From History.com comes this portentous story:
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.
Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the “Lost Squadron” helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.
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According to an ex-exorcist friend of mine (knew him for 45 years), the Bermuda Triangle “problem” no longer exists. There were documentations for over seventy years of planes and ships disappearing. At one time, many years ago now, a ship of priests and exorcists purposefully went to the Bermuda Triangle to discern the cause of the several disasters. Apparently, they discerned that this area had been the dumping ground for sick and elderly slaves who would not make it to the market from Africa. Those slave merchants would throw the live Africans overboard and let them drown. My friend told me that the priests said a Mass for the souls of the dead on board the ship and also exorcised the place. Nothing happened after that.
According to an ex-exorcist friend of mine (knew him for 45 years), the Bermuda Triangle “problem” no longer exists. There were documentations for over seventy years of planes and ships disappearing. At one time, many years ago now, a ship of priests and exorcists purposefully went to the Bermuda Triangle to discern the cause of the several disasters. Apparently, they discerned that this area had been the dumping ground for sick and elderly slaves who would not make it to the market from Africa. Those slave merchants would throw the live Africans overboard and let them drown. My friend told me that the priests said a Mass for the souls of the dead on board the ship and also exorcised the place. Nothing happened after that. Peace was restored to the area.
but Father FATHER
You forgot to remind us to go to confession !!
1. Obviously it’s good to have Masses for the souls of the dead. I applaud this.
2. There are still plenty of places in the area where the weather can come up very fast, ships can be swamped, and small planes can be hit by wind shear and downdrafts. Even with modern communication and navigation systems, and even with black boxes, the weather alone will pretty much explain a lot of dangerous stuff.
3. The biggest safety difference between now and the 1940’s is weather radar. That’s why there’s a lot fewer shipping losses.
One of the best books is Kusche’s The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved! Kusche was a librarian who just researched every single Bermuda Triangle “mysterious disappearance,” and brought up the various military, company, Coast Guard, and insurance investigations files. They all came up as pretty normal causes.
You can watch the Bermuda Triangle Is It Real? episode on YouTube.
They got lost, ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean. I very much doubt there’s anything really dodgy going on in the so-called “Bermuda Triangle” just that there’s been enough high profile ones to get everyone’s attention.