calling tower. This is an emergency. . . . We seem to be off course . . . . We cannot see land . . . . (REPEAT) . . . We cannot see land." When asked for their position, he said, "We are not sure of our position. We can't be sure of just where we are. We seem to be lost." Then, when told to head due west, he radioed, "We do not know which way is west. Everything is wrong ... strange. We can't be sure of any direction. Even the ocean doesn't look as it should."


Fifteen minutes later, personnel in the control tower heard the men on the planes talking back and forth. Then the flight commander did something extremely unusual--he turned control over to one of his men.


At 4:25, the last message came, "Not certain where we are ... about 225 mi. northeast of base. . . . Looks like we are--"


A Martin flying boat with a crew of 13 men took off to begin a search for the missing planes. Five minutes later, it vanished. Six planes were now inexplicably lost.