Bermuda Triangle - The Devil's Triangle

 Bermuda Triangle

The Devil’s Triangle

  4 February 2021

Introduction

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil’s Triangle, is a loosely defined 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. Most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.

                                                                      

The vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle is amongst the most heavily traveled shipping lanes in the world, with ships frequently crossing through it for ports in Americas, Europe and the Caribbean islands. Cruise ships and pleasure craft regularly sail through he region, and commercial and private aircraft routinely fly over it.

Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings. Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors.

ORIGIN OF THE TALE……

The earliest suggestion of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in “ The Miami Herald” ( Associated Press ) by Edward Van Winkle Jones.

Two Years later……..

Fate Magazine published “Sea Mystery at Our Back Door” a short article by George Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of 5 US Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission.

Sand’s Article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place, as well as the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident.

Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. In it Author Allan W. Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying 

“ WE ARE ENTERING WHITE WATER, NOTHING SEEMS RIGHT. WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE ARE, THE WATER IS GREEN, NO WHITE”

He also wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes “FLEW OFF TO MARS”.

In February 1964, Vincent Gaddis wrote an article called the “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” in the pulp magazine Argosy saying Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book Invisible Horizons.

HOW BIG IS THE TRIANGLE AREA

The Gaddis Argosy article delineated the boundaries of the triangle, giving its vertices as Miami ; San Juan, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.

Subsequent writers did not necessarily follow this definition. 

Some writers gave different boundaries and vertices to the triangle, with the total area varying from 1,300,000 to 3,900,000 km2 ( 500,000 ti 1,510,000 sq mi) .

Indeed, some writers even stretch it as far as the Irish coast. 

Consequently, the determination of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them.

CRITICISM OF THE CONCEPT

Larry Kusche, author of the The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved (1975) argued that many claims of Gaddis and subsequent writers were exaggerated, dubious or unverifiable. Kusche’s research revealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz’s accounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants and other involved in the initial incidents. 

Kusche concluded that :

• The number of ships and aircraft reported missing in the area was not significantly greater, proportionally speaking, than in any other part of the Ocean.

• In an area frequented by tropical cyclones, the number of disappearances that did occur were, for the most part, neither disproportionate, unlikely nor mysterious.

• Furthermore, Berlitz and other writers would often fail to mention such storms or even represent the disappearance as having happened in calm conditions when meteorological records clearly contradict this.

• The numbers themselves had been exaggerated by sloppy research. A Boat’s disappearance, for example, would be reported, but its eventual (if belated) return to port may not have been.

• Some disappearances had, in fact, never happened. One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937, off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses; a check of the local papers revealed nothing.

• The legend of the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery, perpetuated by writers who either purposely or unknowingly made use of misconceptions, faulty reasoning and sensationalism.

In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the World’s 10 Most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them.

HYPOTHETICAL EXPLANATION ATTEMPTS

Person accepting the Bermuda Triangle as a real phenomenon have offered a number of explanatory approaches.

PARANORMAL EXPLANATIONS

Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts to explain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology from the mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantis story is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Road off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of the purported psychic Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968, as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formation as a road, wall or other structure but the Bimini Road is of natural origin.

Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. Charles Berlitz author of various books on anomalous phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or unexplained forces.

NATURAL EXPLANATIONS

COMPASS VARIATIONS

Compass problems are one of the cited phrases in many Triangle Incidents. While some have theorised that unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalies have not been found. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, a fact which navigators have known for centuries.

Magnetic Compass North and Geographic True North are exactly the same only for a small number of places - for example, as of 2000, in the United States, only those places on a line running from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. But the public may not be as informed and think there is something mysterious about a compass “Changing” across an area as large as the Triangle, which it naturally will.

GULF STREAM

The Gulf Stream is a major surface current, primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and the flows through the Strait of Florida, into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean and like a river it can and does carrying floating objects. It has a maximum surface velocity of about 2 m/s. A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by current.

HUMAN ERROR

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, Revonoc as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.

VIOLENT WEATHER

Hurricanes are powerful storms that form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives and caused billions of dollar in damage. The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla’s Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane. These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.

A powerful downdraft of Cold Air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of Pride of Baltimore on May 14, 1986. The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 Km/h ( 20 mph ) to 97-145 Km/h ( 60-90 mph ). A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James Lushine stated “During very unstable weather conditions the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water. A similar event occurred to Concordia in 2010, off the Coast of Brazil. 

Scientists are currently investigating whether “Hexagonal” clouds may be the source of these up to 170 mph ( 270 Km/h ) “AIR BOMBS”.

METHANE HYDRATES

An explanation of some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates ( a form of natural gas ) on the continental shelves.  

Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can, indeed sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of water, any wreckage consequently rising to the surface would be rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream. It has been hypothesised that periodic methane eruptions ( Sometimes called “mud volcanoes” ) may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships. If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.

Publications by USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge Area, off the coast of the southeastern  United States. However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years.