Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Facts and Myths

So looking for the facts behind the mystery of Bermuda Triangle? Learn more about the Bermuda Triangle mystery with the interesting facts, secrets, history and theories. Why do ships and planes seem to go missing in this region? More than 1000 ships and planes have disappeared in the triangle area over the past five centuries and continue to do so.

And all these happen when apparently there are no human errors, equipment failures or even natural disasters. Strangely, the ships and aircraft just vanish when everything seems to be okay. Many believe that Devil is at play here and therefore call the area also as Devil's Triangle.

Are the reported ship and aircraft incidents and disappearances related to some kind of supernatural force or have the mysterious stories been exaggerated? The facts however are quite far from what is generally known or believed to be true. There are many stories and myths created through sheer imagination by writers who have used them rampantly to draw publicity to their books.

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).

In many cases, the facts got blurred. But one thing which is beyond doubt is, far too many incidents have taken place in this area for it to be ignored casually or interpreted to be just another normal ocean area.

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.

Perhaps science can offer some answers, maybe the Bermuda Triangle is actually no different from other parts of the ocean. Enjoy the facts and information and decide for yourself.

You won't find it on any official map and you won't know when you cross the line, but according to some people, the Bermuda Triangle is a very real place where dozen of ships, planes and people have disappeared with no good explanation. Since a magazine first coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in 1964, the mystery has continued to attract attention.

What is Bermuda Triangle?

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is an undefined 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.

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.

Where is Bermuda Triangle ? 

 
So where is Bermuda Triangle located and how large is the area? Is there a map? And do you get to know when exactly you cross the line and enter the area? By the simplest of all definitions,

The Bermuda Triangle is located off the South-Eastern coast of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean,, with its apexes in the vicinities of Miami (in Florida); San Juan (in Puerto Rico); and Bermuda (a north-Atlantic island). It covers roughly 500,000 square miles.

The disappearances have mostly taken place near the southern boundary of the triangle between Florida and Puerto Rico. You can always argue that it's obvious because that's where the area of the triangle is widest and therefore such possibilities should be more anyway! But the area is not as simple as it appears in the picture above. In order to know more about its location, how the area is actually laid out in the Atlantic, and whether you will ever know when you are entering the dreaded Bermuda triangle area as you take a cruise or flight, Visit Triangle Location & Map.

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. In most cases I have discussed and explained the possible causes, in some cases I have also given excerpts from official reports that were produced by US Navy, US Air Force or US Coast Guards after completing the search operations. And in several cases, I have given updates on further findings.

Popular Disappearances:

  • Built in 1854 and that in 1880 the ship Meta was 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.
  • 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. Two of Cyclops’s sister ships, Proteus and Nereus were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during World War II.
  • 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. 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.
  • The USS Cyclops and its crew of 309 that went missing after leaving Barbados in 1918.
  • The TBM Avenger bombers that went missing in 1945 during a training flight over the Atlantic.
  • A yacht was found in 1955 that had survived three hurricanes but was missing all its crew
  • A Douglas DC-3 aircraft containing 32 people that went missing in 1958, no trace of the aircraft was ever found.
  • Flight 19: It was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945. 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[44] and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident.
  • PBM Martin Mariner: When all hopes for the above Flight-19 planes were quickly fading, two Martin Mariner planes (flying boats) were sent by US Navy to search them out. One came back, but the other didn't. Read the full story to know what happened.
  • 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: 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. But this time, although the ship could be salvaged, none on board could ever be traced.
  • 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, and lost for ever.
  • Ellen Austin: The Ellen Austin, an American schooner, met with another ship in Bermuda Triangle. The other ship was moving in full speed but 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.
  • 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 IV passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.[46] 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.
  • On December 28, 1948, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft, 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. From the documentation compiled by the Civil Aeronautics Board investigation, a possible key to the plane’s disappearance was found, but barely touched upon by the Triangle writers: the plane’s batteries were inspected and found to be low on charge, but ordered back into the plane without a recharge by the pilot while in San Juan. Whether or not this led to complete electrical failure will never be known. However, since piston-engined aircraft rely upon magnetos to provide spark to their cylinders rather than a battery powered ignition coil system, this theory is not strongly convincing.
  • On August 28, 1963, a pair of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic. The Triangle version 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[15] 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 driftwood tangled in an old buoy.
  • A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26, 1955; it is usually stated in the stories 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.

Those were only few cases. Check out Bermuda Triangle Incidents for a list of all the major indents in the triangle area along with fascinating stories for many.

Why is Bermuda Triangle mysterious?

Unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 16, 1950. Vincent Gaddis’s article “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region.The triangle does not exist according to the US Navy and the name is not recognized by the US Board on Geographic Names. Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings.

Stories of unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle started to reach public awareness around 1950 and have been consistently reported since then.

What is the mystery behind the Bermuda Triangle?

As an answer to this, we have many theories, like

Magnetic theory: The magnetic compass shows strange variations, this can be explained as, There are many places where magnetic North and the geographic North differ.

Gulf stream theory : The Gulf Stream is a deep ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up to about 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mi/h). A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.

Unverified supernatural explanations for Bermuda Triangle incidents have included references to UFO’s and even the mythical lost continent of Atlantis.

Other explanations have included magnetic anomalies, pirates, deliberate sinkings, hurricanes, gas deposits, rough weather, huge waves and human error.

Which theory explains it the best?

Computer studies of ocean floors around the world, particularly the area known as The Bermuda Triangle, reveal evidence of massive methane explosions in the past. For years, believers in the paranormal, aliens, and other outlandish theories pointed to the the disappearance of ships and aircraft as an indicator of mysterious forces at work in the “Devil’s triangle.” Scientists have finally pointed the rest of us to a more plausible cause.

The presence of methane hydrates indicates enormous eruptions of methane bubbles that would swamp a ship, and projected high into the air- take out flying airplanes, as well.

Any ships caught within the methane mega-bubble immediately lose all buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the ocean. If the bubbles are big enough and possess a high enough density they can also knock aircraft out of the sky with little or no warning. Aircraft falling victim to these methane bubbles will lose their engines-perhaps igniting the methane surrounding them-and immediately lose their lift as well, ending their flights by diving into the ocean and swiftly plummeting.

When you dig deeper into most cases, though, they're much less mysterious. Either they were never in the area to begin with, they were actually found, or there's a reasonable explanation for their disappearance.

Does this mean there's nothing to the claims of so many who have had odd experiences in the Bermuda Triangle? Not necessarily. Scientists have documented deviations from the norm in the area and have found some interesting formations on the seafloor within the Bermuda Triangle's boundaries. So, for those who like to believe in it, there is plenty fuel for the fire.

­Many think of the Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, as an "imaginary" area. The U. S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle and does not maintain an official file on it. However, within this imaginary area, many real vessels and the people aboard them have seemingly disappeared without explanation.

The area may have been named after its Bermuda apex since Bermuda was once known as the "Isle of Devils." Treacherous reefs that have ensnared ships sailing too close to its shores surround Bermuda, and there are hundreds of shipwrecks in the waters that surround it.

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