Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,
Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster,
And today's episode is about the Bermuda Triangle.
The Bermuda Triangle,
Also known as the Devil's Triangle,
Is a loosely defined region in the North Atlantic Ocean,
Roughly bounded by Florida,
Bermuda,
And Puerto Rico.
Since the mid-20th century,
It has been the focus of an urban legend suggesting that many aircraft,
Ships,
And people have disappeared there under mysterious circumstances.
However,
Extensive investigations by reputable sources,
Including the U.
S.
Government and scientific organizations,
Have found no evidence of unusual activity,
Attributing to reported incidents to natural phenomena,
Human error,
And misinterpretation.
Although the nearby Sargasso Sea already had a reputation as a disappearance in the Bermuda area,
It appeared in an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones of the Miami Herald that was distributed by the Associated Press and appeared in various American newspapers on September 17,
1950.
Two years later,
Fate magazine published Sea Mystery at Our Back Door,
A short article by George X.
Sand that was the first to lay out the now familiar triangular area where the losses took place.
Sand recounted the loss of several planes and ships since World War II,
The disappearance of Sandra,
A trap steamer,
The December 1945 loss of Flight 19,
A group of five U.
S.
Navy torpedo bombers on a training mission,
The January 1948 disappearance of Star Tiger,
A British South American Airways BSAA passenger airplane,
The March 1948 disappearance of a fishing skiff with three men,
Including jockey Albert Snyder,
The December 1948 disappearance of an airborne transport DC-3 charter flight en route from Puerto Rico to Miami,
And the January 1949 disappearance of Star Aerial,
Another BSAA passenger airplane.
Flight 19 was covered again in the April 1962 issue of the American Legion magazine.
In it,
Author Alan W.
Eckert wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying,
We cannot be sure of any direction.
Everything is wrong.
Strange.
The ocean doesn't look as it should.
In February 1964,
Vincent Gaddis wrote an article called The Deadly Bermuda Triangle in Argosy,
Saying Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region dating back to at least 1840.
The next year,
Gaddis expanded this article into a book,
Invisible Horizons.
Other writers elaborated on Gaddis' ideas,
Including John Wallace Spencer,
Limbo of the Lost,
1969,
Reprinted 1973,
Charles Berlitz,
The Bermuda Triangle,
1974,
And Richard Weiner,
The Devil's Triangle,
1974.
Various of these authors incorporated supernatural elements.
Sand's article in Fate described the area as a watery triangle bounded roughly by Florida,
Bermuda,
And Puerto Rico.
The Argosy article by Gaddis further delineated the boundaries,
Giving its verticals as Miami,
San Juan,
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.
3 to 3.
9 million square kilometers.
Indeed,
Some writers even stretched it as far as the Irish coast,
According to a 1977 BBC program.
Consequently,
The determination of which accidents occurred inside the triangle depends on which writer reported them.
Larry Kusher,
Author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery,
Solved,
1975,
Argued that many claims of Gaddis and subsequent writers were exaggerated,
Dubious,
Or unverifiable.
Kusher's research revealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz's accounts and statements from eyewitnesses,
Participants,
And others involved in the initial incidents.
Kusher noted cases where pertinent information went unreported,
Such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst,
Which Berlitz had presented as a mystery,
Despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Another example was the ore carrier,
Recounted by Berlitz as lost without trace three days out of an Atlantic port,
When in fact it had been lost three days out of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean.
Kusher also argued that a large percentage of the incidents that sparked allegations of the triangle's mysterious influence actually occurred well outside it.
Often,
His research was simple.
He would review period newspapers of the dates of reported incidents and find reports on possibly relevant events,
Like unusual weather,
That were never mentioned in the disappearance stories.
Kusher concluded 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 often failed to mention some storms and sometimes even represented 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 alleged disappearances were,
In reality,
Not mysterious.
Berlitz found that one plane believed to have disappeared in 1937 had,
In fact,
Crashed off Daytona Beach,
Florida,
In front of hundreds of witnesses.
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.
When the British Channel 4 television program,
The Bermuda Triangle 1992,
Was being produced by John Simmons of Geofilms for the Equinox series,
The marine insurance market Lloyd's of London was asked if an unusually large number of ships had sunk in the Bermuda Triangle area.
Lloyd's determined that large numbers of ships had not sunk there.
Lloyd's does not charge higher rates for passing through this area.
