Charles Berlitz Bermuda Triangle read. Bermuda Triangle: one of the main mysteries of our time, or an exaggeration of conspiracy theorists? There are not enough nurses for everyone
“In the Western Atlantic, adjacent to the southeastern coast of the United States, there is a triangular area. It can be outlined by a line coming from those located in the north Bermuda to the southern tip of Florida, thence eastward, passing the Bahamas and Puerto Rico, to a point about forty degrees west longitude, and then again to Bermuda. This area is exciting, almost incredible place, which takes pride of place on the list unsolved mysteries. It is usually called the Bermuda Triangle. More than a hundred ships and planes disappeared here without a trace, mostly after 1945. Over the past 26 years, more than a thousand people have disappeared in it, but during the search it was not possible to find a single corpse or even debris from the disappeared ships and planes. Such disappearances have become more frequent, although air routes and sea routes have become busier, searches are more thorough, and all data is much better stored.”
This is how Charles Berlitz began the book " Bermuda Triangle", which became one of the few bestsellers among books about the anomalous. However, he was not a pioneer.
Birth of a legend
The first to connect several disasters off the coast of Florida was journalist E.U. Jones of the Associated Press. His note read:
“Is our world small? No, it is still huge, like the world that ancient people knew, with the same foggy purgatory of lost souls.
We think it's small because of the speed of the wheels, the wings, and the voice of the radio coming from the void. It takes a minute to travel a mile, a few seconds to fly by, but it's still a mile.
The miles add up to a huge unknown, where more than a hundred people have recently flown or swam and have sunk like ships in the old days of navigation.
“Sandra” had a radio. It was a 350-foot cargo ship with 12 crew members. Leaving Miami, the ship took on 300 tons of insecticide in Savannah and sailed to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. On the way, he disappeared without a trace.
On June 16, 1950, a year when people thought the world was small, the search for her was called off. The fate of the ship and the dozens of people on board became an officially recognized mystery.
Where are the lucky men, women and two children, 13 in all, who boarded a plane in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and flew 1,000 miles to Miami? At 4:00 a.m. on December 27, 1948, a radio message arrived that the plane was 50 miles south of its destination. They never arrived.
Rescuers have searched 310,000 miles of ocean and land, but the elusive purgatory into which the plane flew is not marked on any map.
On January 18, 1949, the US Navy conducted large-scale maneuvers south of Bermuda. That same day, the British airliner Ariel disappeared into the clear air in which it was flying. The plane with 20 people on board landed on the islands on the way from London to Chile.
Airplane "Ariel"
The Navy interrupted the maneuvers. Aircraft carriers, cruisers and destroyers plied the waters, thousands of pairs of keen eyes looking overboard. They found no clue as to the plane's fate.
A year earlier, on January 31, 1948, another British aircraft, the Star Tiger, was approaching Bermuda with 29 people on board. He transmitted his location several times. Then there was silence, shrouded in mystery. To this day, not a trace of this plane has been found.
An older, but more puzzling mystery is the fate of the five torpedo bombers that took off from Fort Lauderdale Naval Station on December 5, 1945, for a navigation training flight. Hours passed and darkness fell. Concerned officers called them by radio, but the answer was silence.
Flight of Avenger aircraft
The time has passed when aircraft should have run out of fuel. Other aircraft took off in the search, including a large, bulky PBM rescue floatplane carrying 13 crew members.
None of the five torpedo bombers with 14 crew members were found, despite the largest search in Florida history. The rescue seaplane also did not return.
Approximately 135 people arrogantly traveled to a world they thought was small and never returned - this is the list of victims of modern mysteries. It's still the same Big world, as the ancients knew it, a world where people with their cars and ships can disappear without a trace.”
Jones did not try to draw the boundaries of the “triangle”, did not claim that there was anything anomalous in it. If we take the crashes he mentioned individually, they all received convincing explanations without the involvement of “unknown forces.”
Explanations without mysticism
The ship Sandra, contrary to Jones's claims, was not 350 feet (106 m) long, but 185 feet (56 m). He left Savannah on April 5, and the search ended not on June 16, as Jones writes, but on May 29.
Fate magazine for October 1952 published an article by George Sand mentioning the sinking of the ship. He had an extraordinary imagination and depicted rust stains covering the sides along the entire “350-foot length”, how the ship sailed serenely near Jacksonville and “through the peaceful darkness of the tropical night that shrouded the low coast of Florida, the blinking light of the St. Augustine." The author told how the sailors, after dinner, walked along the deck and smoked, remembering the affairs of the past day.
The maritime idyll was ruined by the librarian Laurence Couche. Having picked up the documents, he found out that a storm was raging at the time the ship disappeared. The Miami Herald of April 8, 1950 reported:
“The storm, which developed due to the passage of a low pressure band and was accompanied by thundershowers and strong winds, raged in Florida for three days and on Friday reached almost hurricane force, hitting the maritime shipping area. Winds near the Virginia Capes reached 73 mph, just two miles slower than a hurricane."
So much for peaceful conversations with a pipe in your mouth! Although the weather was less severe off Florida, there was also a storm here, which began on April 5, the day the Sandra set sail. It seems that there was nothing mysterious about the death of the ship.
Kusche discovered that the DC-3 that disappeared on June 16, 1948, took off from San Juan with dead batteries:
DC-3
"Although the ministry civil aviation and did not reveal the mystery of the disappearance of DC-3, his report contains very important information on this score. The legend emphasizes that the disaster occurred almost instantly: a sudden loss of communication between the control tower and the plane. However... since the batteries were dead, the radio transmitter, in fact, did not work both at the airfield in San Juan and at the beginning last flight. Obviously, problems with the transmitter continued throughout the flight, since all attempts to establish radio contact with the aircraft were unsuccessful.
A lot of malfunctions could have occurred on the plane in the hour and a half that passed between Linquist’s (airplane pilot’s) last message and that fateful moment when there wasn’t a drop of fuel left in the gas tanks. New power problems could arise, and if a plane flies at night without lights, instruments and navigation equipment, it is doomed to death...
In San Juan, forecasters told Linquist that the wind would start out light from the southwest before changing direction and blowing from the northwest. Correcting for the wind, Linquist had to fly the plane slightly to the left of the set course. However, as they approached Miami, the wind changed direction again and blew from the northeast. If the pilot did not know about it, then, although the wind was not strong, it could cause a deviation to the left of 40-50 miles. Thus, DC-3 may have passed south of the southern tip of Florida and ended up over the Gulf of Mexico."
