Episode #11: The Bermuda Triangle

I’d say let’s take a little trip to the Bermuda Triangle, but considering its history, I think that’s a bad idea. Instead, we’re just going to look into its history from afar, from the safety of the Archives and the comfort of your own home. If you’ve never heard about the mysterious circumstances that surround the folklore about the area, I don’t know what sort of rock you’ve been living under. Even at the mention of certain famous names throughout history, the Devil’s Triangle comes to mind.

Author E.M. Moon Website

The Occult Archives theme song by JunkFood2121, background music by Purple Planet Music (www.purple-planet.com)  

Transcript

I’d say let’s take a little trip to the Bermuda Triangle, but considering its history, I think that’s a bad idea. Instead, we’re just going to look into its history from afar, from the safety of the Archives and the comfort of your own home. If you’ve never heard about the mysterious circumstances that surround the folklore about the area, I don’t know what sort of rock you’ve been living under. Even at the mention of certain famous names throughout history, the Devil’s Triangle comes to mind.

The Bermuda Triangle, or the Devil’s Triangle as I mentioned, is a loosely triangular area in the western part of the Atlantic Ocean between Miami, Florida, Puerto Rico, and of course, Bermuda, but this is still debatable. In this triangular area of the ocean, many planes and ships have been lost to its mystery, never to be seen again. The earliest suggestion of disappearances appeared around September 17th, 1950 in an article published in the Miami Herald, but two years later Fate magazine published a piece called Sea Mystery at Our Back Door, covering the loss of several planes and ships in the area, including Flight 19, a group of five US Navy Grumman BM Avenger torpedo bombers on a training mission. The author of the article, Georgie Sand, was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangle that we all recognize as well as the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident.

Since Flight 19 was one of the first real stories to be tangled up in the Bermuda Triangle, let’s start there.

Flight 19 was the designation of a group of five aircraft, torpedo bombers to be exact, that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5th of 1945 on a routine navigation and combat training exercise. The assignment was called “Navigation problem no. 1”, a combination of bombing and navigation training that had already been completed by other flights or were scheduled to go on later that day. The flight leader was United States Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor, who had about 2,500 flight hours logged under his belt, mostly in aircrafts of the same type that he was flying that day. His trainee pilots each had 300 total. Taylor himself had completed a combat tour in the Pacific theater as a torpedo bomber pilot on the aircraft carrier USS Hancock and had recently arrived from NAS Miami where he had been a torpedo-bombing plane instructor. Clearly, Taylor knew what he was doing when he set out on the training mission that day, and his student pilots had already completed other training missions in the area prior. They were U.S. Marine Captains Edward Joseph Powers and George William Stivers, U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant Forrest James Gerber and USN Ensign Joseph Tipton Bossi. There were five aircraft designated for the navigation training, each being a version of the Grumman TBF Avenger, which were built by General Motors under wartime production. Each plane that was to go out that day was fully fueled, but during pre-flight checks it was discovered that all the clocks were missing from the aircraft. You’d think this would be a problem considering that part of the training was to teach dead reckoning principles, part of which involved calculating elapsed time. How are you going to calculate elapsed time without a clock? Apparently, the lack of time keeping wasn’t a concern, because it was assumed that each pilot had their own watch.

First mistake.

Departure was delayed from 13:45 local time to 14:10 due to Taylor being late, but the weather in Ft. Lauderdale was described as “favorable, sea state moderate to rough.” Taylor had the supervising position for this mission while a trainee pilot had the role of leader out front, for obvious reasons…this was training. The exercise was titled “Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Navigation Problem No. 1” with three different legs, though the actual flight should have apparently had four. After take-off, they flew 091 degrees, almost due east for about 64 miles until reaching Hen and Chicken Shoals where they carried out some low level bombing practice. They continued on that heading for another 77 miles before turning onto a course of 346 degrees that led them 84 miles in the process of flying over the Grand Bahama islands. The next scheduled turn was to be at 241 degrees, flying for 140 miles, at the end of which the exercise was completed and they were to turn left and head back to NAS Ft. Lauderdale. This was supposed to be routine…

          But conversations between the pilots were overheard by base and other aircraft in the area. The practice bombing operation had been clearly carried out because at about 15:00 a pilot requested and was given the permission to drop his final bomb. Forty minutes later, another flight instructor, Lieutenant Robert F. Cox, who was forming up with his own group of students, received an unidentified transmission…

One of the unidentified crew members asked Powers for his compass reading and Powers replied, “I don’t know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn.”

Cox then transmitted “This is FT-74, plane or boat calling ‘Powers’ please identify yourself so someone can help you.”

