Bermuda Essay, Research Paper

*A legendary triangle of Ocean lies between 3 countries upon the Atlantic

*ocean. The Cities are Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Fort Lauderdale. Ships,

*people and aeroplanes have been reported mysteriously disappearing off the

*face of the earth whilst travelling inside this triangle. It soon acquired

*the name “Devils Triangle” owing to peoples superstitions that the devil

*was at play on this stretch of ocean and gobbling up weary and lost

*travellers with great delight, but what actually was at play inside this

*triangle of rough water, is it really the devil?, or perhaps aliens are

*using this spot as their home base on earth. Maybe it really does contain a

*mystical vortex that sucks people down into a third dimension.

*

*The myth of the mysterious triangle was first begun in an Associated Press

*dispatch of September 16, 1950. Reporter E.V. W. Jones wrote of “mysterious

*disappearances” of ships and planes between the Florida coast and Bermuda.

*Two years after this article appeared Fate magazine ran an article by

*George X. Sand 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”.

*

*It was not long before ideas and suggestions started forming about this

*piece of ocean. M.K. Jessup wrote about the disappearances and gave ideas

*about alien intelligences being behind them in the book “The Case for the

*UFO. The view was also echoed by Donald E. Kyhoe who is noted for his “The

*Flying Saucer Conspiracy” of 1955. Frank Edwards (Stranger Than Science)

*agreed with the theory of aliens having a local hangout in the triangle as

*well. Finally a man by the name of Vincent H. Gaddis came up with the

*phrase “Bermuda Triangle”.

*

*Vincent Gaddis wrote an article in February 1964’s edition of Argosy and

*incorporated the story later in his book “Invisible Horizons” titled “The

*Deadly Bermuda Triangle”. And there was the birth of the now world famous

*myth of the Bermuda Triangle.

*

*Throughout the years it has featured in many many articles, books,

*television series and movies and always portrayed as a very real and

*mysterious thing, but anyone out there with any sense surely will ask

*themselves ” how in this day and age could boats, planes and other

*travellers just go mysteriously missing in a certain piece of water?”

*”wouldn’t an aeroplane full of international travellers be afraid to travel

*over this part of the ocean”….Well let me tell you I’ve always asked the

*same questions myself and I personally have come to the conclusion that the

*entire thing is nothing more than a myth hyped up over the years by wrong

*facts and silly overexaggerated stories told down through the generations

*of people willing to listen to any kind of mysterious story with a unknown

*edge to it.

*

*

*

*One of the most famous stories to ever surround the Bermuda Triangle is the

*mysterious disappearance of the Naval Air Flight 19.

*

*So what happened?

*

*On December 5th, 1945, five Avenger torpedo bombers left the Naval Air

*Station at Fort Lauderdale. They never returned home.

*

*The Avenger bombers contained 14 men, 13 of those were trainees in the last

*stages of their training along with Lt. Charles Taylor. The five pilots had

*been recently transferred from the Miami Naval Air Station. Lt. Taylor knew

*the Florida Keys well but had no knowledge of flying over the Bahamas which

*was the direction Flight 19 was headed in.

*

*Their mission on that day was for practice bombing at hens and Chicken

*Shoals fifty-six miles away. Once that was accomplished, the Avengers were

*to continue on eastward for another sixty-seven miles, then head north

*seventy-three miles. Following that they would turn southwest and head for

*home. In other words they were flying a triangular flight path through what

*would be called the Bermuda Triangle.

*

*At 3.50pm that afternoon a pilot and his flight instructor, Lt. Robert Cox

*were about to land at Fort Lauderdale. They overheard a radio transmission

*addressed to someone named Powers. Powers replied, “I don’t know where we

*are. We must have got lost after that last turn.”

*

*A little later on Lt. Cox managed to establish radio contact with another

*of the Pilots on the lost Avengers out at sea. Speaking with Lt. Taylor he

*was informed that Taylor’s compasses were not working and he was sure that

*they were in the “keys”, meaning Florida keys, and that he didn’t know how

*to get to Fort Lauderdale. Cox urged him to fly north toward Miami “If you

*are in the keys.”

*

*Taylor was badly mistaken, he in fact was not in the keys as thought. He

*was in the Bahamas and by taking Cox’s advice and flying north he would

*only go further out to sea. Efforts by Cox and others to establish the

*location of Flight 19 were hampered by poor communications. At one point

*Taylor was urged to turn over control of the flight to one of the students,

*though apparently he did not do so.

*

*As dusk slowly approached Fort Lauderdale realized with great horror that

*Lt. Taylor and his Avengers had no idea of where they were, they were

*completely lost. The atmospheric interference with the radio signals got a

*lot worse at sunset and communication was almost impossible with Flight 19.

*Lt. Taylor exclaimed that they would fly north-northeast for a short time,

*then head north.

*

*The continued on with their course changing to veer slightly off to the

*east when the contact made with Fort Lauderdale at 5.15pm by Taylor. “We

*are now heading west” exclaimed Taylor as he was overheard addressing his

*companions and telling them that they should join up; as soon as one of

*them ran out of fuel, they would all go down together.

*

*The sun sank down on Fort Lauderdale at 5.29pm. Bad weather was moving in

*from the north and the situation was escalating into a full blown

*emergency. No one knew where Flight 19’s location was and there was much

*speculation as to where they could be. At 6.00pm reception improved for a

*short time. Taylor was urged to switch to 3,000 kilocycles, the emergency

*frequency. Taylor refused to do so for fear he and the other planes would

*fall our of communication; unfortunately, interference from Cuban

*commercial stations and the inability of other coastal stations to

*translate the Fort Lauderdale training signal easily would effectively shut

*off Flight 19 from the rest of the world.