Flight 19. Flying coffins
The Ariel was a British South American Airways (BSAA) Tudor IV, a converted World War II bomber. However, what was suitable for war time, in peacetime is unacceptable: the plane was so bad that all other companies abandoned it. Don McIntosh, a former BSAA pilot, believes the under-floor cockpit heating system is to blame. The heater ran on aviation fuel, which was fed drop by drop into a hot pipe, and was in dangerous proximity to a vital control system - hydraulic rods.
Captain Peter Duffy, who flew for BSAA, also found the proximity of the heater and rods fatal: “I believe that there was a leak of hydraulic fluid vapor, which, having got into the hot heater, exploded.” There was not even a fire alarm under the cabin, not to mention an automatic fire extinguishing system. The plane with broken rods does not have much time left to send an SOS, or the radio is also out of order.
Rescuers arrived at the suspected crash site 12 hours later. During this time, the wreckage could have sunk or floated very far away.
The second aircraft Jones mentioned, the Star Tiger, was of the same type and belonged to the BSAA. It disappeared on December 30 (not 31), with 31 people on board.
The official report on the disappearance read: “We will never know what really happened in this case, and the fate of Star Tiger will forever remain an unsolved mystery.” But is it?
In 2009, BBC journalists found that the Star Tiger encountered problems even before it made an intermediate landing on Azores. The heater failed, and one of the compasses also failed. Most likely, to make it warmer on the plane, the pilot decided to fly not at the usual altitude, but near the water. At low altitude, if something happens to the plane, it falls into the water in a matter of seconds: the pilots do not have enough time to call for help.
Gordon Store, a former BSAA pilot, said in 2008 that he never trusted the Tudor IV's engines: "All the systems were hopelessly confused, the hydraulics, all the equipment mindlessly crammed under the floor, without any consideration." In the jumble of wires, rods and hoses, any problem could be fatal.
In just three years, BSAA had 11 serious incidents and five aircraft fatalities, claiming the lives of 73 passengers and 22 crew members. The death of the Star Tiger was the last straw, forcing the abandonment of aircraft with such a bad reputation.
There was no secret in the death of six aircraft - five Avenger torpedo bombers and a rescue seaplane in December 1945. The torpedo bomber pilots, except for the squadron commander, Lieutenant Taylor, and one of the crew members, were inexperienced cadets and, lost, dangled in the air over the ocean until the fuel ran out. Laurence Cousche concluded that Taylor, whose compasses had failed, played the role of Susanin, leading the squadron further into the ocean. Many pilots realized that he was leading them in the wrong direction, but no one violated military discipline to return to the air base on the correct course.
Documentary video about the Bermuda Triangle (up to minute 17:56)
When it's time emergency landing, the weather was not as good as during departure. Avenger aircraft are not designed to land on water, especially in bad weather. Most likely, the pilots did not even have time to open the cockpit and unfasten their seat belts, having gone under the water along with the torpedo bombers.
With the rescue seaplane the situation was even simpler. At 7:50 p.m., the sailors on the Gaines Mills saw the plane “catch fire in the air, quickly fall into the water and explode.” Such seaplanes were nicknamed “flying tanks”: they always contained a lot of gasoline vapor. A secretly lit cigarette or spark could cause a fire and explosion at any moment.
There are as many reasons as there are incidents. As Lawrence Kusche noted, “Trying to find one common cause for all the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle is no more logical than trying to find one common cause for all the car accidents in Arizona.”
"Cyclops" is the largest victim of the "triangle". As it turned out later, the dangerously overloaded ship disappeared during a storm.
The name “Bermuda Triangle” itself appeared only in 1964, when an article of the same name by Vincent Gaddis appeared. It was there that the legend took its final shape: ships and planes disappear not just because anything happens at sea, but because the area is “ anomalous zone", "hole in the sky". To this he added UFOs, magnetic anomalies and hints at secret government projects.
Rescuers say
Over the course of a year, up to tens of thousands (!) of “SOS” signals are recorded in different areas of the World Ocean. During the same time, about 300 ships perish, an average of 6 disappear without a trace, and about two dozen “ghost ships” appear, abandoned by the crews. All this does not happen just anywhere, but, as a rule, in those areas where the intensity of shipping is high and conditions for navigation are unfavorable. In this sense, the Bermuda Triangle is not too different from other areas of the World Ocean. The Asian seas occupy the first place in shipwrecks and disappearances.
According to data from the US Coast Guard's Seventh District, which is responsible for rescue operations in the Triangle area, over 150 thousand sea voyages take place here each year. If we compare the number of disasters in this area, which occupies about a quarter of the length of the US coast, with its entire length, then, paradoxically, losses in the Bermuda Triangle are not only not higher than average, but sometimes even lower (for example, in 1975 out of 21 maritime disasters, the “triangle” accounted for only 4; in 1976, out of 28, only 6). These data apply to ships whose tonnage exceeds 100 registered tons. Airliners, having become more technically advanced and more powerful, stopped “disappearing.” Private boats, yachts and aircraft are less closely monitored and continue to be lost in choppy waters. The Gulf Stream can carry the wreckage 100-200 miles away in a day, hiding the traces of the tragedies that have unfolded.
Changeable weather, the topography of the ocean floor, including shallows and reefs, deep-sea depressions, frequent hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, even piracy - all these factors did not make the “triangle” so dangerous that the famous insurance monopoly Lloyd increased the amount of insurance for ships, passing through the “fatal place”. A Lloyd's spokesman said in 1975 that "our information service has found no evidence to suggest that there were more casualties in the Bermuda Triangle than anywhere else."
The US Coast Guard considers the "triangle" a fiction:
"Most disappearances can be attributed to unique features environment district. First, the Devil's Triangle is one of only two places on Earth where a magnetic compass points to true (geographic) north. It usually points to magnetic north. The difference between the two directions is known as magnetic declination. At trip around the world its value can vary by as much as 20 degrees. If this magnetic declination, or error, is not taken into account, the navigator may be much off course and encounter greater difficulties...
Another environmental factor is the peculiarity of the Gulf Stream. This current is extremely fast, turbulent and can quickly destroy any traces of disaster. The unpredictable nature of weather in the Caribbean-Atlantic region also plays a role. Pilots and sailors are often at risk of disaster from tornadoes and sudden localized thunderstorms. Finally, the topography of the ocean floor varies from extensive shoals around islands to sea trenches that are among the deepest in the world. As a result of interaction with strong currents washing numerous reefs, the bottom topography is in a state of constant movement and the formation of new navigational hazards occurs quickly.
The factor of human error should not be underestimated. In the waters between Florida's Gold Coast and Bahamas floats a large number of pleasure boats. Too often they attempt to cross these waters in boats that are too small, with insufficient awareness of the dangers of the area and lack of good navigation skills.
