Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil's Triangle, is a sea area in the Atlantic Ocean. It lies north of the Caribbean Sea roughly between South Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.

As a result of several real or alleged ship and aircraft disasters that took place there, this area got the mysterious reputation of being the scene of many such accidents, and even of "disappearing" ships and aircraft. Some of the incidents, in which ships, airplanes or their crews are said to have disappeared without a trace, could not be completely cleared up. They inspired various authors to sometimes quite bizarre attempts at explanation, which became the basis for a large number of literary works, films and Internet sites. In fact, the number of catastrophes that have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle is not conspicuously high. Moreover, many of the ships that supposedly mysteriously disappeared are believed to have simply sunk in the storm.

Reception History

The term Bermuda Triangle was coined in 1952 in an article by George Sand in the US magazine Fate and by Associate Press and soon became a myth. Interest in the supposed supernatural phenomena reached its peak in 1974 after Charles Berlitz and J. Manson Valentine landed a bestseller with their book The Bermuda Triangle (published in Germany in 1977), which had a worldwide circulation of millions. As an indication of the phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle, a list of ships and aircraft that have disappeared without trace is mentioned there - as it was by other authors before. However, the size of the area under consideration does not always correspond to the "classic" definition of the Bermuda Triangle, as some also add the Azores and the West Indies, thus increasing the area from around 600,000 square kilometres to about three times that.

The stories from the Bermuda Triangle are strikingly similar: Either ships or aircraft disappear without a trace in the best weather conditions, calm seas and despite experienced pilots and crew, or an abandoned but otherwise fully intact ghost ship is found floating in the sea while the crew remains missing. In some cases, unclear and strange radio transmissions also play a role. Potential causes of these occurrences include alien abductions or dangerous "force fields" emanating from the sunken continent of Atlantis. The most famous example is the story of Flight 19. It is also striking that many of the mysterious stories become even more mysterious from publication to publication (the corresponding authors usually refer to their own kind) and not infrequently become more and more detailed and fantastic (even if they date back a long time).

One year after the bestseller by Berlitz and Valentine, the book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved! by Lawrence Kusche was published. published by rororo, 1980). This work, still considered a classic of skeptical research, cleared up a whole series of conjectures, half-truths and fictions on the subject. Kusche showed that nothing about this part of the Atlantic was unusual. The number of ships and aircraft that have disappeared is no higher than in other areas of the world's oceans comparable in terms of traffic volume, and the vast majority of cases completely lose their mysterious appearance when the original sources provided in the book are examined. The subject has since become noticeably quieter. In 1980, Berlitz presented some new unexplained accidents, but they turned out not to be inexplicable at all and, moreover, with three exceptions, were not attributable to the Bermuda Triangle at all. Although shipping and aircraft accidents continue to occur in the Atlantic, they are now rarely associated with the Bermuda Triangle.

Incidents (selection)

Flight 19

This incident is the best documented and most talked about in the history of the Bermuda Triangle, where five American bombers and a search plane went missing and were not recovered on December 5, 1945. The five bombers, with their instructor Lieutenant Taylor, who was flying in the area for the first time, had lost their way on a training flight east of Florida, according to their own (radio) accounts, and were on radio bearings north of the Bahamas when they must have run out of fuel. At the time, the area in question was experiencing heavy seas and high winds that made ditching dangerous; no trace of the five planes was discovered. The search plane launched later was also lost, but more than 200 kilometers north-northwest of the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle, very far outside of it. A large pool of oil was found at sea at the spot where it presumably crashed, but no survivors.

Coal ship USS Cyclops

The USS Cyclops (AC-4) of the United States Navy disappeared in the area of the Bermuda Triangle on March 4, 1918, after leaving Barbados under as yet unexplained circumstances. Although it is assumed that the coal ship was inconveniently loaded, had an engine failure and sank in a sudden storm, there is still no trace of the ship and the 306 people on board; a wreck has never been found.

Passenger aircraft Star Tiger

On January 30, 1948, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro 688 Tudor Mark IV passenger plane carrying 31 people disappeared on a night flight from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores to Kindley Field in Bermuda. The aircraft's position could still be transmitted to the captain by radio direction finding, but shortly afterwards radio contact was lost. The aircraft was flying at an exceptionally low altitude of only 2000 feet (about 610 meters) on the transatlantic flight. The crew had not reported any problems with the aircraft prior to the disappearance.

The sighting of a low-flying aircraft by a merchant vessel on the night of the crash suggested that the aircraft had veered off course and was heading towards the east coast of the USA. In addition, a large-scale search operation sighted flotsam in the sea two days after the disappearance, but it could not be positively attributed to the aircraft. According to a more recent theory, a lack of fuel could have contributed to the disappearance of the aircraft.

