The BermudaTriangle, also known as the Devil'sTriangle, is a region of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels are alleged to have disappeared. Somepeople have claimed that these disappearances fall beyond the boundaries of human error, equipment failure or natural disasters. Popular culture hasattributed some of these disappearances to theparanormal, a suspension of the laws of physics, or activity by extraterrestrialbeings. Though asubstantial body of documentation exists showing numerous incidents to havebeen inaccurately reported or embellished by later authors, and numerousofficial agencies have gone on record as stating that the number and nature ofdisappearances is similar to any other area of ocean, proponents of paranormalphenomena claim that many have remained unexplained despite considerableinvestigation.The Triangle Area
The boundaries of the Triangle vary with the author; some statingits shape is akin to a trapezoid coveringthe Straits of Florida,the Bahamas andthe entire Caribbean islandarea and the Atlantic east to theAzores; others add to itthe Gulf of Mexico. The more familiar triangularboundary in most written works has as its points somewhere on the Atlanticcoast of Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda, with most of the accidentsconcentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the FloridaStraits.The area is one of the most heavily-sailed shipping lanes in theworld, with ships crossing through it daily for ports in the Americas, Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. Cruise ships are alsoplentiful, and pleasure craft regularly go back and forth between Florida andthe islands. It is also a heavily flown route for commercial and privateaircraft heading towards Florida, the Caribbean and South America from points north.History of the Triangle story
Origins
The first article of any kind in which the legend of the Trianglebegan appeared in newspapers by E.V.W. Jones on September 16, 1950, through theAssociated Press. Two years later, Fate magazine published "Sea MysteryAt Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss ofseveral planes and ships, including the loss of Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger bombers on a training mission. Sand'sarticle was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where thelosses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered in the April 1962 issue of American Legion Magazine. It was claimed that the flight leaderhad been heard saying "We are entering white water, nothing seems right.We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." It was alsoclaimed that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes"flew off to Mars." This was the first article to connect thesupernatural to Flight 19, but it would take another author, Vincent Gaddis,writing in the February 1964 Argosy magazine to take Flight 19 togetherwith other mysterious disappearances and place it under the umbrella of a newcatchy name: "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle"; he would build on that article with amore detailed book, InvisibleHorizons, the next year. Others would follow with their ownworks: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973); Charles Berlitz (The Bermuda Triangle, 1974); Richard Winer (The Devil's Triangle, 1974) , and many others, all keeping to someof the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert. Kusche's research
Lawrence David Kusche, a research librarian from Arizona State University and author of The Bermuda Triangle Mystery:Solved (1975) has challenged this trend. Kusche's researchrevealed a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies between Berlitz'saccounts and statements from eyewitnesses, participants, and others involved inthe initial incidents. He noted cases where pertinent information wentunreported, such as the disappearance of round-the-world yachtsman Donald Crowhurst, which Berlitz hadpresented as a mystery, despite clear evidence to the contrary. Another examplewas the ore-carrier Berlitz recounted as lost without trace three days out ofan Atlantic port when it had been lost three daysout of a port with the same name in the Pacific Ocean. Kusche also argued that a largepercentage of the incidents which have sparked the Triangle's mysteriousinfluence actually occurred well outside it. Often his research wassurprisingly simple: he would go over period newspapers and see items likeweather reports that were never mentioned in the stories.Further responsesThe marine insurer Lloyd's of London has determined the Triangle to be nomore dangerous than any other area of ocean, and does not charge unusual ratesfor passage through the region.
The Coast Guard is also officially skeptical of the Triangle,noting that they collect and publish, through their inquiries, muchdocumentation contradicting many of the incidents written about by the Triangleauthors. In one such incident involving the 1972 explosion and sinking of thetanker V.A. Fogg in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guardphotographed the wreck and recovered several bodies in contrast with oneTriangle author's claim that all the bodies had vanished, with the exception ofthe captain, who was found sitting in his cabin at his desk, clutching a coffeecup. Supernatural explanations
Triangle writers have used a number of supernatural concepts toexplain the events. One explanation pins the blame on leftover technology fromthe mythical lost continent of Atlantis. Sometimes connected to the Atlantisstory is the submerged rock formation known as the Bimini Roadoff the island of Bimini in theBahamas, which is in the Triangle by some definitions. Followers of thepurported psychic Edgar Cayce takehis prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968 as referring tothe discovery of the Bimini Road. Believers describe the formationas a road, wall, or other structure, though geologists consider it to be ofnatural origin. Natural explanations
Compass variations
Compass problemsare one of the cited phrases in many Triangle incidents. While some have theorizedthat unusual local magnetic anomalies may exist in the area, such anomalieshave not been shown to exist. It should also be remembered that compasses havenatural magnetic variations in relation to the Magnetic poles. For example, in the United States the only places where magnetic (compass)north and geographic (true) north are exactly the same are on a linerunning from Wisconsin tothe Gulf of Mexico. Navigators have known this forcenturies. But the public may not be as informed, and think there is somethingmysterious about a compass "changing" across an area as large as theTriangle, which it naturally will.Deliberate acts of destructionThis can fall into two categories: acts of war, and acts ofpiracy. Records in enemy files have been checked for numerous losses; whilemany sinkings have been attributed to surface raiders or submarines during the World Wars anddocumented in the various command log books, many others which have beensuspected as falling in that category have not been proven. It is suspectedthat the loss of USS Cyclops in 1918, as well as her sister ships Proteus and Nereus in World War II, were attributed to submarines,but no such link has been found in the German records.Piracy, as defined by the