The Coast Guard is unimpressed by supernatural explanations for disasters at sea. Every year, their own experience convinces them that the combination of natural forces and the unpredictability of human behavior can far exceed even the most sophisticated science fiction.”
Journalist Peter Michelmore, who was on duty with the coast guard in the Bermuda Triangle area, cites cases where people were only miraculously not included in the statistics of “disappearances without a trace”:
“The man who emerged victorious from his fight with death was Dan Smith, captain of the three-masted schooner Star of Peace. His ship was sailing calm sea from Nassau to Miami when the diesel suddenly exploded. The schooner began to sink quickly. Burnt and wounded by shrapnel, Smith still found the strength not only to lower the life raft - there were five more passengers on board, besides him and two sailors - but also to send a distress signal over the air and take a radio beacon with him. Imagine him being confused. Then the Star of Peace would have added to the long list of mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle: “Mysteriously disappeared in good weather" would be written after the name of this vessel.
However, self-control and resourcefulness in extreme situations are needed not only by sailors, but also by pilots. Take, for example, the story of David Ackley. On a beautiful sunny day, he flew from Palm Beach to the Bahamas in a light twin-engine aircraft. 40 miles from shore, his right engine caught fire. Attempts to put out the flames were unsuccessful, the car almost stopped obeying the pilot, but he still did not let it fall into a tailspin, but splashed down on three points. Before the plane sank, Ackley managed to get onto an inflatable raft. There was one more problem to solve: how to communicate about yourself. The fact is that while he was making sharp turns, fighting the fire, the radio went out of order. “Fortunately, I had with me not a gas, but a gasoline lighter, the antediluvian nature of which my friends often joked about,” Ackley later said. “She served me well.” Since the synthetic overalls are made of non-flammable fabric, I built a brazier out of it, put my shirt and underwear in it, prepared a lighter and waited for a ship or plane to appear nearby. After all, the flight control center in Miami should have noticed that I suddenly disappeared from the locator screen.” The pilot’s calculations were justified: they actually sent a helicopter to search for him, which saw his homemade torch.
A legend doomed to life
Laurence Cousche examined the 50 most frequently reported cases of disappearance or death in the Bermuda Triangle and concluded that they could be divided into several categories. Among them there are fictions - someone comes up with a “mysterious catastrophe”, while others pick up this “canard” without checking the source of information. There are serious mistakes - the name of the ship, the year, and the place of the disaster do not match. In some cases, the ship or plane did not disappear at all, continuing to sail or fly for many years!
Most often, however, those who write about the “Bermuda Triangle” mention cases that took place, but the information about them is seriously distorted - important details are missed that completely change the situation (for example, that the wreckage of the ship was found, a storm was raging, etc.). As a result of a sober analysis, they move from “mysterious” to the category of ordinary, and the veil of mystery disappears.
Reading about riddles and secrets is not as boring as scientific literature, so books dedicated to the “triangle” will not soon disappear from the shelves. “The Bermuda Triangle” by Charles Berlitz remained on the bestseller list for seven months and was sold, according to conservative estimates, in a circulation of 5 million copies (they also called four times that figure). Instead of boring attempts to give natural explanations for the disasters, Berlitz brought down intriguing guesses and assumptions on his readers:
This is roughly how Berlitz and his followers imagine the disappearance of ships in the “triangle”
“If planes, ships and people are abducted from the Bermuda Triangle or any other part of the world by UFOs or other means, then the most important task of any investigation should be to find possible reason or reasons. A number of researchers are of the opinion that intelligent beings, scientifically ahead of the comparatively primitive peoples of the Earth... have been busy for many centuries monitoring our progress in order to intervene, if necessary, to prevent us from destroying our planet. This, of course, suggests altruistic motives in some beings from near or far outer space, a trait that is not always prevalent among explorers or discoverers.
On the other hand, in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle and at a number of other nodal points, one can assume electromagnetic gravitational currents, a door or window into another space or dimension, through which sufficiently scientifically advanced aliens can penetrate the Earth at will, but if with these windows people meet, they turn out to be a one-way road. It will be impossible for them to return or due to their level scientific development, or because they will be hindered by extraterrestrial forces. Many disappearances, especially of entire ship crews, indicate raids from space in order to replenish the zoos of the Universe, to acquire exhibits for exhibitions showing different eras of the development of planetary civilizations, or for experiments.”
Stories like this are cited as proof:
“Several years ago, a National Airlines passenger plane with 127 passengers on board was approaching the Miami (Florida) airfield from the northeast and was being monitored by ground radar. Suddenly the plane disappeared from the screen and appeared only ten minutes later. The landing took place without any incidents. The crew was surprised by the concern of the airfield service. When the pilots checked the time, it turned out that all the clocks on the plane were 10 minutes behind the clocks at the airport. And 20 minutes earlier, when checking the watches on the plane and at the control tower, there were no discrepancies. The senior controller said to the pilot: “My God, buddy, you simply didn’t exist for ten minutes!”
Neither Berlitz himself nor other authors provide dates, times and flight numbers. No such incident was recorded in the documents of the US Civil Aviation Administration, the documents of the Miami airport and the airline itself. Company employees argued that “if the incident really took place, everyone would probably know about it.” But not everything in the books about the “triangle” is made up.
Methane hell under your feet
“The pilots of a Boeing 707 flying from San Juan to New York on April 11, 1963, observed a billowing mound of water resembling a giant cauliflower,” Berlitz writes. “He was clearly observed at 13.30 from an altitude of 9.5 km - first by the co-pilot, then by the commander and flight mechanic. Observation coordinates – 19°54′ N. w. and 66°47′ W. d., in the vicinity of the Puerto Rican Trench, 5.5 miles deep. They calculated that the rising mass of water was 0.5-1 mile in diameter and more than 900 m high. Since the commander did not want to disrupt the schedule, endangering the plane and passengers, he simply looked at the unusual phenomenon and continued the flight on the same course. The co-pilot, however, then contacted the Coast Guard, the seismic center and, strangely enough, the FBI, but did not receive any confirmation from them that anything unusual was happening in that place at the indicated time.”
The same phenomenon was observed a few weeks later by pilot Raymond Shattenkirk of Pan Am:
“I was the co-pilot of Flight 211 on March 2, 1963, from New York (departure 1434 GMT) to San Juan, where we landed at 1822. During the flight, at exactly 17.45, when we were at a point with coordinates 20°45′ N. w. and 67°15′W. at an altitude of 7.5 km, heading at an azimuth of 175°, I saw the formation of a giant white bubble on the surface of the ocean ahead at a course of approximately 45° to starboard. The bubble had the shape and symmetry of the white part of a cauliflower. Mentally comparing it to the size of the ground structures as seen from 6-9 km altitude, I can say that Idlewild Airport could easily fit into it.
