On December 5, 1945, a group of US attack aircraft on patrol near the Atlantic coast disappeared without a trace. The United States Navy has given probabilities of what happened to them, but that hasn’t stopped a legion of conspiracy theorists from theorising about what might have occurred in their absence.
The mystery is only one of several that have been not uncovered in the Bermuda Triangle, a Atlantic Ocean region stretching from the coast of Florida through Puerto Rico and then onto the Bermuda Islands.
The Lost Air Patrol
On December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bomber aircraft took off from US Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, which is located on the Florida coast, for a training exercise that would test both their dive-bombing skills as well as their dead reckoning, which is the estimation of one’s location in the absence of timekeeping or other navigational devices.
That day’s weather was predicted to be “favourable, with moderate to rough seas.”
Flight 19 was supposed to travel roughly 56 nautical miles to the east, simulate a collision with a group of solitary rocks in the Bahamas, continue to a point further east, and then make a loop to the north, west, and back to NAS Fort Lauderdale. It was planned to take three hours to complete the mission.
During the simulated bombing mission, the aircraft reportedly became disoriented when their bombs were detonated. This information comes from radio transcripts of the event.
How many ships and aircraft went missing in Bermuda Triangle?
There is no way to know the exact number of ships or aircraft that have “disappeared” in the Bermuda Triangle; nonetheless, the United States Navy estimates that approximately fifty ships and twenty aircraft have vanished in that region.
Bermuda Triangle – Mysterious Waterway
The Bermuda Triangle, which is also known as the ‘Devil’s Triangle,’ the ‘Hoodoo Sea,’ and the ‘Limbo of the Lost,’ amongst other less common names, encompasses a vast area of ocean that is 700,000 square kilometres or 270,000 square miles in size, but it is also a highly trafficked region of the ocean.
Wreckage evidence, rather a lack of it, has contributed to the waterway’s image as a site of supernatural activity due to the disappearance of many ships and planes over the years.
However, there are a variety of reasonable theories for the disappearances that arise from totally natural sources on Earth. It has nothing to do with aliens or fire crystals from the city of Atlantis that were lost. It is usual for hurricanes and other storms to pass through the Bermuda Triangle; the Gulf Stream flows through the region, and the western half of the Sargasso Sea, a gyre filled with sargassum seaweed, spans across a portion of the Triangle, which may have swept away any debris from collisions.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the majority of the scientific causes include the numerous tropical storms and hurricanes that travel through this area, as well as the Gulf Stream Current, which can generate rapid and significant changes in the weather. According to NOAA, there may be evidence that this region contains a geomagnetic anomaly that can cause a ship or plane’s navigation system to point to the “true” north instead of the “magnetic” north. This information is based on the possibility that there is such evidence. This can lead to navigational errors, although it should be emphasised that magnetic anomalies are not unique to this region and can be found everywhere on the planet. Despite this, navigational errors can occur.
Both simple human error and the presence of explosive methane gas, which can rise to the top of the ocean and sink ships, are two more ideas that have been proposed. The United States Navy believes that the bomber squadron involved in the incident known as Flight 19 crashed into the water after running out of fuel. While it is a sad tragedy, it might not even be a mystery.
Critics have also noted that the number of mysterious losses in the Bermuda Triangle is comparable to that of other comparable stretches of water and have accused certain authors of sensationalising or even inventing stories about disappearances there to cultivate an unwarranted aura of mystery.
Because of its location so close to the Equator and its proximity to the most prosperous part of the planet (the Americas), there is a significant amount of transportation.
According to Lloyd’s of London and the United States Coastguard statistics, the proportion of people reported missing in the Bermuda Triangle is comparable to the number reported missing in any other part of the world.
Visiting Bermuda Triangle
Holiday Maker Travel, which has its headquarters in Mechanicsville, Virginia, is a leisure travel company that provides a wide range of services and currently sells cruises to the Bermuda Triangle. According to the travel firm, participants in this trip to the Bermuda Triangle can be reassured about going missing. The tour has a return rate of one hundred per cent if they go missing during the tour.