The date is December 5th, 1945, and five American Avenger fighter-bombers take off from an airstrip in the Naval Air Station of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The weather is crystal clear, and blue skies greet the pilots as they rise to cruising height. Below them the tropical Atlantic is a light blue and calm- it is a picture perfect day.
The five aviators are experienced combat veterans, and have hundreds of hours of combat flight hours under their belt each. The Avenger aircraft they fly are fresh off the production line, equipped with all the latest flight gear that the US arms industry can afford. The planes plot a course east, flying for fifty six miles to execute a few practice bombing runs at the Hens and Chicken Shoals- a naval proving ground.
Then the planes will fly east for sixty seven more miles to reach the Bahamas, before flying north for seventy three miles and then turning back for Florida. The planes plot a triangular flight path across the Bermudas which will end with them back home. As the flight heads out to sea though, the lead pilot's compass starts spinning out of control.
Commander Charles Taylor carefully checks and rechecks his equipment, but can't find a reason for the compass malfunction. The other pilots radio over that they too are experiencing strange equipment malfunctions. Taylor radios back to Fort Lauderdale and informs the tower there of their equipment malfunction.
Even more troubling, he reports his location as being over the Florida keys, which should be impossible as he and his wingmen have flown due east for the last hour. The tower radios back, informing Taylor to immediately turn north and head for Miami- but only if he is sure he really is over the Florida keys. Lacking modern radar and IFF transmitters, the tower is as in the dark to Taylor's position as he is.
Suddenly, Taylor spots a mysterious silver, saucer shaped craft directly in front of him. The craft appears to have accelerated towards his plane in the blink of an eye. Looking inside a small porthole cut into the craft, Taylor spots the face of a Zeti Reticulian alien waving back at him, licking its lips in anticipation at the delicious human brain feast it is about to gorge itself on.
At the same time, miles beneath the Atlantic ocean, a fire crystal that once powered the now sunken city of Atlantis hums with energy. The Atlantean relic, damaged in the great catastrophe that sunk the legendary city beneath the waves eons ago, is still functional, but severely damaged. The fire crystal releases a burst of energy that bores through miles of water and into the sky, incinerating Taylor and his aircraft.
Except the Atlantean fire crystal is too late, because Taylor and the other plane with him are suddenly overtaken by a shining, whirling vortex of triforce energy, which teleports the pilots and their aircraft to the year 3,451 AD. Arriving in our distant future, Taylor lands his plane to find a planet ruled by Bigfoots- a planet of the mythical apes. The Bermuda Triangle has mystified humanity ever since the disappearance of the now legendary Flight 19, but for as long as the myths surrounding the alleged mysteries of the triangle have persisted, so too have the debunkers who have worked far harder than any human should have to, to try and convince people that Atlantean fire crystals, sea monsters, alien space ships and time vortexes don't really exist.
Now a scientist has finally pulled the curtain back on the truth behind the Bermuda triangle- and his discoveries, all backed up with scientific evidence, have shocked many. Well, in truth they haven't shocked many people at all- and that's because scientist Karl Kruszelnicki has at last revealed with empirical evidence that the only mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle is that there never was a mystery to begin with. Much like conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's assassination, the mental programming of male models to become elite assassins for the fashion industry, and the moon landing, it turns out that good old fashioned human ignorance, a whole lot of misinformation, and an appetite for mystery is mostly to blame for the Bermuda Triangle alleged weirdness.
Take the legendary disappearance of Flight 19 for example. In our opening scenario we told the story as most conspiracy theorists tell it- and yet there are very many glaring errors even before we get to the aliens, fire crystals, and time vortexes. The weather for example was not crystal clear, and there was moderate cloud cover that impeded the pilot's sight at times.
The waves below were cresting at about fifteen meters- hardly calm skies for a pleasant afternoon flight. The pilots themselves were not combat veterans with hundreds of flight hours between them, but rather four of them were extremely inexperienced and on what would have been one of their first training flights. Commander Taylor himself was also quite the controversial figure.
He was known to be a heavy drinker, and in fact had shown up that day quite hungover. Also he had a prior history for getting lost and having to ditch his plane, having done so twice already. Clearly not the best navigator in the world, which maybe helps explain why he drifted so far off course.
The fact that the airmen were not flying brand new Avengers, but rather well-used aircraft, probably also explains why Taylor's compass malfunctioned which only exacerbated the problems with Taylor's poor navigation skills. And there was of course only one recorded malfunctioning compass, not four, which further decreases the mystery of the disappearance. Taylor's pilots had in fact repeatedly postulated that they had accidentally flown southeast, not southwest as Taylor believed.
Several pilots even repeatedly suggested that they turn west, though Taylor insisted that they fly east instead, taking them further out to sea. One of the pilots is even thought to have broken formation and headed west, albeit too late to save himself as his plane ran out of fuel. From established facts alone we can already see how many elements of the Flight 19's disappearance have been misunderstood or misrepresented by conspiracy theorists.