The crew - Commander John Knepper, myself, Ralph Stokes and the flight engineer observed this frightening phenomenon for at least three minutes until the bubble collapsed, turning into a huge circle of dark blue water without a trace of smoke, steam or debris. It seemed like he came out of nowhere and returned to nothing.”
Berlitz did not know that the billowing "bubbles" would have a natural explanation in 1984. Canadian chemist Donald Davidson drew attention to gas hydrate deposits under the Bermuda Triangle. In appearance they look like ordinary snow - whitish crystals that quickly disintegrate from heat. These solid compounds of gases and water are very stable, as if cementing the bottom with a hard “shell” up to 300 meters or more thick.
Physical tests confirmed the correctness of the computer model. A ship sank if it was between the middle of the bubble and its outer edge
Next, there are two possible options. Firstly, huge volumes of natural gases – mainly methane and carbon dioxide – can accumulate under the gas hydrate “shell”. The “armor” cracks from time to time, and gases instantly burst out in the form of a giant “bubble”. A ship caught in a gas emission zone is doomed. Methane gas is flammable, and if its concentration in the emission is high, it can ignite and turn into a giant torch (such torches, up to 500 meters high, were observed in 1985-1987 by L.P. Zonenshain from the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in a region rich in gas hydrates Sea of Okhotsk).
The pilots of the two planes that saw the “bubbles” did the right thing: if they had flown closer, they would have risked the methane being “sucked in” by the turbines with unpredictable consequences, including stopping the engine or exploding in the air.
Secondly, if some process disturbs the equilibrium of the layer of gas hydrates and its fragments begin to float, the higher temperature of the surface layers will cause them to quickly melt. One volume of gas hydrates produces 100-160 volumes of gas, and by the time the gases reach the surface, the water will turn into a gas-water mixture that is not capable of supporting the ship. The ship falls under the water, at risk of never rising.
“I have met people,” said marine geologist Alan Judd of the University of Sunderland, “who have been involved in such disasters. They survived only because in their case the methane emission was not powerful enough to sink, but the ship lost some of its buoyancy for a short time and suddenly plunged 1-2 meters into the water.”
Charles Berlitz also met people who fell into gas emissions, but preferred to consider them something supernatural. His books mention the case of Joe Tully, captain of the fishing boat Wild Goose. In 1944, the ship was towed behind another ship, the Caicos Trader. Tully was sleeping in the cabin when suddenly water rushed into it. He automatically grabbed his life jacket and swam out the hatch. The ship at that moment was already at a depth of 15-25 meters, but Tully managed to rise into the air. Caicos Trader remained afloat. The sailors later said that his ship literally fell into the water: they had to cut off the towing cable, fearing that they too would be pulled into the abyss. The release was small, otherwise both ships would have sunk and the depth of the dive would have been fatal.
Is Triangle a UFO base?
The crew of the American guided-missile destroyer Josephus Daniels observed something strange on October 20, 1969. Radar specialist Robert Reilly, Petty Officer Third Class, told Berlitz:
“We were returning from a mission in Guantanamo Bay and sailed north of Cuba. Most sailors did not know the ship's location, but I was navigating and knew that we were in the Triangle. I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember the time – 23.45. I was inside - we had two lookouts, one on each side of the bridge, 9 meters from the information and combat center. Someone said that the watch on the starboard side saw something...
It's hard to describe. It looks like the moon rising above the horizon, but a thousand times larger - like a sunrise that does not glow. It was a light that did not emit light. It rose above the horizon about 11-15 miles to starboard and partly ahead of us, and continued to increase for 15 minutes. It all looked like a flash from a nuclear explosion, but it grew in size and remained in place - if it had been a nuclear explosion, we would have seen it on a radar with a range of over 300 miles.
The captain was notified. The officer of the watch on the bridge ordered the ship to be turned around. Maybe he thought it was a nuclear explosion, and the standard maneuver in this case is to “turn astern towards the flash.” About 70-100 people saw this - most were lying in their beds. I would also be asleep if I weren’t on duty...
The next day we arrived in Norfolk. Everyone was talking about it. Our captain gathered the team and told them not to talk about what they saw.”
You must have thought that the sailors from the destroyer saw the exit of burning gas from the depths of the ocean. And they were wrong. An expanding “ball” is an effect that accompanies the launch of ballistic missiles from American submarines. If the captain knew about this, the request to remain silent was fully justified.
Thor Heyerdahl saw the same thing while sailing on the Ra-II in 1970:
“That night we experienced a great fright. On June 30 at 0.30 Norman picked me up on watch, I sat down in my sleeping bag and started pulling on my socks, as it was damp and cold on the bridge. Suddenly Norman's voice was heard again, and now there was horror in it:
- Come here, quickly! Look!
I ducked through the door, followed by Santiago, climbed onto the bridge, and through the roof of the cabin we peered in the direction Norman was pointing.
Purely the end of the world. A pale disk, like a ghostly aluminum moon, rose above the horizon on the left side, in the northwest. Without looking up from the water, it slowly increased in size. The regularly expanding semicircle resembled either a very dense nebula, brighter than the Milky Way, or a mushroom cap that was inevitably advancing on us, capturing the sky ever wider. The moon was shining in the opposite direction, it was cloudless, the stars were sparkling. At first I thought it was a spot of light against the background of the humid night air from some powerful spotlight over the horizon. Or maybe this is an atomic mushroom, the fruit of a monstrous oversight of people? Or northern lights? In the end, I was inclined to believe that this was a luminous rain of cosmic bodies invading the earth's atmosphere. Here the disk, which had already occupied about thirty degrees of the black sky, suddenly stopped growing, somehow imperceptibly melted and disappeared. So we didn’t understand what it was... In the morning we learned from a Barbadian radio amateur that the same phenomenon, but in the northeast, was observed from many islands of the West Indies.”
On board the Ra-II there was a Soviet doctor, Yuri Senkevich, later the host of the Film Travel Club program. In 1997, he said that that night he also saw an “expanding disk” over the ocean. According to the Marine Observer magazine, this grandiose spectacle - the launch of a Poseidon-class rocket - was observed from six ships in the Atlantic.
Of course, in the Bermuda Triangle there are various anomalies and even UFOs, but the frequency of their appearance is no higher than in other areas of the Atlantic. All known cases do not give reason to believe that the “triangle” is a UFO base or their hunting ground.