Because of its flight destination Bermuda and the at that time already big myth around the Bermuda Triangle the disappearance of the Star Tiger is called by advocates of the mystery hypothesis as belonging to this mystery, even if the machine was lost north of Bermuda and thus far outside of the Bermuda Triangle.

Passenger aircraft of the type Douglas DC-3

The DC-3 was en route from Puerto Rico to Miami on December 28, 1948 with 32 passengers. In his last radio message, pilot Bob Linquist reportedly said the plane was 50 miles south of Miami and he could see the city lights. Shortly thereafter, he and his plane and passengers disappeared without a trace.

Critics point out that the pilot realized his radio was out of order before takeoff from Puerto Rico. It is possible that he did not receive the message about a change in wind direction during the flight and thus was about 50 miles south of the planned course at the time of the last radio call, about 100 miles from Miami. Moreover, Linquist's words that he could already see the lights of the city were put into his mouth after the fact.

Passenger aircraft Star Ariel

On January 17, 1949, another British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro 688 Tudor Mark IV passenger plane disappeared. The plane with its 20 occupants had taken off in the morning for a flight from Kindley Field in Bermuda to Kingston Airport in Jamaica. At the time of the disappearance, the weather was excellent, so the captain decided to fly at an altitude of 18,000 feet (about 5500 meters), a much higher flight level than is usual on this route. After the captain announced to air traffic control that he was changing radio frequencies an hour after takeoff, contact was lost. The crew had not reported any problems with the aircraft prior to the disappearance. While the weather was excellent on the day in question, there were reports of generally poor radio reception in the area of the Star Ariel's disappearance.

The Marine Sulphur Queen

In 1963, the tanker Marine Sulphur Queen disappeared with a crew of 39. Findings and the last radio communications indicate that the ship sank west of Key West and thus outside the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. The tanker, more than 20 years old, was loaded with 15,000 tons of liquid sulfur and had already been severely damaged in several weather events in the months prior, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. However, a thorough examination and repair of the ship and its tanks for damage was not scheduled until March 1963. There had also been a large number of mostly small fires on board, which, according to information from the US Coast Guard, became more frequent from October 1962 onwards and, according to witnesses, occurred almost constantly from December of that year.

The tanker departed Beaumont on February 2, 1963, with last radio contact at about 1:30 a.m. on February 4. At that time, the ship had traveled about two-thirds of the way between Beaumont and Florida's southern tip, so was still far from the Bermuda Triangle. At 11:23 a.m. on February 4, an attempt to make radio contact with the ship failed. At that time, it should have been near the Dry Tortugas, a group of islands in the Gulf of Mexico.

When the ship failed to arrive in Norfolk, Virginia, as planned on February 7, a major search operation began the next day, covering nearly 350,000 square nautical miles over the course of six days, with a calculated 95% probability of finding the tanker if it had still been on the surface.

On February 21, a U.S. Navy boat found a Navy Sulphur Queen foghorn and life jacket 12 nautical miles southwest of Key West. Subsequently, other life jackets, life rings and other small items were recovered from various vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1978, the science fiction radio play The Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle by H. G. Francis, starring René Genesis and Horst Stark, was released, describing one possibility of what might have happened on the Navy Sulphur Queen.

Japanese freighter Raifuku Maru

The freighter Raifuku Maru (Japanese 來福丸) is said to have disappeared west of the Bahamas in 1924 or 1928. His last radio message is said to have read in broken English "now very danger come quick" or, in the context of the myth, "Danger like a dagger now! Come quick! "(German: "Danger like a dagger! Come quick!").

In fact, the ship sank on April 21, 1925, en route from Boston to Hamburg in a severe storm far north of the Bermuda Triangle off Nova Scotia at position 41° 43′ N, 61° 39′ W41.716666666667-61.65, as radioed by RMS Homeric, which rushed to the rescue and observed the sinking.

Boeing 727 of the National Airlines

Ivan T. Sanderson reported in 1970 in his book Invisible Residents, which deals with aliens living on the ocean floor, that an incident is said to have occurred during a National Airlines flight with a Boeing 727 shortly before the landing approach. During the landing approach, the Boeing allegedly disappeared from the radar screen for ten minutes, but then suddenly reappeared and landed normally at Miami International Airport.

Sanderson wrote that both pilots' and passengers' watches were said to be ten minutes behind. The same time difference had also been observed on the on-board chronometer.

However, Sanderson was unable to provide a source or date for this alleged event. Also flight number and information about witnesses were missing. Thus, to this day, there is no evidence that this event actually took place. It is therefore generally considered to be one of the many reports freely invented by Sanderson.