The Bermuda Triangle: Mystery, Myth, and the Science Behind the Disappearances
The Bermuda Triangle is a large, roughly triangular region of the North Atlantic whose corners lie near the Bermuda Archipelago, the southern tip of Florida, and the island of Puerto Rico. According to some commentators, a number of ships and planes have disappeared in the region under mysterious circumstances, prompting suspicions that a strange, unidentified force is at work there. The Bermuda Triangle overlaps the larger Sargasso Sea, which has a somewhat similar reputation.
The most famous unexplained event in the region is probably the disappearance of Flight 19 on December 5, 1945. Consisting of five US Navy bombers, the flight took off from the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale on the Atlantic coast of Florida on a training mission. Planes on simultaneous missions subsequently received a radio transmission from one of the Flight 19 pilots stating that he had become lost and that both of his compasses were malfunctioning. Further transmissions indicated confusion and disagreement on the part of the pilots over their location and the best course of action to follow. Weather conditions had begun to deteriorate, and late that afternoon listeners heard a final transmission to the effect that the pilots planned to ditch their bombers together in the water. A search was mounted, but without success. Bizarrely enough, one of the rescue planes also disappeared.
An ensuing investigation concluded that the Flight 19 pilots had miscalculated their location, leading them to exhaust their fuel in a misguided attempt to reach land. It is possible that this initial error led them to distrust their compass readings. However, it is difficult to understand why the pilots did not turn on their radio homing devices, which would have helped them return to base. As for the missing search plane, reports from a ship in the area led the investigators to conclude that it had exploded.
It was nearly two decades after the loss of Flight 19 that Vincent H. Gaddis gave the region its popular name in an article in the popular men’s magazine Argosy. Besides summarizing the circumstances surrounding Flight 19, Gaddis listed a number of other disappearances from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A seemingly puzzling case from March 1918 involved the 500-foot U.S.S. Cyclops, which disappeared without a trace after sailing from the West Indian island of Barbados. Bound for Virginia, the Cyclops carried nearly 300 men. Gaddis also mentioned a tanker, the Marine Sulphur Queen, which had been lost in February 1963 on its way from Texas to Virginia, leaving virtually no identifiable debris. To account for the wrecks, Gaddis suggested the possibility of atmospheric or magnetic aberrations that could interfere with compasses, radio transmissions, and even the appearance of the sea and sky.
Since the publication of Gaddis’s article, further disappearances have contributed to the Bermuda Triangle’s reputation, and commentators have advanced a variety of explanations, many of them pseudo-scientific, to account for the events. However, when the considerable level of air and sea traffic in the vast region is taken into account, the number of unexplained disappearances is no higher than expected. As authorities point out, equipment failure, bad weather, and human error account for virtually all shipwrecks and plane crashes throughout the world. Other possible factors include rare, little-understood “rogue waves” that can reach more than 90 feet in height. Whatever the case, the evidence that would reveal the cause of any particular disappearance is often destroyed in the event itself, rendering it “unexplained.” Grove Koger.
FURTHER READING:Edwards, Ron. 1999. “Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.” Aviation History 9 (6): 50-6 Gaddis, Vincent H. 1964. “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” Argosy (February): 28-9, 116-18. Gaffron, Norma. 1995. The Bermuda Triangle: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven. Kusche, Larry. 1995. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Date added: 2025-10-14; views: 2;