How the Bermuda Triangle Works

How the Bermuda Triangle Works

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. 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.

Bermuda Triangle Image Gallery

The Bermuda Triangle covers roughly 500,000 square miles in the Atlantic Ocean. .

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.

In this article, we'll look at the facts surrounding what we do know about the area as well as some of the most commonly-recited stories. We'll also explore the bizarre theories like aliens and space portals as well as the mundane explanations.

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 Bermuda Triangle is located off the Southeastern coast of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean, with its apexes in the vicinities of Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It covers roughly 500,000 square miles.

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.

The Bermuda Triangle Mystery

Over the past 100 years, the Bermuda Triangle has seen what some say is a significant and inordinately high number of unexplained disappearances of planes, ships and people. Some reports say that as many as 100 ships and planes have been reported missing in the area and more than 1,000 lives have been lost. The U.S. Coast Guard, however, maintains that the area does not have an unusual number of incidents.

In 1975, Mary Margaret Fuller, editor of "Fate" magazine, contacted Lloyd's of London for statistics on insurance payoffs for incidents occurring within the Bermuda Triangle's usually accepted boundaries. According to Lloyd's records, 428 vessels were reported missing throughout the world between 1955 and 1975, and th ere was no greater incidence of events occurring in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else in the world.

Image courtesy Amazon

Gian J. Quasar, author of "Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery" and curator of Bermuda-triangle.org, argues that this report "is completely false." Quasar reasons that because Lloyd's does not insure small crafts like yachts and often doesn't insure small charter boats or private aircraft, its records can't be the definitive source. He also states that the Coast Guard's records, which it publishes annually, do not include "missing vessels." He requested data on "overdue vessels" and received (after 12 years of asking) records of 300 missing/overdue vessels for the previous two years. Whether those vessels ultimately returned is unknown. His Web site has a of these vessels.

The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) database indicates (according to Gian J. Quasar) that only a handful of aircraft have disappeared off the New England coast over the past 10 years, while over 30 have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle.

The mystery of the Triangle probably took hold with the first well-publicized disappearance in 1945, when five Navy Avengers disappeared in the area. The cause of the disappearance was originally "pilot error," but family members of the pilot leading the mission couldn't accept that he had made such a mistake. Eventually they convinced the Navy to change it to "causes or reasons unknown."

Is Insurance Higher in the Bermuda Triangle?According to Norman Hooke, who conducted marine casualty studies for Maritime Information Services, based in London, "The Bermuda Triangle does not exist." He instead says that disappearances in the Triangle are typically weather-related. So despite the theories of why ships and planes disappear in the area, insurance premiums are no higher than for any other area of the ocean.

The myth gained momentum after reporter E.V.W. Jones compiled a list of "mysterious disappearances" of ships and planes between the Florida coast and Bermuda. Two years later, George X. Sand wrote an article for "Fate" magazine, titled "Sea Mystery at our Back Door." The article was about a "series of strange marine disappearances, each leaving no trace whatever, that have taken place in the past few years" in a "watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico."

As more incidents occurred, the reputation grew and past events were reanalyzed and added to the legend. In 1964, "Argosy Magazine" gave the triangle its name in an article titled "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" by Vincent Gaddis. Argosy magazine's tagline a "magazine of master fiction," but that did nothing to halt the spread of the myth. More articles, books, and movies have appeared, suggesting theories ranging from alien abductions to a giant octopus.

Next, we'll look at some early well-known incidents that have been attributed to the area.

Well-known Disappearances

Many Bermuda Triangle Web sites include long lists of missing ships and planes. But many of those were nowhere near the Triangle when they disappeared or they turned up later with rational explanations for their disappearances. For example, the Mary Celeste, found floating in 1872 with not a person on board and everything exactly as they had left it, is on nearly every list of losses blamed on the Bermuda Triangle. But in reality, it was many hundreds of miles from the Triangle at the time.

Here is a sampling of the some of the most notable incidents. As you'll see, some of these have reasonable explanations although they're still attributed to the strange and unknown powers of the Bermuda Triangle.

The U.S.S. Cyclops, 1918

During World War I, the U.S.S. Cyclops served along the eastern coast of the United States until January 9, 1918. At that time, she was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service. The Cyclops was scheduled to sail to Brazil to refuel British ships in the south Atlantic. She set out from Rio de Janeiro on February 16, and, after a brief stop in Barbados from March 3 to 4, was never seen or heard from again. All 306 passengers and crew were gone without a trace.

Image courtesy New York Navy Yard/Navy Historical Center The USS Cyclops anchored in the Hudson River on October 3, 1911.

U.S. Navy Avengers Flight 19, 1945

The most famous Bermuda Triangle story is the mystery surrounding five missing Navy Avengers in 1945. The story of Flight 19 is usually summarized this way: a routine patrol set out on a sunny day with five highly experienced student pilots. Suddenly, the tower began receiving transmissions from the flight leader that they were lost, compasses were not working, and "everything looked wrong." They were never seen again, and extensive Navy investigations turned up no clues to explain the disappearance.

Image courtesy U.S. Naval Historical Center A U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger

Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor led the mission, which included several planned course changes. They departed at 1:15 p.m. on December 5, 1945. At 3:00 p.m., Lieutenant Robert F. Cox was flying over Fort Lauderdale, Florida when he heard a signal that he thought was from a boat or plane in distress. He called Operations at the Naval Air Station to report what he had heard. Cox told Taylor to fly with the sun at his left wing and up the coast until he hit Miami. Taylor then said that they were over a small island with no other land in sight. If he was over the Keys as he had said, however, he should have seen several islands as well as the Florida peninsula.

With less than two hours' flying time until they ran out of fuel, Taylor described a large island to Operations. Assuming this was Andros Island, the largest in the Bahamas, Operations sent Taylor a heading that would take him to Fort Lauderdale. Apparently this heading was correct, because once Flight 19 assumed the new course, Taylor's voice began coming in stronger over the radio. Taylor, however, didn't believe this course was right and after a few minutes said that they "didn't go far enough east. Turn around again and go east. We should have a better chance of being picked up closer to shore." With this move, transmissions began to weaken as they flew out of radio range in the wrong direction. For unknown reasons, Taylor ignored the standard flying procedure of flying west if over water and east if over land.

Two PBM-5 Mariner seaplanes went out to search the area, but one exploded soon after takeoff. The other never located Flight 19.