Mikhail Gershtein
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At the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle, pyramids several times larger than the Egyptian ones were found.In early 1977, the echo sounders of a fishing vessel registered an irregularity resembling a pyramid on the ocean floor, somewhat away from Bermuda. This was the reason for the American Charles Berlitz to organize a special expedition. This expedition discovered a pyramid at a depth of 400 meters. Charles Berlitz claims that its height is almost 150 meters, the length of the side of the base is 200 meters, and the slope of the side faces is the same as the Cheops pyramid. One of the sides of this pyramid is longer than the other.
The discovered pyramid is three times higher than the largest one Egyptian pyramid(Cheops), has glass (or glass-crystal-like appearance) edges that are immaculately smooth and even, like mirrors.
In the early 1990s, American oceanographers using sonar instruments discovered an underwater pyramid in the very center of the Bermuda Triangle. After processing the data, scientists suggested that the surface of the pyramid-shaped structure is perfectly smooth, possibly glass! It is almost three times the size of the Cheops pyramid! According to the characteristics of the echo signals reflected from its surface, the faces of the pyramid are made of some mysterious material, similar to polished ceramics or glass. The sensational news was announced by scientists at a press conference in Florida.
Journalists were provided with relevant materials from oceanographic research: photographs, echograms. Shipborne sonars and computerized analyzers with high resolution showed three-dimensional images of very smooth, clean, not overgrown with algae, edges of the pyramid. The pyramid does not consist of blocks; no seams, no connectors, no cracks are visible. It seems that it is carved from a single monolith. But in subsequent years, the US authorities classified information about the glass pyramid, and this topic became closed in the media. According to US Navy intelligence officers, it is known that in this area UFOs have been observed taking off directly from the water and the entry of unidentified objects into the depths of the sea. Last years intelligence services monitor such flights, which occur quite often.
Employees of the intelligence services and the US Army are forced to admit that the anomalies in the Bermuda Triangle are due to the work of a huge energy complex of underwater inhabitants, perhaps Atlanteans, who survived the tragic disaster. Thus, the glass pyramid is the central part of such a complex, once built by the priests of Atlantis. A similar group of structures in the form of luminous pyramids was also recently discovered near southern Chile, in the Bellingshausen Trench, at a depth of 6000 meters. We can talk once again about the fulfilled prophecies of Edgar Cayce, in particular, about a huge crystal that had monstrous power, capable of causing destructive cataclysms on the planet and destroying traces of past civilizations. Reports of pyramids allegedly found in the Bermuda Triangle area arrive regularly. American Reconnaissance Mountain was first mentioned in documents from the US Navy Hydrographic Service in August 1948. This huge mountain rises from a depth of 4400 meters and reaches 37 meters from the surface of the ocean. Careful measurements in September 1964, carried out by the American research vessel Atlantis 11, showed that there was no mountain. Geologists concluded that information about this underwater mountain was obtained as a result of the so-called “false bottom”. The famous atlantologist Charles Berlitz spoke about the underwater pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle. The expedition he led discovered a mountain that looked like a pyramid. He believed that this mountain was an exact copy of the Cheops pyramid. It was located at a depth of 400 meters, its height was 150 meters, and its base was 200 meters. However, it is not yet possible to talk about the identity of the Berlitz pyramid with the recently discovered one. Alejandro Serillo Perez, a resident of Guatemala, a descendant of Mayan shamans, is an Elder of the Americas. This was proclaimed by two All-American Congresses. The cities built in the Yucatan, Perez says, were built by the Mayan ancestors who came from Bermuda. And this word sounded at first - May. May is Atlanta. At first they lived in the Diamond City in Bermuda and from there they came to Tollan. Most main city- Diamond, in Bermuda, with a pyramid under water.
However, in 2003, a message came again that two mysterious giant pyramid-shaped structures had been found in the Bermuda Triangle area. Oceanographer Verlag Mayer, using special equipment, managed to find out that they consist of a substance resembling glass. The dimensions of the underwater pyramids, located in the very center of the mysterious triangle, significantly exceed the dimensions of similar structures on land, including the famous pyramid Cheops. However, preliminary data suggests that the age of these pyramids does not exceed 500 years. Who built them and why remains a sealed mystery. Mayer claims that the technology used to make the pyramids is unknown to earthlings.
The book “The Bermuda Triangle”, written by Charles Berlitz, is already 40 years old. As the title implies, the publication, published in 1974, is dedicated to the Bermuda Anomaly. captured part of the Atlantic Ocean. It was this work that brought the town wide fame as a mysterious zone that devours any transport ship passing in the area.
But despite the passage of time, interest in the anomaly has not subsided at all; researchers regularly and persistently try to crack the tough nut of the anomaly.
The legendary “Devil's Triangle” is another name for the mysterious anomaly, the apexes of the corners support Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Fort Lauderdale.
According to the prevailing legend, the anomaly “settled” near Bermuda has satanic power, and caused dozens of dozens of disasters, destroying vehicles both air and sea.
And despite hundreds of expeditionary attempts to find at least something from the lost ships or people, the researchers each time dejectedly left here empty-handed.
Charles Berlitz, revealing to the public the secret of the Bermuda Triangle, connected the disasters and the disappearances of marine and aircraft with alien creatures.
Allegedly, they open portals here to other dimensions and kidnap ships and people. UFOs fly here, whose base is hidden underwater in the center of the anomaly.
The book was a very huge success, and even gave rise to some hysteria around the “Bermuda Anomaly”, because, among other things, a version appeared with a pyramid from the era of the mythical Atlantis.
Against the general background of the “UFO Hunt” that was developing at that time, the proposals, as well as the stories given in the book, came in very handy and were a great success.
Bermuda Triangle, background.
According to the legend that Bermuda has acquired over just a dozen years, ships, people and planes crossing the territory of the mysterious triangle disappeared without a trace inside the anomalous zone.
There was no way to know who the next victim would be scary place. Soon, the initially nameless place receives its own name - the “Devil's Triangle”.
Most likely, this name comes from popular superstitions, allegedly once in this place the Devil flirted with sea travelers, who played so hard with the waves that he lost the travelers in the abyss. Since then, in this place periodically - this is the cause of disasters.
Perhaps in this place of the Atlantic Ocean the Devil really planted something terrible in ancient times, which became the cause of the tragedies occurring here. However, another version sounds more reliable; it relies on aliens who left in the center of the triangle some extremely complex device associated with the transfer of matter to another place in the Universe.
In another case, aliens use this place as a... Of course, eyewitnesses of their appearance are captured, and their further fate is unknown. Another suspect in the disasters was a certain “mystical vortex” that sucks ships and planes to the seabed and throws them out in another dimension.
