It was just an ordinary day at the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida on December 5, 1945. The Naval base was preparing for a routine navigation and combat training exercise.
There initial flight plan was scheduled to take them due East from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles, then a left turn due north for 73 miles flying over the Grand Bahama island and finally back at the base at Lauderdale following a direct route.
After a mysterious malfunctioning of their radio transmitters, the Flight 19 was lost in the vast North Atlantic ocean and was never found. Many people believe that there is an existence of a virtual area known as the Bermuda triangle, which is causing all those unrealistic events and disappearances. Here we are some interesting facts about the Bermuda triangle.
Table of Contents
The Area
Image credit: wikimedia
The total area covered by the Bermuda triangle is actually huge. Many pundits and writers have marked different boundaries and vertices of the triangle which varies from 1,300,000 km² to 3,900,000 km² of total area. It is much larger than the combined area of California and Texas states of the U.S.A.
It’s unofficial
The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN), a Federal body under the United States Geological Survey whose purpose is to maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government does not recognize the Triangle, nor it is given on any map drawn by any authority in the United States.
The USS Cyclopes
The earliest registered incident on the Bermuda Triangle was the mysterious disappearance of USS Cyclopes in 1918. The collier USS Cyclopes carrying Manganese ore with the crew of 309, after departing from Barbados, went missing sometime during the March 1918. Although several independent theories like storm effects, capsizing and enemy activities exist, many believe that it was lost in the Triangle.
Economical Importance
While the name may scare the hell-out of some people, the Bermuda Triangle is actually one of the busiest trade routes in the world. This part of the Atlantic ocean is regularly sailed by the ships of shapes and size from different regions of the world. Every year the Miami port and Port Everglades handle around 730,000 TEUs (2014) of cargo.
The AUTEC
Image credit: wikipedia
Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation center (AUTEC) is located right underneath the Andros Island in Bahamas inside the Bermuda Triangle region. The United States Navy’s underground research facility is responsible for testing and re-calibration of their underwater arsenal. However, many believe that the AUTEC is much more than an underwater testing facility.
Read: 13 Top Secret US Military Intelligence Programs
The origin of “Bermuda Triangle”
The name “Bermuda Triangle” was coined by an American author Vincent Hayes Gaddis, which he first used in a cover article for the 1964’s February edition of the magazine Argosy.
Methane Hydrates
There is a massive amount of Methane hydrates is trapped thousand feet underneath the seabed around the triangle. If that gas gets released, the water density will get effected and frothy water will become un–sailable. It can significantly heat up the water, resulting in reduced buoyancy which will sink every other ship that may sail over it.
The air can also get densely saturated with methane to the point that it starts to become very turbulent. That way we can explain all those sunken ships and lost aircrafts. However, there is no strong evidence found yet that can support the methane theory.
Read: 12 Unfamiliar Uses of Nanotechnology
The ‘mopping’ stream
The Gulf Stream is strong, warm and swift Atlantic ocean currents that occur from the Gulf of Mexico via straits of Florida covering the triangle before reaching far off the European coast. The currents are so powerful that it can wipe debris and oceanic wastes from one place to another in quick succession. The Gulf Stream is a major factor behind the mysterious loss of wreckage from lost vessels to sunken ships.
Christopher Columbus and the Diario
According to historical relics and artifacts, Christopher Columbus was the first ever person to mention unusual happenings near the triangle. Although the original log of Columbus’ voyages has not survived, what we do have is a copy of the log and diary of Bartolome de las Casas [1484 CE – 1566 CE]. In the Diario, he mentioned two strange, distant lights seen by Columbus and his crew on September 15, 1492. Many scholars assume that the first one was probably a meteor falling.
According to the diary, the crew faces an unusual navigational problem sometime in September, 1492. Being about two hundred leagues (a unit of length) from the island of El Ferro (Canary Islands), Columbus for the first time noticed the abnormal variation of the compass needle; a phenomenon which had never been recorded before. This ignited the speculations of extraterrestrial interference in that region as early as 1792.
The electronic fog of the Bermuda Triangle
Bruce Gernon and his father were regular fliers from Bahamas to Miami in the late 1960s and 1970s. On a fine day of December 1970, they took off following a positive weather report from the Miami flight service. As Gernon flew over the Bermuda Triangle, they approached a unique formation of clouds in front of them. He noticed that an another cloud was forming right behind the airplane and was literally being engulfed by these two clouds and its shaping into a tunnel.
As the aircraft progressed through the tunnel, it formed a vortex and spiral shapes became apparent. The weightlessness and electronic and magnetic compass failure of the aircraft makes the scene more confusing as well as scary. As they moved further into it, they reached into what appeared to be a vast area of nothingness, much like fog. It is believed that the electronic fog is the possible cause of the many disappearances of aircraft, water vessels, throughout the history of this particular region.
Read: Area 51: Things You Din’t Know
The Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso sea is a unique water body in the gyre in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is the only sea on the earth with no coastline with brown sargassum sea weed and calm water, which is totally different from the rest of the Atlantic Ocean. Some experts believe that the presence of the Sargasso sea may be a possible explanation of the catastrophes in the Bermuda triangle.
Vile Vortex
The Vile vortex(s) is twelve purported particular geographic areas, or sites of unexplained disappearance and other mysterious phenomena. In 1972, biologist and writer Ivan T. Sanderson published an article in Saga magazine, “The twelve devils graveyards Around the world”. These locations mentioned by Sanderson are equidistant from each other, equally divided between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, North and South poles represent areas where strange disappearances, phenomena, or electromagnetic “aberrations” are said to occur.
