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List of Bermuda Triangle incidents

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This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

This is a list of incidents attributed in popular culture to the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle.

Aircraft incidents

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  • 1945: July 10, Thomas Arthur Garner, AMM3, USN, along with eleven other crew members, was lost at sea in a US Navy PBM3S patrol seaplane, Bu. No.6545, Sqd VPB2-OTU#3, in the Bermuda Triangle. They left Naval Air Station, Banana River, Florida, at 7:07 p.m. on July 9, 1945, for a radar training flight to Great Exuma, Bahamas. Their last radio position report was sent at 1:16 a.m., July 10, 1945, with a latitude/longitude of 25.22N 77.34W, near Providence Island, after which they were never heard from again. An extensive ten-day surface and air search, including a carrier sweep, found nothing.[1]
  • 1945: December 5, Flight 19 (five TBF Avengers) lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19.[2]
  • 1947: July 3, a Douglas C-54 crashed off the Florida coast after the pilot lost control in turbulence.[3]
  • 1948: January 30, Avro Tudor G-AHNP Star Tiger lost with six crew and 27 passengers, en route from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores to Kindley Field, Bermuda.[4]
  • 1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002 lost with three crew and 36 passengers, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida.[5]
  • 1949: January 17, Avro Tudor G-AGRE Star Ariel lost with seven crew and 13 passengers, en route from Kindley Field, Bermuda, to Kingston Airport, Jamaica.[6]
  • 1965: June 9, A USAF C-119 Flying Boxcar of the 440th Troop Carrier Wing missing between Florida and Grand Turk Island[7] The last call from the plane came from a point just north of Crooked Island, Bahamas, and 177 miles from Grand Turk Island. On July 18, 1965, debris from the plane was found on the beach of Gold Rock Cay just off the northeastern shore of Acklins Island.[8]
  • 1965: December 6, Private ERCO Ercoupe F01[9] lost with pilot and one passenger, en route from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Bahamas Island.[10]
  • 2005: June 20, A Piper PA-23 disappeared between Treasure Cay Island, Bahamas and Fort Pierce, Florida. There were three people on board.[11]
  • 2017: February 23, The Turkish Airlines flight TK183 (an Airbus A330-200) was forced to change its direction from Havana, Cuba to Washington Dulles airport after some mechanical and electrical problems occurred over the triangle.[12]
  • 2017: May 15, A private MU-2B aircraft was at 24,000 feet when it vanished from radar and radio contact with air traffic controllers in Miami.[13] Plane wreckage was found later.[14]

Incidents at sea

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  • 1800: USS Pickering, on course from Guadeloupe to Delaware, lost with 91 people on board.[15] (Possibly lost in a gale)
  • 1814: USS Wasp, last known position was the Caribbean, lost with 140 people on board.[15] (Possibly lost in a storm)
  • 1824: USS Wild Cat, on course from Cuba to Tompkins Island, lost with 14 people on board.[15] (Lost in a gale with 31 on board)
  • 1840: Rosalie, found abandoned.[15] (Possibly the "Rossini" found derelict)[16]
  • 1881: According to legend, a sailing ship, the Ellen Austin, found a derelict vessel and placed a crew to sail the vessel to port. Two versions of what happened to the vessel are: the vessel was either lost in a storm or was found again without a crew. Lawrence David Kusche author of "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved" found no mention in 1880 or 1881 newspapers of this alleged incident-he did trace the legend to a book by Rupert Gould "The Stargazer Talks" published in 1943. The Ellen Austin did exist; a check from Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of Meta, built in 1854, and that in 1880, Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared although one website includes the alleged derelict vessel incident it does find that Rupert Gould talked about the legend on radio in the 1930s;[17] likewise the website traces the derelict story to a June 1906 newspaper story-which claims the derelict ship incident took place in 1891;[17] however the 1906 story does not give a reference of where this story came from.
  • 1918: USS Cyclops, collier, left Barbados on March 4, lost with all 306 crew and passengers en route to Baltimore, Maryland.[18]
  • 1921: January 31, Carroll A. Deering, five-masted schooner, Captain W. B. Wormell, found aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.[19]
  • 1925: December 1, SS Cotopaxi, having departed Charleston, South Carolina two days earlier bound for Havana, Cuba, radioed a distress call reporting that the ship was sinking. She was officially listed as overdue on 31 December.[20] In 1985 an unknown shipwreck was found off St Augustine, Florida; in 2020 it was identified as the remains of the SS Cotopaxi.[21]
  • 1941: USS Proteus (AC-9), lost with all 58 persons on board in heavy seas, having departed St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands with a cargo of bauxite on 23 November. The following month, her sister ship USS Nereus (AC-10) was lost with all 61 persons on board, having also departed St. Thomas with a cargo of bauxite, on 10 December. According to research by Rear Admiral George van Deurs, USN, who was familiar with this type of ship from their service in the USN, the acidic coal cargo would seriously erode the longitudinal support beams, making these aging and poorly constructed colliers extremely vulnerable to breaking up in heavy seas.[22] They were both sister ships of the USS Cyclops.
  • 1958: Revonoc. A 43-foot racing yawl was lost with owner Harvey Conover and four others aboard, between Key West and Miami in a hurricane. The only trace found was the Revonoc's 14-foot skiff, near Jupiter, Florida.[23]
  • 1967: December 22, Miami hotel owner and yachtsman Dan Burack set out on his cabin cruiser Witchcraft with a priest named Patrick Horgan.[24][25] The ship was taken one mile off the Miami coastline so that Burack and Horgan could view the Christmas lights visible from the shore.[24][25] That night, Burack radioed a distress call to the Coast Guard, informing them that the boat's propeller had struck something underwater, and that the vessel would need to be towed in.[25] The Coast Guard requested that he send up a flare in roughly 20 minutes so that the boat could be more easily located.[25] The official who received the call reportedly later noted that Burack did not seem too concerned about the Witchcraft,[24] a boat that Burack had fitted with a special floatation device in its hull.[26] When the Coast Guard arrived at the location from which Burack called, he, Horgan, and the Witchcraft were nowhere to be found.[24][26] Over the following days, a search was conducted over hundreds of square miles of ocean, but the boat and its passengers were never found.[24][27]
  • 2015: Late July, two 14-year-old boys, Austin Stephanos, and Perry Cohen went on a fishing trip in their 19-foot boat. Despite the 15,000 square nautical mile wide search by the Coast Guard,[28] the pair's boat was found a year later off the coast of Bermuda, but the boys were never seen again.[29]
  • 2015: October 1, SS El Faro, with a crew of 33 aboard, sank off of the coast of the Bahamas within the triangle after sailing into Hurricane Joaquin. Search crews identified the vessel 15,000 feet below the surface.