After a few minutes the response was a request from the other in the flight for suggestions. FT-74 tried again and a man that identified himself as FT-28 (Taylor himself) came over the air. Cox asked Taylor what the trouble was and he responded that “Both of my compasses are out and I am trying to find Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I am over land but it’s broken. I am sure I’m in the Keys but I don’t know how far down and I don’t know how to get to Fort Lauderdale.”

Cox in turned informed the NAS that aircraft were lost, then advised Taylor to put the sun on his port, or left wing and fly north up the coast to Fort Lauderdale. Base operations then asked if the flight leader’s aircraft was equipped with a standard YG or IFF transmitter, which would allow them to triangulate the flight’s position, but the message was never acknowledged by Taylor, even though later he would indicate that his transmitter was indeed activated. Instead, at 16:45, Taylor radioed, “We are heading 030 degrees for 45 minutes, then we will fly north to make sure we are not over the Gulf of Mexico”. During this time no bearing could be made and IFF could not be picked up on the flight. At this point Taylor was told to broadcast on 4805 kHz. This order was not acknowledged, however, so he was asked to switch to 3000 kHz which was the search and rescue frequency. Taylor finally replied, “I cannot switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact.” At around 16:56  Taylor was again asked to turn on his transmitter if he had one, but again he didn’t acknowledge the request. He did advise his flight, however, to “Change course to 090 degrees (due east) for 10 minutes.” Around the same time, another pilot on the flight was heard saying, “Dammit if we could just fly west we would get home; head west, dammit.” After reviewing this evidence there seemed to be a difference in opinion as to why the students didn’t simply head west on their own, but it was explained that this was probably due to military discipline. 

Maybe, but if they were as fearful as their transmissions made them seen, you’d think that they would have broke from command and tried to save their lives…

Eventually the weather deteriorated and radio contact became sparse. It was assumed that the grouping of aircraft were over 230 miles out to sea, east of the Florida peninsula. Taylor radioed in again “We’ll fly 270 degrees west until landfall or running out of gas.” He also requested a weather check at 17:24 and by 17:50, several land-based radio stations had triangulated Flight 19’s position, they were north of the Bahamas and well off the coast of central Florida, but nobody transmitted this information on an open, repetitive basis. At 18:04 Taylor radioed to his flight, “Holding 270. We didn’t fly far enough east; we may as well just turn around and fly east again.”  Of course, by that time the weather had continued to become unfavorable as the sun set. Around 18:20, Taylor’s last message was received:

“All planes close up tight…we’ll have to ditch unless landfall…when the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.”

At this point, several air bases, aircraft, and merchant ships were alerted to the fact that Flight 19 had been lost. They were sent out in search of the possibly downed flight. One US Navy Squadron Training No. 49 took off from the Naval Air Station Banana River. They called in one routine radio message before they too were never heard from again. Later in the evening, a tanker observed flames from an apparent explosion. They tried to search for survivors in a pool of oil and aviation gasoline, but were unsuccessful. The assumption is that this explosion was one of the Martin PGM-5 Mariner flying boats that had exploded mid-air on its search for Flight 19.

So, what exactly happened to Flight 19? Was it pilot error? Mechanical malfunction of the aircraft? Faulty compasses? Their lack of time-keeping devices? Bad weather? There are so many factors to determine in a mysterious case like this.

Several months after the incident, a 500 page Navy board investigation report was published with several key observations:

• Flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor had mistakenly believed that the small islands he passed over were the Florida Keys, that his flight was over the Gulf of Mexico, and that heading northeast would take them to Florida. It was determined that Taylor had passed over the Bahamas as scheduled, and he did in fact lead his flight to the northeast over the Atlantic. The report noted that some subordinate officers did likely know their approximate position as indicated by radio transmissions stating that flying west would result in reaching the mainland.
• Taylor was not at fault because the compasses stopped working.
• The loss of PBM-5 BuNo 59225 was attributed to an explosion.

The report was subsequently amended as “Cause unknown” by the navy after Taylor’s mother argued that the Navy was unfairly blaming her son for the loss of five aircraft and the death of 14 men, when the Navy had neither the bodies nor the aircraft as evidence. Had Taylor been where he thought, the flight would have made it to the Florida coastline within 20 minutes or so depending on how far down they were. The islands that Taylor had witnessed from the cockpit were most likely the Bahamas which was well northeast of the Keys and they were exactly where they should be. A board of investigation found that because of the belief that Taylor was on base with their course to Florida, he would have actually taken the flight further northwest and out to sea. By the time the flight would have actually turned west, they were most likely too far out to sea and had already passed their aircraft’s fuel endurance. All these factors, combined with inclement weather and the ditching characteristics of the Avenger aircraft, meant that there was little hope of rescue, even if the crafts managed to stay afloat. There is more deep dive speculation on what could have possibly happened to Flight 19 and all of it seems to point to confusion on Taylor’s part, most likely due to the malfunction of compasses. 