The myth of the mysterious triangle was first voiced in the Associated Press on September 16, 1950, when American reporter E. Jones wrote a small brochure about the “mysterious disappearances” of planes and ships between the coasts of Florida and Bermuda.
It was the reporter who first used the name Bermuda Triangle, but for some reason the glory of giving the anomaly a name went not to him, but to the person who said it 14 years later.Two years later, after the article and seven-page pamphlet, George H. Sands published a series of strange maritime incidents.
In his story, ships, both sea and air, once in the zone of the water triangle formed by Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, disappear without a trace for no apparent reason, and do not have time to report anything on the radio.
I would like to note that versions of disappearances and the presence of alien intelligence in this part of the ocean appeared several years before Jessup’s book “The Case for the UFOs” ... or Frank Edwards’ book in ’55 about “flying saucers and secret conspiracies.” As the title suggests, although the authors were not adherents of the idea of an alien presence, they willingly supported the theory of people from other planets settling in Bermuda.
It was after these events that Vincent H. Gladdis (a fan of spiritualism) “gives” the name everywhere - “Bermuda Triangle”, which immediately took root in society.
Vincent Gladdis wrote an article in Argosy in February 1964, and later used the name in the book Invisible Horizons, referring to the anomaly as the "Deadly Bermuda Triangle". Since then, it has been the custom to believe that it was Gladdis who gave the name to the now world-famous myth of the Bermuda Triangle.
Over the years, the myth has been described and shown, and television series and films have been made based on it. The Bermuda Triangle is firmly embedded in our culture, and is always portrayed as very real and mysterious place where people and vehicles disappear without a trace.
This is terrible, the legend is frightening, but: “be it a ship, be it a plane full of many travelers, be afraid to travel in this part of the ocean, the yellow fog devours everything and everyone, there is no salvation for anyone here”…. Scary? Then let me tell you that the terrible mystery of the Bermuda Triangle is not as scary as the myth, inflated by years of incorrect facts and many stories before the Pleiades itself, makes it out to be.
If you look at the Bermuda Triangle area and look for the facts, the terrible tragedy of Bermuda is not described by the hundreds of ships that disappeared here. And not even fifty, but only a dozen, and even then, if you “draw” all the crashes that occurred nearby to this area.
By the way, look at the photograph above - you can see that the anomalous zone does not “lie exactly on the equator”, as is often said, pointing to the mystical side of the phenomenon. The central figure that represents the Bermuda Triangle is the departure of naval aviation flight number 19.
The missing link of the Avengers, Departure number 19.
In all cases, the story began on December 5, 1945, when five single-engine Avenger torpedo bombers left Fort Lauderdale. Charles Berlitz's book states that the Avengers were flown by 14 experienced pilots.
The aircraft commanders were practicing a training bombing flight mission and, as part of a navigation exercise, had to make two turns - mystically, this happens just above the vertices of the Bermuda Triangle.
Then something terrible happens, the connection periodically disappears, the planes, moving for a couple of hours without changing course, nevertheless circle inside the anomaly. Then the link disappears completely without a trace. Adding to the horror of the situation is the rescue flight of the twin-engine flying boat Martin Mariner, which went to the rescue of its colleagues - there are no traces of it either.
Larry Kusche (Larry Kush) spoke out against Berlitz, pointing out the mystification of the facts. Surprisingly, Kushe's publication Mystery Revealed Bermuda Triangle" is published in 1975, following the publication of Berlitz.
In the book, Kushe directly states that there is no anomaly in Bermuda. Kushe did not deny the fact that five torpedo bombers disappeared without a trace under unknown circumstances, as well as the missing Mariner seaplane.This is a real fact that happened, but he has read the investigative reports and states that this is an incredible case for the entire world aviation, but the cause of the disaster is the human factor, but not the cruel machinations of aliens, or Atlanteans.
After reviewing the reports of the investigative team, Larry Kushe indicates that the torpedo bombers were operated by 14 people, 13 of whom began retraining to fly this machine under the command of Lieutenant Charles Taylor. However, the flight commander was recently transferred from the Florida Keys and had not previously flown in the area.
It turns out that the group commander did not know the area, and the other pilots and navigators who arrived for training were inexperienced. “Many people talk about this when they talk about Bermudian mythology from half a century ago. Although at least four navigators were experienced, as confirmed by the same military reports.
Meanwhile, the weather situation in the area is considered very difficult - frequent tsunamis, storms, and the compass is acting up. There is no anomaly here, skeptics assure, there are many places on Earth where you cannot rely on the compass needle, or you need to gain greater altitude.
In the case of the American Avengers (torpedo bombers), they may not have had a chance to rise higher, since they were “pressed” to the water by a thundercloud. The pilots circling in this area, surrounded by lightning, eventually burned all the fuel, leaving them to land on the water, where a storm wave raged.
However, Larry Kushe’s version also “limps”; Lieutenant Taylor flew 2,500 hours on this particular type of aircraft, which characterizes him as an experienced and skilled naval aviation specialist. The mention of a transfer from another place is somewhat weak for arguments, since it came from a neighboring maritime area.
And the water stretching around leaves little chance of seeing visual landmarks for navigation, even if the flights take place in a familiar place. The commanders of other vehicles can be called trainees with a stretch - the total flight time is about 350 hours, Captain Powers even arrived from the main headquarters of the Marine Corps.
And you know, I, for example, would note one strange thing in this case, as if anticipating something, knowing what awaited him that day, one of the gunners-radio operators did not show up for the flight, and remained alive.
It is difficult to reliably imagine the further development of events of that time, since contradictory data appeared even on the official pages of the US Navy and Navy (now they do not exist at all).
Although in theory, such structures should have complete information. But a rough picture is drawn as follows:
The fact that the link was lost in space and experiencing a navigation problem was learned at 15:50 - 16:00, when senior instructor Lieutenant Robert Fox, intending to land in Fort Lauderdale, together with his ward, heard a radio broadcast where someone without a call sign was openly asking for "Powers."
Minutes later, the radio brings in a voice, “I don’t know where we are. I think we got lost at the last turn.”
A little later, Lieutenant Fox manages to talk with Charles Taylor and find out about the breakdown of the on-board compasses (TBM-3 was a fairly technologically advanced machine of that time, in addition to the pilot and navigator compasses, there was also a gyrocompass and a radio semi-compass).
Many people ignore the fact that there were still four aircraft left, using the instruments of which the flight commander could establish the location and choose a course for the base.
However, it looks as if the pilots and navigators of the entire group were left without means of navigation, or were subject to some kind of mystical influence.