taking of a ship orsmall boat on the high seas, is an act which continues to this day. Whilepiracy for cargo theft is more common in the western Pacific and Indian oceans,drug smugglers do steal pleasure boats for smuggling operations, and may havebeen involved in crew and yacht disappearances in the Caribbean. Historicallyfamous pirates of the Caribbean (where piracy was common from about 1560 to the1760s) include Edward Teach (Blackbeard) and Jean Lafitte. Lafitte is sometimes said to bea Triangle victim himself.Gulf StreamThe Gulf Stream isan ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, and then through the Straits of Florida,into the North Atlantic. In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and like ariver, it can and does carry floating objects. It has a surface velocity of up toabout 2.5 metres per second (5.6 mph). A small plane making a waterlanding or a boat having engine trouble will be carried away from its reportedposition by the current, as happened to the cabin cruiser Witchcraft on December 22, 1967, when it reportedengine trouble near the Miami buoy marker one mile (1.6 km) from shore, but wasnot there when a Coast Guard cutter arrived.Humanerror
One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to theloss of any aircraft or vessel is human error. Whether deliberate oraccidental, humans have been known to make mistakes resulting in catastrophe,and losses within the Bermuda Triangle are no exception. For example, the CoastGuard cited a lack of proper training for the cleaning of volatile benzene residueas a reason for the loss of the tanker V.A.Fogg in 1972. Humanstubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailingyacht, the Revonoc, as hesailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958. Manylosses remain inconclusive due to the lack of wreckage which could be studied,a fact cited on many official reports.Area51
Area 51 is a nickname for a military baselocated in the southern portion of Nevada in thewestern United States (83 miles north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas). Situated at its center, on thesouthern shore of Groom Lake, is a large secretive militaryairfield. The base's primary purpose is to support development and testing ofexperimental aircraft and weapons systems. The base lies within the United States AirForce's vast Nevada Testand Training Range. Although the facilities at the range are managedby the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base,the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Force Flight TestCenter (AFFTC) at Edwards Air ForceBase in the Mojave Desert, around 186 miles(300 km) southwest of Groom, nd as such the base is known as Air ForceFlight Test Center (Detachment 3) Other names used for the facility include Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, HomeBase, Watertown Strip, Groom Lake, and most recently Homey Airport. The area is part of the Nellis MilitaryOperations Area, and the restricted airspace around the field isreferred to as (R-4808N), known by the military pilots in the area as "TheBox."The intense secrecy surrounding the base, the very existence ofwhich the U.S. government barely acknowledges, has led it to become thefrequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentifiedflying object (UFO)folklore.GeographyArea 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flat regionof the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location of 739 of the 928nuclear tests conducted by the UnitedStates Department of Energy atNTS. The YuccaMountain nuclear waste repository isapproximately 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Groom Lake.The same "Area xx"naming scheme is used for other parts of the Nevada Test Site.
Operations at Groom Lake
Groom Lake is not a conventional airbase, as frontline units arenot normally deployed there. It instead appears to be used during thedevelopment, testing, and training phases for new aircraft. Once these aircrafthave been approved by the United States AirForce or otheragencies such as the CIA,operation of that aircraft is generally conducted from a normal air force base.Groom is reported, however, to be the permanent home for a small number of Soviet-designed aircraft which are analyzed and used fortraining purposes.Though no ICAO identifier for the base appears on anyofficial document, in December 2007, airline pilots noticed that the base hadappeared in their aircraft navigation systems' latest Jeppesen databaserevision as "KXTA".
U-2 program
Groom Lake was used for bombing and artillery practice during World War II, but was then abandoned untilApril 1955, when it was selected by Lockheed's Skunk Works teamas the ideal location to test the forthcoming U-2 spyplane. The lakebed made an idealstrip from which they could operate the troublesome test aircraft, and theEmigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter protected the test sitefrom prying eyes and outside interference.
Blackbird programs
Even before U-2 development was complete, Lockheed began work onits successor, the CIA's OXCART project, a Mach-3 high altitudereconnaissance aircraft, a later variant of whichbecame the famed USAF SR-71 Blackbird. The Blackbird's flightcharacteristics and maintenance requirements forced a massive expansion offacilities and runways at Groom Lake. By the time the first A-12 Blackbirdprototype flew at Groom in 1962, the main runway had been lengthened to 8,500ft (2,600 m), and the base boasted a complement of over 1,000 personnel. It hadfueling tanks, a control tower, and a baseball diamond.Security was greatly enhanced, the small civilian mine in the Groom basin wasclosed, and the area surrounding the valley was made an exclusive militarypreserve. Groom saw the first flight of most major Blackbird variants: A-12, the abortive YF-12 interceptorvariant, and the D-21 Blackbird-based drone project. The A-12 would remain atGroom Lake until 1968. (The SR-71 firstflew at Palmdale, California.)Have Blue/F-117 program
The Lockheed Have Blue prototype stealth fighter (a smallercousin of the F-117 Nighthawk) first flew at Groom inDecember 1977. Testing of aseries of ultra-secret prototypes continued there until mid-1981, when testingtransitioned to the initial production of F-117 stealth fighters. In additionto flight-testing, Groom performed radar profiling, F-117 weapons testing, andwas the location for training of the first group of frontline USAF F-117pilots. Subsequently, the still highly classified active-service F-117operations moved to the nearby Tonopah Test Range,and finally to Holloman Air Force BaseArea51 border and warning sign stating that "photography is prohibited"and that "use of deadly force is authorized" under the terms of the1950 McCarranInternal Security Act. A government vehicle is parked on thehilltop; from there, security agents observe the approach to Groom Lake.Commuter service is provided along Groom Lake Road by a bus,catering to a small number of employees living in several small communitiesbeyond the NTS boundary (although it is not clear whether these workers areemployed at Groom or at other facilities in the NTS). The bus travels GroomLake Road and stops at Crystal Springs, Ash Springs,and Alamo, and parks at the Alamo courthouseovernight.
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