Incidents on land

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References

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  1. ^ "VPNAVY - VPB-2 Memorial Page".
  2. ^ "The Loss Of Flight 19". Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997.
  3. ^ Harro Ranter (3 July 1947). "ASN Aircraft accident Douglas C-54G-1-DO Skymaster 45-519 Florida coast, USA".
  4. ^ G-AHNP Aviation Safety Network – Avro 688 Tudor 1 G-AHNP
  5. ^ NC16002 Aviation Safety Network – Douglas DC-3DST-144 NC16002
  6. ^ G-AGRE Avro 688 Tudor Mk.1 G-AGRE c/n 1253 – Jack McKillop
  7. ^ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar 51-2680 Crooked Island, Bahamas". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  8. ^ "The Milwaukee Journal August 11, 1965". google.com. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  9. ^ [The Legend lists plane loss as a "Cessna" But see NTSA report]
  10. ^ "NTSB Record as NTSB Identification: MIA66A0065". ntsb.gov. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  11. ^ "Recent Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle". lovetoknow.com. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  12. ^ "The Turkish Airlines plane en route to Cuba landed to the US". 23 February 2017.
  13. ^ "U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for four whose plane was lost near Bahamas". Reuters. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
  14. ^ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft 15-MAY-2017 Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 N220N". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  15. ^ a b c d Berlitz, Charles, and J. Manson Valentine. Without a Trace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977. Print.
  16. ^ "The derelict Rosalie". www.bermuda-triangle.org. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016.
  17. ^ a b Sometimes Interesting (2015-12-10). "The Ellen Austin Encounter". Sometimes Interesting. Retrieved 2017-07-17.
  18. ^ USS Cyclops Archived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center – Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
  19. ^ Simpson, Bland (2005). Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9780807856178.
  20. ^ "Mails and Shipping". The Times. No. 44157. London. 31 December 1925. col D, p. 18.
  21. ^ Popular Mechanics 2020
  22. ^ Rob Fisher. "Naval History.ca – History of the Royal Canadian Navy – Canadian Merchant Ship Losses, 1939–1945".
  23. ^ Nature Keeps a Grim Date at sea Sports Illustrated January 20, 1958 Archive accessed September 29,2018
  24. ^ a b c d e Cock-Starkey, Claire (August 5, 2016). "7 Ships That Disappeared Without a Trace". Mental Floss. Retrieved June 4, 2021.
  25. ^ a b c d Stewart 2009, p. 20.
  26. ^ a b Stewart 2009, p. 22.
  27. ^ Stewart 2009, p. 23.
  28. ^ "2 Boys in a Fishing Boat Vanish In the Bermuda Triangle". madmikesamerica.com. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  29. ^ Angel, Greg (2017-04-23). "One Year Later: Austin & Perry Boat Found". cbs12.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  30. ^ Quasar, Gian. Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2004), Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Vanished Ships, p.71.

Bibliography

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