The mysticism of the Bermuda Triangle?
Now let's look at the tragedy of the Bermuda Triangle a little differently, but we will not consider the well-known negotiations between Taylor and Fox here.
There also seems to be nothing mystical in the death of the flying boat; its explosion was recorded and explained by technical reasons.
Although it should be noted, of course, that there were no reports from Mariner about a problem with the plane, only words that they were arriving in the area of the last direction finding of the missing link.
As the captain of the Gaines Mills tanker passing in those places reported to the coast guard headquarters, at 19:50 in the evening an air explosion and a fire column up to 35 meters high were recorded. According to Captain S. Stanley, in deep confusion the crew watched as a vertical column of fire hung in the air, which lasted a good ten minutes.
True, later the captain told a more understandable picture of the event, allegedly the crew saw the plane catch fire, fall into the water, explode, leaving oil stains and a mass of debris…. Aircraft arriving in the search area found no signs of a seaplane crash.
The American military sent huge forces to search for the missing: 300 aircraft and 21 ships, many volunteers and the National Guard searched for the now missing 6 aircraft.The entire coast was literally combed, the water surface was carefully examined. You won’t believe it, but even the floats from the missing seaplane were not found, nothing at all that could tell the cause of the tragedy that happened in these places.
On December 10, 1945, search efforts were stopped, and the crews of the missing aircraft were declared missing. On April 3, 1946, the American naval department pointed to Lieutenant Taylor as the culprit for the death of flight number 19, they say the flight commander became confused, then panicked, confused... to be honest, these are strange conclusions, to suspect that the combat pilot was confused and panicked.
Taylor's mother and aunt rejected this statement from the military, forcing Navy reconsider the decision. Dissatisfied women hire a lawyer and demand more thorough investigations and a review of the case. Strange, but on November 19 the verdict was adjusted, and the tragedy acquired different conclusions about the reasons for what happened - “for unknown reasons.”
Often radio communications coming from Taylor are mystified, allegedly someone heard him say through interference: “everything is wrong here ... it’s strange ... the ocean doesn’t look the way it should” .... “we can’t escape”… “this damn yellow fog”… “I don’t know, they look like...”.
In fact, there is no documentary evidence for these words; it is impossible to find a person with a specific surname who would have said this initially.
This probably comes from adherents of false sensations and unnecessary evidence, an attempt to explain everything with the help of aliens, and at the same time “attach” to this the alien spaceships hovering over the Bermuda Triangle.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of strange things in this catastrophe. At 17:15 Taylor informs Port Everglades: “I can’t hear you very well. We follow a course of 270 degrees” ... we will maintain a course until we reach the shore, or land on the water when the fuel burns out (Taylor has experience of two such landings).
Robert F. Fox, talking with Lieutenant Taylor, comes to the conclusion that he is in the sky over the Florida Keys (Florida Keys) since when asked where they are, Taylor answers - over the Keys (I am sure I’m in the Keys).
Robert Fox, guiding a colleague, advises him to turn the planes on the left side towards the Sun, and follow this course.
However, the strange thing is that Taylor hears, talks, and does not react to the words in any way. Meanwhile, the connection continues to deteriorate, at about 19 o'clock in the evening the connection that hung on the word of honor ceases altogether, Lieutenant Taylor's group has clearly retreated to a considerable distance.
At 19:05 pm, the last thing the Miami coast heard from the planes was how one of the pilots called Taylor for communication.
For example, I was also amazed: a flight of planes, maintaining the chosen course, went a considerable distance.
However, the bearing of their location pointed to the center of the Bermuda anomaly, and accordingly, on the basis of this, the search was carried out in a triangle.
How can this be, what kind of mysticism, maybe this place really hides some secret beyond our ability to understand?
What's happening in the Bermuda Anomaly.
According to the Coast Guard, the designated area is famous for frequent storms, and people like to rush around in the skies.
At the same time, researchers who do not believe in diabolical tricks or games with parallel worlds could not find confirmation of the five hundred disappearances of aircraft and sky vessels that allegedly disappeared without a trace in the Bermuda anomaly.
There haven't even been a dozen confirmed cases of missing ships here.
It turns out that most of the ships that crashed and were cited as evidence of the anomaly occurred quite far from the “Devil’s Deadly Triangle”; the ships could not experience it themselves.
Some authors of theories assure us that all ships disappear in this place completely without a trace, nothing can be found!
But what can you find? The Avengers are a heavy iron machine, which, having fallen into the sea and exploding/not exploding upon impact with the water, will inevitably go to the bottom.
Likewise, rescuers for a long time cannot find traces of modern aircraft disappearing over any part of the sea.
According to expert reports, there is no reason to blame the Bermuda Triangle for requiring more ship casualties than any other part of the planet.
If you look at the outlined triangle with a normal eye, it becomes obvious that disasters in this part of the ocean occur no more often than in any other place in the Atlantic.
The fact is that disasters happen, they happen for one reason or another in absolutely any place on the planet. Planes crash, ships sink, but in every case we are not looking for a “magic crystal” or some kind of “transguangulator” - a high-tech device installed/lost by ancient aliens.
Charles Frambach Berlitz(November 23, 1913 – December 18, 2003) was an American linguist and language teacher, known for his language teaching courses and his books on the paranormal.
life
Berlitz was a writer on the paranormal. He wrote a number of books dedicated to Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis He claimed Atlantis was real, based on his interpretation of geophysics, psychic research, classical literature, ancestral knowledge, and archaeology. He also tried to link the Bermuda Triangle of Atlantis. He claimed that Atlantis was located underwater in the Bermuda Triangle area. He was also an ancient astronaut advocate who believed that aliens had visited Earth.
Berlitz spent 13 years on active duty in the US Army, primarily in intelligence. In 1950, he married Valeria Seary, with whom he had two children, daughter Lyn, and son, Mark. He died in 2003 at the age of 90 at University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida.
reception
Berlitz's statements about the Bermuda Triangle and the Philadelphia Experiment have been heavily criticized by researchers and scientists for their inaccuracy. It has also been criticized for ignoring possible natural explanations and promoting pseudoscientific ideas.
Larry Kusche accused Berlitz of fabricating evidence and inventing secrets that have no basis.
Bibliography
Anomalous phenomena
- The Mystery of Atlantis (1969)
- Secrets from Forgotten Worlds (1972)
The controllers heard only a few panicked phrases in their headphones, after which the plane disappeared from the radar screens. The US Congress adopted resolution number 420-2. With this document, the Americans paid tribute to the memory of 27 naval pilots of the FT-19 flight, who disappeared without a trace 60 years ago, not returning from a training flight over the area that later became known as the “Bermuda Triangle”. Following the congress, NBC announced the premiere of a new documentary about the ill-fated link being prepared for November 27.
