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 plane
*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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