United States Coast Guard records confirm their conclusion.
In fact,
The number of supposed disappearances is relatively insignificant,
Considering the number of ships and aircraft that pass through on a regular basis.
The Coast Guard is also officially skeptical of the Triangle,
Noting that they collect and publish,
Through their inquiries,
Much documentation contradicting many of the incidents written about by the Triangle authors.
In one such incident involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of the tanker V.
A.
Fogg,
The Coast Guard photographed the wreck and recovered several bodies in contrast with one Triangle author's claim that all the bodies had vanished,
With the exception of the captain who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk,
Clutching a coffee cup.
In addition,
V.
A.
Fogg sank off the coast of Texas,
Nowhere near the commonly accepted boundaries of the Triangle.
Nova Horizon aired the episode,
The Case of the Bermuda Triangle,
On 27th of June,
1976.
The episode was highly critical,
Stating that when we've gone back to the original sources or the people involved,
The mystery evaporates.
Science does not have to answer questions about the Triangle because those questions are not valid in the first place.
Ships and planes behave in the Triangle the same way they behave everywhere else in the world.
Skeptical researchers such as Ernest Taves and Barry Singer have noted how mysteries and the paranormal are very popular and profitable.
This has led to the production of vast amounts of material on topics such as the Bermuda Triangle.
They were able to show that some of the pro-paranormal materials,
Often misleading or inaccurate,
But its producers continue to market it.
Accordingly,
They have claimed that the market is biased in favor of books,
TV specials,
And other media that support the Triangle mystery,
And against well-researched material if it espouses a skeptical viewpoint.
In a 2013 study,
The Worldwide Fund for Nature identified the world's 10 most dangerous waters for shipping,
But the Bermuda Triangle was not among them.
Benjamin Radford,
An author and scientific paranormal investigator,
Noted in an interview on the Bermuda Triangle that it could be very difficult to locate an aircraft lost at sea due to the vast search area,
And although the disappearance might be mysterious,
That did not make it paranormal or unexplainable.
Radford further noted the importance of double-checking information,
As the mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle had been created by people who had neglected to do so.
NOAA attributes most Bermuda Triangle disappearances to environmental factors such as hurricanes,
Sudden weather shifts from the Gulf Stream,
And hazardous shallow waters.
The U.
S.
Navy dismisses supernatural claims,
Emphasizing natural causes and human error.
Additionally,
The U.
S.
Board on Geographic Names does not list the Bermuda Triangle as an official location,
Given the lack of evidence distinguishing it from other ocean regions.
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 city or state 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 Case 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.
Some hypothesize that a parallel universe exists in the Bermuda Triangle region,
Causing a time or space warp that sucks the objects around it into a parallel universe.
Others 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.
Compass issues are frequently cited in accounts of triangle incidents.
While some have theorized 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 that 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 are 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.
The Gulf Stream,
Florida Current,
Is a major surface current,
Primarily driven by thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic.
In essence,
It is a river within an ocean,
And like a river,
It can and does carry floating objects.
It has a maximum surface velocity of about 2 meters per second.
A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.
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,
Revanock,
As he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1st,
1958.
Hurricanes are powerful storms which form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars 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.
Many Atlantic hurricanes pass through the Triangle as they recurve off the eastern seaboard,
And before the advent of weather satellites,
Ships sail through the Triangle.
The U.
S.
Often had little to no warning of a hurricane's approach.
A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of the Pride of Baltimore on the 14th of May,
1986.
The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 km per hour to 97 to 145 km per hour.
A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist,
James Leshine,
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.
An explanation for some of the disappearances is 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 the water,
And any wreckage would be deposited on the ocean floor or rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream.
It has been hypothesized 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 the 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.
The sail training ship HMS Atlanta,
Originally named HMS Juno,
Disappeared with her entire crew after setting sail from the Royal Naval Dockyard,
Bermuda,
For Falmouth,
England.
On January 31,
1880.
It was presumed that she sank in a powerful storm,
Which crossed her route a couple of weeks after she sailed,
And that her crew,
Being composed primarily of inexperienced trainees,
May have been a contributing factor.
The search for evidence of her fate attracted worldwide attention at the time.
Connection is also often made to the 1878 loss of the training ship HMS Euridice,
Which foundered after departing the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda for Portsmouth on the 6th of March,
And she was alleged decades later to have been a victim of the mysterious triangle,
An allegation resoundingly refuted by the research of author David Francis Raine in 1997.