But what made the compasses stop working? And from the transmissions received, it seemed like more than just a loss navigation, almost as if there was some sort of electrical disturbance that could have caused them to get turned around and render their navigation tools unusable. Over the years there has been wreckage found in the area that the planes might have gone down in, but none of them were Flight 19. There was essentially a graveyard of aircraft and other debris in the same area that the flight was lost, but not one bit of it was traced back to Flight 19. It’s as if you whole group just disappeared into thin air.

And that feeds into one of the theories about the Bermuda Triangle, that it is somehow an area where energies converge, creating a sort of wormhole that just takes things that are in its way. But is this actual paranormal phenomenon or are there more natural explanations?

Those that view the Bermuda Triangle as being more paranormal have a number of supernatural theories as to what could possibly be going on within that area of the ocean. One such theory pins the blame on leftover technology from the famed mythical city of Atlantis, though the area isn’t quite right if you know anything about Atlantis. Sometimes connected to this story is the submerged rock formation known as Bimini Road which is off the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. This structure is apparently within the confines of the Triangle by accounts. There are also followers of the infamous Edgar Cayce that take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 which could possibly refer to the discovery of the Bimini Road. People try to claim that this structure is a manmade road or wall, when in fact it actually a natural structure.

And let’s not forget about the UFO theories that are constantly flying about, no pun intended. (well, pun intended) or other anomalous or unexplained forces.

More natural explanations state things like compass malfunction due to possible unusual local magnetic anomalies that may exist in the area. Compasses have natural magnetic variations in relation to the magnetic poles, something that navigators have understood for centuries, though your average person may not know that this is true and think that something mysterious is going on. The Gulf Stream itself is another theory. Because it is essentially a river within the ocean, it can carry its own floating objects. If a plane were to land in the Gulf, there is a possibility that it could be swept away in the current of the stream. There’s also human error, which humans know well. Need I say more? Violent weather is also at the top of this list. 

Aside from the loss of Flight 19 and other aircraft and boat wreckage that has been found in the area, there are numerous other notable instances that have been attributed to the wiles of the Bermuda Triangle. 

The USS Cyclops was considered the single largest loss of life in the history of the US Navy not related to combat. The ship was carrying a full load of manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace, taking a crew of 309 people, sometime after March 4th 1918 after departing Barbados. Although there isn’t a single strong theory on what happened to the Cyclops, some blame storms, capsizing, and others even suggested that wartime enemy activity was to blame for the disappearance. In an eerie addition, two of the Cyclop’s sister ships, Proteus and Nereus, were also lost in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both ships were transporting heavy loads of metallic ore similar to the load the Cyclops carried during her fatal voyage. It’s assumed that these losses were most likely due to structural failure of the ships due to overloading. “But these ships were carrying metallic ore!” Some may say in regards to the electromagnetic wonkiness of the Triangle, but I checked and neither manganese nor aluminum is magnetic. So, that point is moot at least.

A five-masted schooner built in 1919 called the Carroll A. Deering was found run aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on January 31st, 1921.  Most assume that the Deering was a victim of piracy possibly connected to illegal rum-running trade during Prohibition, and possibly involved with another ship named Hewitt. It is though that possibly this ship was somehow involved in the disappearance of the Deering’s crew.

Then there was Star Tiger and Star Ariel who disappeared within a year of one another, 1946-49, one a flight to and one from Bermuda, the Douglas DC-3 in late 1948 heading from San Juan to Miami with no trace of the aircraft or the 32 people on board. Connemara IV was yet another, this time a pleasure yacht, that was found adrift in the Atlantic, south of Bermuda in September of 1955. Apparently the crew vanished while the yacht managed to stay afloat through three hurricanes. Also, the pair of KC-135 Stratotankers that collided and crashed into the Atlantic about 300 miles west of Bermuda.

What could possibly be causing these ships and airplanes to either crash, become abandoned, or disappear altogether? Most likely it is due to a combination of factors like weather, poor navigation, instrument failure, etc. just like with Flight 19, but do we really know? And this is just a handful of mystery disappearances that happened over seventy to eighty years ago. Some even purport that before these mysterious cases were grouped together to put the blame on the Triangle, the disappearances still occurred, but remained unconnected.

On December 4th of 1872 a ship by the name of the Mary Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in another location but its connection to the Bermuda Triangle has somehow invoked an answer to what happened to the very ship and its crew. When it was discovered, everything on board was in its place but it was missing the entire crew which consisted of seven crew members and Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, and their two your old daughter; the whole vessel was loaded with raw alcohol. 

The ship was found stranded in the sea only days after it set sail from New York, heading to Genoa, Italy. The British ship, Dei Gratia found the Mary Celeste under partial sail in the Atlantic near the shores of the Azores Islands. No crew to be seen, but the lifeboat was missing and nine of the alcohol barrels in cargo were empty and a sword was found on the deck. 

