FOXSYLVANIA

Ships go missing!- – Planes vanish without a trace! – – Are strange forces at work, or is the Bermuda Triangle just a myth?  In another episode focusing on the paranormal and mysteries rather than cryptozoology, Monsters and Mysteries Unsolved on their S1/Ep09 installment dealt with such questions.  Most of the segments again covered familiar territory and occurrences in an uneven fashion.

There was pilot Bruce Gernon, who in 1970 while flying from Palm Beach to the Bahamas encountered a lenticular cloud which ascended and expanded, trapping him.  A kind of tunnel with strange lines formed, his instruments went haywire, and the pilot could not ascertain his position, but reported the sensation of zero-gravity and hydroplaning.  He arrived at his destination earlier than otherwise would have been possible given the capabilities of his small plane.  At least this pilot had a positive outcome…

…not so the legendary Flight 19, a group of five American Navy Avenger bombers which a quarter century earlier disappeared while on a training flight out of Ft. Lauderdale.  Compass deviations were reported, with the final squadron transmission occurring two hours into the flight.  Despite a massive search, no trace of the planes or their occupants were ever found.  The ill-fated Fight 19 was termed the single most important event perpetuating the myth of the Bermuda Triangle.

On the sea itself, the USS Cyclops disappeared in 1918 on route to Baltimore out of Barbados.  A massive ship for its day, no wreckage, oil slick, or any trace of the vessel was ever found.  The ship went down over the Puerto Rico Trench, a deep part of the ocean.  A rogue wave was advanced as the leading theory for the disappearance.  Other oceanic disasters have included the sinking of the Ocean Ranger oil rig in 1982.

These are but a few of the best known Bermuda Triangle disappearances, with author/researcher Michael Preisinger reporting over fifty unsolved cases.  Even Christopher Columbus reported compass malfunctions.  David Pares believes that bad weather accounts for most of the disappearances, noting that converging storms can form a hole between them, possibly like that experienced by pilot Gernon in 1970.  Efforts to recreate his experience, however, have not been successful.  Other explanations briefly and weakly advanced included the possible association of gamma rays with thunderstorms, and the weakening of Earth’s magnetic fields, especially in association with an area called “the South Atlantic Anomaly.”  Ultimately, the show concluded that the Bermuda Triangle is felt to be founded more on myth than on facts…

This entry was posted on September 18, 2016 at 2:09 pm and is filed under anomalies, environmental, speculation, television, unexplained. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.