With a factual account of the disappearance, it doesn't seem like much of a mystery at all. Taylor was irresponsible, took off with a malfunctioning compass, and then led his flight deeper out to sea instead of turning west as he should have done. Heavy cloud cover likely obscured views of any recognizable landmasses and added to the difficulty in navigating.
Mystery solved- Taylor got his men killed due to an error of judgment, and certainly didn't need the help of extinct Atlanteans or space aliens to do so. There is of course the popular follow-up to Flight 19's disappearance- the disappearance of a search and rescue aircraft sent on the same flight path that very night. Once more depending on which conspiracy theory website you read the story on, the disappeared plane either vanished into thin air, was spotted being followed by UFOs, or became victim of another Atlantean fire crystal.
Yet in reality, the alleged 'sudden' and 'unexplained' disappearance had several witnesses who all reported a fireball crashing to the ocean. The next morning plane debris and an oil slick was discovered. Clearly this was the work of UFOs trying to throw investigators off the scent.
Except the PBM Mariner aircraft which had been dispatched to look for the missing flight already had a nasty reputation for randomly exploding- which on a top ten list of things an aircraft shouldn't do is right at number one. The aircraft had already earned the nickname of 'flying gas tank' by its pilots, and after the disappearance of the search and rescue Mariner, the Navy grounded all of its Mariners and eventually replaced them altogether. So an irresponsible commander with a faulty compass showed up to work half-drunk and led his men far out into the sea to crash, and the search and rescue aircraft dispatched to find any remains itself exploded due to its poor construction.
For some, this is still not enough to convince them that aquatic Bigfoots in cohoots with space aliens aren't firing Atlantean fire crystals at our planes and ships. Since the mid 1970s Lloyds of London has been attempting to convince the unwashed masses that there is nothing weird about the Bermuda triangle. Lloyds of London is a maritime insurer who has insured ships heading out to sea since the seventeenth century.
Every time one of their insured ships goes down in an accident or bad weather, they lose a significant amount of money- thus Lloyds of London keeps one of the world's most detailed records of all maritime accidents all around the globe. The area known as the Bermuda Triangle is a very heavily trafficked sea lane. Cruise ships routinely cross through the triangle bringing thousands of tourists to the Bahamas and other tropical islands, and giant cargo ships cross through the waters enroute to ports in the Gulf of Mexico.
A ship wishing to dock at the southern US's largest ports- such as Mobile, Alabama, must cross through the triangle on its way to America from Europe, Africa, or even Asia. All of this heavy ship and air traffic is bound to result in a large number of shipping accidents and lost ships. No matter how advanced our modern technology is, some estimates say that we still lose two dozen large ships every year, completely vanishing along with their crews.
The ocean is still a wild and very dangerous place for mankind to tread, and occasionally it likes to remind us of that fact. When you concentrate large amounts of shipping traffic through a narrow corridor such as the Bermuda Triangle, it's expected that from time to time there will be a headlines grabbing disappearance. Yet after scouring its records, Lloyds of London was able to prove to the public that this part of the world suffers shipping accidents and losses at nearly the same rate as anywhere else on the planet.
In fact, they've been trying to tell the world at large about this since 1974- and in completely predictable fashion, most people continue to call it fake news. The deep state- in this case a literal deep state beneath the waves known as Atlantis- is clearly to blame. Briefly another theory which was at least scientific in nature, was proposed for the loss of ships and planes across the Triangle.
This theory states that massive releases of methane gas, frozen beneath the first few layers of soil at the bottom of the ocean, could be responsible for sinking ships and dropping planes out of the sky. Such a large release of methane could in fact create a swarm of bubbles directly underneath a ship which would destroy its buoyancy, and cause the ship to immediately sink. Imagine one huge bubble slowly rising to the surface, with a ship at the very center of it when it breaks to the surface and bursts.
With no ocean underneath it, the ship plummets into the empty air cavity it and the ocean crashes down above it, immediately sinking the ship. In a very similar way, this is what the theorists propose happens to ships in the Triangle. The methane however can rise for tens of thousands of feet, and when it comes into contact with superheated jet exhaust, it can explode.
The resulting explosion could damage jet engines and cause planes to fall out of the sky. The theory is actually completely plausible, and very realistic- except scientists say that the last massive release of undersea methane in the area occurred about fifteen thousand years ago. It turns out that the only real mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle is why there's a mystery left to begin with.
The facts and the data have been publicly available since the mid 1970s, and prominent scientists have debunked the entire mystery routinely over the last several decades. In the end it seems people simply like having a good mystery, and living in a world with no mysterious circumstances, alien space ships, and Atlantean fire crystals may be too boring for some. What do you think is the real source of the Bermuda Triangle mystery?
Is there something else our there that we might be overlooking? Tell us your theory in the comments, then go watch “How Did A Whole Village Disappear? The Lost Colony of Roanoke Mystery!
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