The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the U.
S.
Navy,
Not related to combat,
Occurred when the Collier Cyclops,
Carrying a full load of Manganese ore and with one engine out of action,
Went missing without a trace with a crew of 306 sometime after March 4,
1918,
After departing the island of Barbados.
Although there is no strong evidence for any single theory,
Many independent theories exist,
Some blaming storms,
Some capsizing,
And some suggesting that wartime enemy activity was to blame for the loss.
In addition,
Two of Cyclops's sister ships,
Proteus and Arius,
Were subsequently lost in the North Atlantic during World War II.
Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to that which was loaded on Cyclops during her fatal voyage.
In all three cases,
Structural failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely cause of sinking.
Carroll A.
Deering,
A five-masted schooner built in 1919,
Was found hard aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals near Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina,
On January 31,
1921.
A FBI investigation into the Deering scrutinized and ruled out multiple theories as to why and how the ship was abandoned,
Including piracy,
Domestic communist sabotage,
And the involvement of rum runners.
Flight 19 was a training flight of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5,
1945,
While over the Atlantic.
The squadron's flight plan was scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 141 miles,
North for 73 miles,
And then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise.
The flight never returned to base.
The disappearance was attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft running out of fuel.
One of the search and rescue aircraft deployed to look for them,
A PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew,
Also disappeared.
A tanker off the coast of Florida reported seeing an explosion and observing a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors.
The weather was becoming stormy by the end of the incident.
According to Contemporanea sources,
The Mariner had a history of explosions due to vapor leaks when heavily loaded with fuel,
As it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation.
GAHNP Star Tiger disappeared on the 30th of January 1948 on a flight from the Azores to Bermuda.
GAGRE Star Aerial disappeared on January 17,
1949,
On a flight from Bermuda to Kingston,
Jamaica.
Both were Avro Tudor 4-passenger aircraft operated by British South American Airways.
Both planes were operating at the very limits of their range,
And the slightest error or fault in the equipment could keep them from reaching the small island.
On December 28,
1948,
A Douglas DC-3 aircraft,
Number NC-16002,
Disappeared while on a flight from San Juan,
Puerto Rico,
To Miami.
No trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board was ever found.
A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found there were insufficient information on the aircraft.
There was no information available on which to determine probable cause of the disappearance.
A pleasure yacht was found adrift in the Atlantic south of Bermuda on September 26,
1955.
It is usually stated in the stories that the crew vanished while the yacht survived,
Being at sea during three hurricanes.
The 1955 Atlantic hurricane season shows Hurricane Ion passing nearby between the 14th and 18th of September,
With Bermuda being affected by winds of almost gale force.
In his second book on the Bermuda Triangle,
Weiner quoted from a letter he'd received from Mr.
J.
E.
Chaloner of Barbados.
On the morning of September 22,
Connemara IV was lying to a heavy moor in the open roadstead of Carlisle Bay.
Because of the approaching hurricane,
The owner strengthened the mooring ropes and put out two additional anchors.
There was little else he could do,
As the exposed mooring was the only available anchorage.
In Carlisle Bay,
The sea in the wake of Hurricane Janet was awe-inspiring and dangerous.
The owner of Connemara IV observed that she had disappeared.
An investigation revealed that she had dragged her moorings and gone to sea.
On the 28th of August 1963,
A pair of U.
S.
Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft collided and crashed into the Atlantic 300 miles west of Bermuda.
Some writers say that while the two aircraft did collide,
There were two distinct crash sites separated by over 160 miles of water.
However,
Acucia's research showed that the unclassified version of the Air Force investigation report revealed that the debris field defining the second crash site was examined by a search and rescue ship and found to be a mass of seaweed and driftwood tangled in an old buoy.
The Devil's Sea,
Also known as the Devil's Triangle,
The Dragon's Triangle,
The Formosa Triangle,
And the Pacific-Bermuda Triangle,
Is a region of the Pacific south of Tokyo.
The Devil's Sea is sometimes considered a paranormal location,
Though the veracity of these claims has been questioned.
The Japanese word ma-no-umi,
Translated as Devil's Sea,
Troublesome Sea,
Or Dangerous Sea,
Has been widely used to describe dangerous marine locations around the world.
This means that there are many locations that the Japanese call ma-no-umi.
