There are few places in the world more mysterious and fascinating than the Bermuda Triangle. An expanse of ocean between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Florida, the Bermuda Triangle has been the sight of a great many disappearances over the years. From mighty warships to aircraft, vehicles, and the people they carry, vanish without a trace.
Now a group of scientists from the UK believe they may have answered the question of what happened to those who disappeared in the Triangle. But first, let’s take a look at the bizarre history of the Bermuda Triangle.
The legend of the Triangle can be traced back to Christopher Columbus. Though the explorer didn’t disappear as he sailed through the Bermuda Triangle, he did report seeing an enormous fireball that fell into the sea—possibly a meteor—as well as strangle lights in the night.
It wasn’t until the 20th century, however, that the Bermuda Triangle became a widely known mystery. In 1918, the 542-foot USS Cyclops, a Navy cargo ship and its 300-person crew, sank somewhere within the Triangle. The ship never sent an SOS and, even to this day, its wreckage has never been found. As US President Wilson said, “Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship.”
Perhaps the most famous disappearance within the Triangle is that of the US Navy’s Flight 19. In 1945, five bombers took off from Florida. As the planes flew through the Triangle, the crews somehow became hopelessly lost, despite being led by veteran pilot, Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor.
Radio transmissions from Flight 19 tells the tale of increasing panic. The pilots complained that their compasses were acting strangely. At one point, a pilot said he could see land below him and he thought he was over the Florida Keys, even though the Keys were hundreds of miles from where they were supposed to be. Finally, with the planes low on fuel, Lieutenant Taylor announced that they would be ditching the planes in the ocean. Then, the radio transmissions faded into static.
The Navy launched a rescue mission that included over 300 ships and planes, but no sign of Flight 19 was ever found. Eerily, one of the rescue planes also vanished while searching within the Triangle, with no trace of what happened to that plane or its 13 crewmen.
Theories about what is going on in the Bermuda Triangle are all over the place. On one end of the spectrum are those who claim unusual weather or magnetic phenomena are to blame. On the other end are those who say the missing people were abducted by aliens, or sucked into the sea by the lost city of Atlantis.
But now back to the latest explanation put forth by those UK scientists. Their explanation: rogue waves. As discussed in a BBC documentary called “The Bermuda Triangle Enigma,” the area of the Triangle is an ideal spot to find multiple storms crashing into one another. This situation is a recipe for rogue waves, massive walls of water that seem to appear out of nowhere. Rogue waves could easily swamp a ship, even one as big as the USS Cyclops, and sink it before the crew could get off a distress call. Some waves could even be tall enough to knock low flying aircraft out of the sky.
But does rogue waves explain all the disappearances within the Bermuda Triangle? Could a wave bring down a high flying aircraft? What about the ships that have been found still afloat and undamaged, but with their crews missing? What do you think?