The initiator of the resolution was Democratic Congressman Clay Shaw from Florida. In an interview with the Chicago Chronicle, Shaw explained his position: “We don’t want to be led by fans of all sorts of sensations who consider the Bermuda Triangle mysterious and unusual. But personally, I will insist on continuing the investigation into this tragedy. At least to inform their relatives about the fate of the crews. Probably, something extraordinary really happened there, which forced experienced pilots to take actions that led to the disaster. Someday we will reveal this secret and put it on the shelf.”
Actually, the sad glory of the Bermuda Triangle - the area of the World Ocean, bounded by lines connecting the tip of the Florida peninsula (Key West), northern part Puerto Rico and the larger Bermuda Islands just began with that ill-fated flight. Until then, the legends of the triangle lived only in the form of folklore of local fishermen and captains of small ships that ply this busy shipping area in abundance.
The Bermuda Triangle area was considered dangerous for navigation back during the Spanish rule in Central and South America. Spanish galleons carrying gold and silver from the colonies were assembled in Havana and then sent across the ocean to Spain. It has been estimated that there are about 1,200 Spanish ships at the bottom of the sea within the Bermuda Triangle. They were wrecked during summer hurricanes and winter storms, struck reefs and sandbanks, and were drowned by pirates.
Later, English, French and Dutch ships plied the waters of the triangle, and again dozens of new ships sank to the bottom of the sea. So this area of the Atlantic has always had a bad reputation, but nevertheless there is no historical document that would speak of it as mysterious, although in the superstitious past centuries there would have been much more room for this than at the present time.
The incident itself, which received a special resolution from Congress, occurred on the afternoon of December 5, 1945, when five Grumman TBM-1 Avenger torpedo bombers of the FT-19 patrol flight took off from the US Navy airfield Fort Lauderdale under the command of flight instructor First Lieutenant Charles Taylor. The purpose of the mission is to practice group coordination and maintain the flight skills of the crews; the flight duration is three hours.
Four "Avengers" ("Avengers") took off with regular crews: a pilot, a navigator-bombardier and a gunner-radio operator. There was no gunner on Taylor's training vehicle. The tragedy happened on way back: The flight commander transmitted a radio message to the controller in Key West: “We have an emergency situation, obviously we have lost our course.”
The last message from Taylor, received 40 minutes later, indicated that the commander had decided to pull towards the shore until the fuel was completely exhausted. No one saw these people again. A few hours later, three Martin PBM-1 Mariner maritime patrol bombers took off in search of the link.
These radar-equipped flying boats, capable of landing on the water and taking off even with a wave force of 3-4.5 points, were perfectly suited for searching and rescuing those in distress - the fuel supply allowed them to stay in the air for up to 48 hours. One of the rescue planes also disappeared, taking with it the mystery of the death of 13 crew members.
"Million per Million"
The Bermuda Triangle area was considered dangerous for navigation during the Spanish rule in Central and South America
Soon reporters from local newspapers found out about the disappearance of the entire team, and the story received wide publicity. America was in a state of shock. It's no joke - 4 months after the end of the war, five combat aircraft with experienced crews who went through the hell of air battles over Pacific Ocean. And what kind of aircraft: the Avenger (“Avenger”) - the main carrier-based torpedo bomber of the US Navy, the threat of the Japanese fleet - was for the Americans the same symbol of victory as the legendary Il-2 attack aircraft is for us.
Reliable aircraft (there were cases when the “Avengers” came to an aircraft carrier literally “on one wing”), equipped with the most modern navigation equipment, are lost in simple weather conditions with visibility, as aviators say, “a million in a million”, and where!
Almost in the “inner puddle”, an area over which during the war years thousands of American aircraft made tens of thousands of sorties in search of German and Japanese submarines trying to waylay allied transports on the way from Florida to the Panama Canal.
The excitement was also added by the fact that large-scale searches covering 250 thousand square meters. miles of water, undertaken by hundreds of ships and aircraft, did not provide any physical evidence of the disaster. I immediately remembered ancient legends about ships abandoned by their crews, and stories of islanders who “knew for a long time that this was a bad place.” At the same time, recent events were also recalled: two months earlier, under suspicious circumstances, a cargo-passenger airliner Lancastrien of the British airline BOAC, flying from Barbados, crashed on approach to Key West.
He piloted a four-engine vehicle, a demilitarized heavy bomber, and an experienced military crew. Air traffic controllers in Florida heard only a few panicked phrases in their headphones, after which the plane disappeared from their radar screens. Although the remains life rafts washed ashore some time later, 23 passengers and four pilots are still listed as missing. However, pretty soon these stories were forgotten. Until then.
The total is
Charles Berlitz's book "The Bermuda Triangle"
The real explosion occurred in 1974 after the publication of the book “The Bermuda Triangle” by the uncrowned king of experts on the secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, Charles Berlitz. The bestseller was immediately republished in other publishing houses, and in each of them it was necessary to reprint the copies several times. According to the most conservative estimates, the circulation of Berlitz's book reached almost 20 million copies (in cheap pocket format).
Thus, the Bermuda Triangle became the property of a very wide readership, including the Soviet one - in 1978, Berlitz’s translation was published by the Moscow publishing house Mir. Supporters of Berlitz and his followers are constantly looking for new justifications for the “mysticism”, “mystery” and “enigma” of this place. But how are things really? This is evidenced by impartial statistics.
The literature on the Bermuda Triangle describes in detail 50 cases of disappearances of ships and aircraft. Some papers describe, rather vaguely, another 40 or 50 cases. The total, therefore, is about 100. Is this a lot or a little? We should not forget that this amount has accumulated over the past 100 years, that is, on average, one case occurs per year. This, of course, is very little for an area that has the densest network of air and sea transport lines and is also a favorite place for yachtsmen and sports fishing enthusiasts.
Tropical cyclones in summer and storms in winter present a good test even for experienced captains of large-capacity vessels, what about yachts and small fishing boats and light-engine private aircraft? By the way, since modern jetliners began flying over the area, major disasters never happened to passenger planes in the Triangle itself - its last “victim” was the heavy transport aircraft C-119, which disappeared back in 1965!
However, the mystery of the death of the FT-19 flight continues to haunt minds. On Friday evening, the largest American television company, NBC, announced that last summer, at its own expense, it equipped an expedition to the area where the torpedo bombers died. The premiere of the film about her is scheduled for November 27. As the producers of the documentary say, the expedition raised more questions than it answered.