*

*At one point the ComGulf Sea Frontier Evaluation Center thought it had

*pinpointed the flight’s approximate position; east of New Smyrna Beach,

*Florida, and far to the north of the Bahamas.

*

*The first rescue craft was sent out at 6.20pm. It was a Dumbo flying boat

*and it soon lost contact with the shore, leading all to believe that they

*had also lost the Dumbo. The problem turned out to be and iced over

*antenna.

*

*Within the hour more aircraft joined in the search. The weather was

*overcast and the seas were reported as rough and turbulent. One flight a

*Martin Mariner (Training 49) failed to make its scheduled rendezvous and

*did not answer radio calls. At 7.50pm the crew of a nearby ship reported of

*seeing an enormous sheet of fire caused by the explosion of an aeroplane.

*The ship reported of passing through a large pool of oil soon after and not

*finding any survivors or bodies of the crashed aircraft. They did not try

*to retrieve any debris from the ocean as weather conditions were at this

*point deteriorating rapidly making it impossible for any kind of retrieval.

*

*Flight 19 by this time had exhausted their fuel and were assumed to be

*down. Taylor’s last transmission was heard at 7.04pm. The search for the

*lost Avengers continued on through the rough night and hundreds of planes

*and ships joined the search the next day.

*

*No trace of the Mariner or Avengers have ever been found.

*

*On April 3, 1946 the conclusion of an extensive Naval Investigation

*declared that the “flight leader’s false assurance of identifying as the

*Florida Keys, islands he sighted, plagued his future decisions and confused

*his reasoning…He was directing his flight to fly east…even though he

*was undoubtedly east of Florida.” Taylor’s mother and aunt refused to

*accept this verdict, the Navy set up a panel to review the report. In

*August this panel announced it could only agree with the original

*conclusion. Furious, the two women hired an attorney and secured a hearing

*the following October. On November 19 the Board for Correction of Naval

*Records retracted the original verdict and officially laid the disaster to

*”causes or reasons unknown”. The Mariner’s fate was believed to be from

*explosion. The Mariner’s had a bad habit of blowing up if even the tiniest

*of sparks were ignited. There is no particular disagreement with this fact.

*

*The Avengers total disappearance would be owing to the rough seas at the

*time and they were well known to be incredibly heavy. Known through the

*Navy as “Iron birds” they weighed 14,000 pounds empty. After impact they

*would of immediately sunk to the bottom; any debris remaining would of been

*swallowed up by the violent ocean at that time, leaving no trace of

*themselves to be found anywhere by anyone.

*

*The mistakes and misguided information about the Mariner and Flight 19’s

*disappearance soon began in the early 50’s. Stories about “a mysterious

*place where ships and planes disappeared into” and a “limbo of the lost”

*caught the public’s intrest immediately, the legend of the Bermuda Triangle

*began and is still carried on to this day.

*

*Taylor is often mistquoted as saying in his radio transmissions that

*”everything is wrong…strange …the ocean doesn’t look as it should” and

*”They look like they’re from outer space – don’t come after me.” He in fact

*never uttered those words. This leads to some seriously silly stories about

*alien abduction and motherships hovering above the triangle. Even in the

*move “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” Steven Speilberg documents Flight

*19 returning to earth off a large spaceship. It is also often reported that

*on the day of Flight 19’s disappearance the seas were calm and smooth. They

*were indeed the very opposite!!

*

*In 1991 a newspaper report ran of a salvage ship named “Deep See” finding

*intact the remains of Flight 19 on the ocean bottom ten miles northeast of

*Fort Lauderdale. One plane bore the number 28, the same as Taylor’s

*aircraft. But on June 4 graham Hawkes, who had headed the search, cincede

*that further investigation had proved that the craft were not from Flight

*19. The numbers on the other plances were different from those on the

*fabled flight. The Avengers were an older model than the one on Flight 19.

*

*There are in fact many many stories of strange disappearances of both ships

*and planes either somewhere near or inside the bermuda triangle – The fact

*is that 1/2 the time they are not even inside the rough triangle

*dimensions, and are quite a long way away from it but somehow get their

*disappearance linked with the Triangle, so far the triangle must have some

*kind of mysterious ocean powers to allow it to travel all over the world

*and suck down all sorts of vessels all over the place.

*

*The fact is that accidents happen, for one reason or another, planes crash,

*boats sink….just look at the Titanic, claimed as “unsinkable” in it’s

*day! The research of Larry Kusche, has dispelled a lot of the untruths

*about the place. After searching endlessly through newspaper accounts,

*weather reports and other official docments, Kusche found (as he suspected)

*that the Bermuda Triangle had no more disappearances than any other section

*of the world. He has a book out called “The Bermuda Triangle Mystery –

*Solved. You can read more about the stories and how they were twisted and

*changed to suit the myth and mystery more.

*

*On 4th of April, 1975 Lloyd’s of London issued a statement to Fate magazine

*declaring that “428 vessels have been reported missing throughout the world

*since 1955″ they continued to state that there was no cause to suspect that

*the Bermuda Triangle was swallowing more ships than any other section of

*the planet.

*

*If you would like more realistic information on the disappearance of flight

*19 and other ships I reccommend this site:

*The Deparment of the Navy – Frequently Asked Questions about the Bermuda

*Triangle.

*

*

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