In August of 1945,
A Mitsubishi A6M Zero supposedly went missing.
A distress radio transmission from Zero-F Wing Commander Pilot Shiro Kawamoto,
Crossing the triangle near the end of the war,
Created more questions than answers.
The last thing his message said was,
Something is happening in the sky.
The sky is opening up.
On January 4,
1955,
Japanese ship Shin-Yo-Maru No.
10 lost radio contact near Mikurajima.
Japanese newspapers then began to label the location as ma-no-umi until the ship was found safe on the 15th of January.
Yomiuri Shimbun showed a map of the sea with points of several other ships that had been lost in recent years,
And stated that those ships were lost within the area that the Yokohama Coast Guard Office had classified as a Special Danger Area.
In the U.
S.
,
The New York Times introduced this incident with the term,
The Devil's Sea,
Where nine ships had been lost in perfect weather.
Yomiuri Shimbun described the size of the ma-no-umi as follows.
From the Izu Islands to east of the Ogasawara Islands,
About 200 miles east to west,
And about 300 miles north to south,
Where nine ships were lost in the past five years.
However,
Two of the nine ships were lost near Miyakejima and Iwojima,
About 750 miles apart.
In 1974,
American paranormal writer Charles Berlitz introduced the Devil's Sea in his book,
The Bermuda Triangle.
Berlitz claimed that the nine modern ships and several hundred crews were lost without traces between 1950 and 1954.
In 1955,
The Japanese government sent Kaiyo Maru No.
5 to the sea.
For investigating unexplained ship losses.
But the ship vanished as well.
After the incident,
Japanese authorities have labeled the sea as a danger zone.
In 1989,
Berlitz claimed that the Devil's Sea is also called the Dragon's Triangle in his book,
The Dragon's Triangle.
Berlitz continued by theorizing that five Japanese military vessels disappeared while in maneuvers near Japanese shores in early 1942.
In 1975,
American author Larry Kusha published The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved,
Debunking the Devil's Sea legend.
Kusha sent letters to government offices which were related to the sea,
But nobody knew about the Devil's Sea or such a danger zone.
The actual danger zone where the Maritime Safety Agency of Japan warned not to approach was only 10 miles to Myojinsho.
The Kaiyo Maru No.
5 was sent to Myojinsho for investigating activity of an undersea volcano.
It was lost in 1952.
The loss of the Kaiyo Maru was accounted for,
Undersea volcano eruption.
One of eight other lost ships also was accounted for.
Most of the nine ships were small fishing boats with poor or no radio.
The weather was not perfect.
In 1995,
Kusha's research claimed that Berlitz's military vessels were actually fishing vessels,
And some of those listed by Berlitz sank outside the area defined by the Dragon's Triangle.
Kusha also wrote that the Japanese research vessel carried not 100 personnel,
But only 31,
And that an undersea volcano destroyed it on the 24th of September 1952.
In Daniel Cohen's 1974 book,
Curses,
Hexes,
And Spells,
It's reported that legends of the danger of the Dragon's Triangle go back for centuries in Japan.
Its most famous casualty was the No.
5 Kaiyo Maru,
A scientific research vessel which disappeared with the loss of all hands on September 24,
1952.
With such a dramatic history,
One would expect there to be all sorts of information on the subject,
Especially in Japan.
A search completed by skeptoid author Brian Dunning for books,
Newspapers,
And magazine articles on the Dragon's Triangle came up completely empty,
Until a full 20 years after the loss of the Kaiyo Maru.
Apparently the story,
Even the very existence of this legendary named region,
Was not invented until very recently.
Research also explores natural environmental changes as the cause of such controversial anomalies in the Dragon's Triangle.
One of these explanations is the vast field of methane hydrates present on the bottom of the ocean in the Dragon's Triangle area.
Methane clathrates will explode when it rises above 18 degrees Celsius.
Methane hydrate gases are described as ice-like deposits that break off from the bottom and rise,
Forming bubbles on the surface of the water.
These gas eruptions can interrupt buoyancy and can easily sink a ship,
Leaving no trace of debris.
Another explanation for this paranormal activity could be the undersea volcanoes that are very common in this area.
It is quite characteristic for small islands in the Dragon's Triangle to frequently disappear and new islands appear due to both volcanoes and seismic activity.
Because the location of the Dragon's Triangle is not plotted on any official world map,
The area and perimeter vary from one author to another author.
