THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

AREA:NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN

Bermuda Triangle, section of the North Atlantic Ocean off North America in which ships and airplanes are said to have mysteriously disappeared. The area, whose boundaries are not universally agreed upon, has a vaguely triangular shape marked by the Atlantic coast of the Florida panhandle (in the United States), Bermuda, and the Greater Antilles.Luxury ships and airplanes will often pass through this area.Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages.

                                          

Some speculate that unknown and mysterious forces account for the unexplained disappearances, such as extraterrestrials capturing humans for study; the influence of the lost continent of Atlantis;vortices that suck objects into other dimensions; and other whimsical ideas. Some explanations are more grounded in science, if not in evidence. These include oceanic flatulence (methane gas erupting from ocean sediments) and disruptions in geomagnetic lines of flux.

A pattern allegedly began forming in which vessels traversing the Bermuda Triangle would either disappear or be found abandoned. Then, in December 1945, five Navy bombers carrying 14 men took off from a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airfield in order to conduct practice bombing runs over some nearby shoals. But with his compasses apparently malfunctioning, the leader of the mission, known as Flight 19, got severely lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence, the official Navy report declared that it was “as if they had flown to Mars.”