Friday, July 28, 2017

Is this the answer to the Bermuda mystery?

Via nzherald.co.nz

It's a notorious part of the world where scores of ships and planes have vanished without a trace in mysterious circumstances.

The Bermuda Triangle, which stretches over 700,000km of sea from Florida to Puerto Rico and the island of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean, is a puzzle that has long stumped scientists and unsettled sailors.

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the "Devil's Triangle", is said to have claimed at least 1000 human lives, 20 planes and 50 ships in the past 100 years, reports news.com.au.

On average, five planes continue to go missing in the area each year.

But Australian Scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki told news.com.au there is no mystery to solve because the incidents were likely caused by human error.

"According to Lloyds of London and the US coast guard, the number of planes that go missing in the Bermuda Triangle is the same as anywhere in the world on a percentage basis," Dr Kruszelnicki said.

"It is close to the equator, near a wealthy part of the world, America, therefore you have a lot of traffic."


The Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily travelled shipping lanes in the world, with vessels crossing through to get to ports in America, Europe and the Caribbean.

The mystery surrounding the area grew in the 20th century with a large number of planes and ships going missing over the decades.

In 1918, the USS Cyclops - a large carrier ship that supplied fuel to the American fleet in WWI - was full of heavy cargo when it set sail with 309 people on board.

After it failed to arrive in Baltimore from Barbados, search teams retraced its route but it was never found. Two of the Cyclops' sister ships disappeared along the same route in 1941.

The legend of the Bermuda Triangle deepened after Flight 19 - which consisted of five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers - took off from a US Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine training mission and disappeared, on December 5, 1945.

Fourteen crew members were on-board but a total of 27 men vanished that night.

A Martin Mariner seaplane with 13 men on-board was deployed to find the missing aircraft but things took a dramatic turn when it also disappeared.

To this day, no bodies or wreckage have been found, despite a massive land and sea search.

But Dr Kruszelnicki - who is also the author of The Doctor which is based on his "quest to unearth scientific truths" - said there was a simple explanation.

"They vanish without a trace then another plane sent out to look with them vanishes ... (so some people claimed) it must have been aliens'," he said.

"(But) there was one experienced guy, the rest were inexperienced.

"It wasn't fine weather, there were 15m waves."

Dr Kruszelnicki said Flight 19's leader Lieutenant Charles Taylor was told to go west but instead chose to continue flying east.

"If you read the radio transcripts some of the junior pilots are saying, 'Why don't we fly to the west?', and the pilot says, 'Why don't we fly to the east?'" he said, suggesting Lt. Taylor was responsible for the flight's fate.

"(Lt. Taylor) arrived with a hangover, flew off without a watch, and had a history of getting lost and ditching his plane twice before.

"The plane that went to rescue then went missing was seen to blow up.

"It didn't vanish without a trace."

In May this year, a plane carrying four people, including a mother and her two children, went missing in the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

Jennifer Blumin, her two sons aged 3 and 4 and her pilot boyfriend Nathan Ulrich, had just spent Mother's Day in Puerto Rico and were flying to Florida when their twin-prop MU-2B aeroplane vanished off the radar about 59km east off the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas.

Communication was lost at 24,000 feet and a speed of about 555km/h, officials said.
The search was eventually called off and no bodies were found.

Source

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