On 5 December 1945, disaster was about to strike the personnel of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. That afternoon five torpedo-bombers took off on a routine training flight. Soon, things began to go wrong. The flight leader reported equipment malfunctions, gyro-compasses went crazy, and he lost his horizon. Finally, he reported that he was lost. This happened just off the Florida coast and, as the day progressed, the weather worsened rapidly. Two hours later, the aircraft disappeared and were never seen again. No bodies were found and no wreckage spotted.
In isolation, the tragedy was not unprecedented. Disorientation is easy to achieve over water and, if lost, it is easy to fly until your fuel runs out, simply falling from the sky. The lack of evidence of a crash was unusual but, again, it has happened before. But what do we make of a sixth plane – part of the search and rescue operation – blowing up less than half an hour after take-off, with total loss of life?
A CATALOGUE OF DISASTER
The above is one of the major episodes of what has become known as the Bermuda Triangle. Others include the loss of two aircraft in 1948, taking sixty lives. In 1950 a freighter disappeared with all hands. 1963 saw a triple tragedy with the loss of another freighter and three large aircraft.
Indeed, if you add up the minor incidents as well you come up with a continuous list of mysterious disappearances of over 140 ships and planes and a thousand lives. The greatest tragedy happened in March 1918. Sailing from Barbados to Norfolk, Virginia, the US Navy Supply Vessel Cyclops disappeared without trace, taking three hundred lives.
The Bermuda Triangle stretches from Bermuda to Cuba, and along the US coast from Miami to New York. Sceptics would argue there is no mystery as traffic is so dense that disasters are inevitable. But a whole industry of the fantastic has been built up to explain such disappearances.
PSEUDOSCHOLASTIC SHENNANIGANS
Vincent Gaddis blamed a space-time continuum touching our dimension at this point.
Charles Berlitz put it down to UFO activity and time warps. A Dr Kenneth McCall postulated the tormented souls of black slaves thrown overboard to be cursing the area.
Ivan Sanderson suggested a slightly less bizarre theory with his magnetic vortices. Identifying similar areas around the Earth, such vortices are formed where warm and cold currents collide.
A further idea is offered by geo-chemist, Dr Richard McIver, who blames gas hydrates trapped in the seabed. Geo-disturbances can cause the release of large amounts of methane. When this happens, the sea can go frothy, like the head of beer, causing ships to lose buoyancy and sink.
When the methane reaches the air, a plane engine can cause it to ignite, the wreckage falling into the frothy sea and disappearing. However, whilst this last theory holds real possibilities, perhaps we are looking at the mystery from the wrong angle …..
This essay has now moved to Anthony North’s new website. Read more of it here, including his own theories and more data.
© Anthony North, April 2007
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