No one that was part of that voyage has ever been found. With what little evidence I’ve presented, it sounds as if the ship had come under pirate attack and those aboard were either killed or taken hostage, but the possibility of a pirate attack has since been ruled out due to everything on the ship being intact and in place, like the barrels of alcohol and valuable belongings, though alcohol was missing, but their barrels remained in cargo. 

There are other theories that blame criminal conspiracy, alien abduction, and even an attack by a giant squid, though the possibility of a natural disaster seems the most plausible on that list. While others seem to think that maybe the Mary Celeste had an accidental foray into the Bermuda Triangle. 

The Ellen Austin was another such similar ship, with a much more interesting story. In 1881 the 210 feet long white oak schooner was on her way from New York to London when they stumbled upon a run-down ship near the Bermuda Triangle. Everything seemed to be fine with the derelict ship itself as it drifted just north of the Sargasso Sea…..

Captain Baker of the Ellen Austin asked to observe this abandoned ship for a period of two days to make sure that it wasn’t somehow a trap. After two days and with no response from the ship, the captain and his crew entered the abandoned vessel to find a well-packed shipment and absolutely no crew. The Ellen Austin decided to tow the unmanned ship back with it, but the captain had to place a prize crew on the ship so that they could set sail together. However, after two days of sailing on calm waters, a squall separated the two ships, following which the derelict ship vanished. Days after the storm they were able to spot the aforementioned ship through a spyglass as it drifted aimlessly away from them. After hours of effort they were able to catch up to the vessel again, but strangely…no one was on board. There is a story that Baker tried to rescue the ship again, but met the same fate before having to abandon the accursed vessel. Other reports suggest that the vessel was indeed spotted again but this time had a separate crew from the one Baker had placed on it in their rescue attempt. Other than what we know here, there has been no real speculation about what actually happened to the ghost ship or its various crews that continued to disappear.

Almost even more startling than the last, a cabin cruiser by the name of Witchcraft left Miami with her captain, Dan Burack and his friend, Father Patrick Horgan. 

The men set out on their journey aboard the 23-foot luxury yacht to enjoy the wonderful view of Miami’s Christmas lights. However, they only made it about a mile from offshore before the coast guard received a call from the captain stating that their ship had hit something, there didn’t seem to be any substantial damage, but they indicated needing help to be towed back to shore. The coast guard set out immediately to retrieve them, reaching Witchcraft in a little under twenty minutes…but found nothing.

The area indicating the location of the ship was completely deserted with no signs that there had been any ship that was stranded or even present there previously. What’s even more perplexing is Witchcraft was a particular cruiser that was virtually unsinkable and would have housed numerous life-saving devices like life-jackets, lifeboats, flares, distress signal devices, etc. But none of those were seemingly used and the shit itself was just…gone. 

Of course, coast guard officials searched hundreds of square miles of ocean over the next few days but were completely unsuccessful. And to this day, nothing of the ship or its occupants has been found. This incident is a complete and total mystery.

          These last few stories are more confounding than that of Flight 19 and similar aircraft stories. Malfunctions of equipment makes more sense in these instances because they are almost out of our control. But to find ships still floating on their own, filled to the brim with cargo and not a person on board is…eerie to say the least. And some don’t even have an abandoned ship as proof that something went awry as with the last story; they just disappeared altogether.

          What do you think is going on in the Bermuda Triangle? Is it just sporadic instances of human error? Electromagnetic interference due to storms that pop up in the area? The Gulf current? Or is it just a bit weirder than that—maybe it is aliens and UFOs or the sunken city of Atlantis…worm holes, alternate dimensions. Who knows? That’s why it’s all still a mystery. And a mystery that makes one wary about venturing into waters of the unknown like that. I for one am unsure and would like to adhere more to the scientific logical explanations, as much as I love the weird and unknown, but believing in that side for this subject is sort of terrifying, all things considered. Humans were probably never meant to fly and navigate the air, but the ocean is just as dangerous since we aren’t capable of breathing under water and are snack sized to most things that dwell beneath.  Maybe it’s just best to avoid that area entirely if you can, just to be on the safe side.

          If you have any theories or ideas on the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle, please feel free to comment under tonight’s episode post on Facebook. You can find me there at Facebook.com/TheOccultArchives. I’m also on Instagram @TheOccultArchivesPodcast and on my website, author-emmoon.weebly.com. You can aaaalso become a member of the Archives on BuyMeACoffee for as little as $3 a month or you can just tip me and Buy Me A Book for as low as a buck. The more you interact with me on social media, the more likely it is for me to be seen and that helps bring you more spooky content.

That’s all for tonight. Until next time…lock your doors, salt your windows, and remember…it’s ok to sleep with the lights on.