The Mystery of Bermuda Triangle
The Mystery of Bermuda Triangle
Al-Yashmen Mucab
The Bermuda Triangle, also called the Devil’s Triangle or Hurricane Alley, is located in
the Western part of the North Atlantic Ocean, where a number of aircraft and ships are said to
have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Most reputable sources dismiss the idea
that there is any mystery. However, popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the
paranormal activity by extra-terrestrial beings.
Notable incidents are Ellen Austin, USS Cyclops, and Carroll A. Deering. Ellen Austin
supposedly came across a derelict ship, placed on board a prize crew, and attempted to sail
with it to New York in 1881. According to the stories, the derelict disappeared. A check form
Lloyd’s of London records proved the existence of Meta, built in 1854, and that in 1880, Meta
was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that
time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that
later disappeared.
USS Cyclops. The incident resulting in the single largest loss of life in the history of the
US Navy not related to combat occurred when the collier Cyclops, carrying a full load of
manganese ore and with one engine out of action, went missing without a trace with a crew of
309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing the island of Barbados. In the case structural
failure due to overloading with a much denser cargo than designed is considered the most likely
cause of sinking.
Carroll A. Deering. Flight 19 was a training of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that
disappeared on December 5, 1945, while over the Atlantic. The squadron’s flight plan was
scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale for 227 km, north for 117 km, and then
back over a final 230 km leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returned to base. The
disappearance is attributed by Navy investigators to navigational error leading to the aircraft
running out of fuel.
Fate magazine published “Sea Mystery at Our Back Door”, a short article by George X.
The loss of Flight 19, a group of five US Navy Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers on a
training mission. In the February 1964, issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis’ article “The Deadly
Bermuda Triangle” argued Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange
events in the region.
In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the World’s 10 most
dangerous water for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them.
Other writers attribute the events to UFOs. This idea was used by Steven Spielberg for
his science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features the lost Flight 19
aircrews as alien abductees. Charles Berlitz, author of various books on anomalous
phenomena, lists several theories attributing the losses in the Triangle to anomalous or
unexplained forces. A paranormal explanation in the 2005 three-part US-British-German
science fiction miniseries The Triangle, says the triangle is a wormhole.
We don’t know which is real among these explanations – it may be a paranormal activity,
UFO, an anomaly, it can be anything. But, there is only one thing I’m sure of, that the mystery of
the Bermuda triangle will forever hunt us.