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AndroMan said:
There was some footage from the 1990's of a North Sea Oil rig tilted over and nearly swallowed up by just such a release of gas on the programme. It get's a mention in the article below. So there is some evidence of sinking due to a methane 'blowout'.

New Scientist: 'Swallowing Ships' 29 November 00

There was a picture to go with the article:

AndroMan:
Now to be totally honest, IIRC, that oil rig triggered the release itself due to its drilling operations. This wasn't a spontaneous release of methane from the seabed.
 
Was discussing the Triangle with someone at lunch and before I could get the full statement out he said precisely what I was thinking. The conversation went something like:

(basic chit chat about travel and flying, with a seque into "hope you don't fly over the Bermuda Triangle")

Me: Well, I gather there's far more boats have "disappeared" in that area than planes. What I don't understand is why people don't think of the simplest explanation, which is, given the history of the area..

Him (breaking in excitedly): pirates! Most of those boats were probably pirated. Didn't Peter Benchley write a novel about that? {edit: yes. The Island } I'd bet that all the things that made that area a hotbed for pirates a long time ago still apply.

Me: Yep. Sea lanes busy enough to keep the flow of goods and money coming; slow enough that a boat being pirated wouldn't be like to be seen....Oh yeah.

A good conversation (since it validated my viewpoint :D )


Interesting that few if any of the books or documentataries on that region mention this as a possible reason. As for planes, the Triangle is right were planes coming out of a busy section of the US east coast fly. It is part of a flight corridor. Hel-lo! Statistically there will be more downed planes there just as, statistically, a busy freeway has more accidents per mile than a lonely old country road. :cool:
 
Bermuda Triangle - Last Words?

Hi,
I've been asked if I can find out something about the BM. Apparently one story has the pilot of a plane uttering a strange word over his radio and then nothing else was heard. This word was apparently completely unknown even after extensive research. The person who asked me said that he thinks a paranormal mag used this word as its title.
Any ideas what it could be?
 
there's one I can think of, but it wasn't the Bermuda Triangle, the word was "STENDEC" repeated over and over.

I'll try and find details
 
It was in the Andes . . .

Horizon did a programme on it, the transcript is here

On August 2nd 1947, a British civilian version of the wartime Lancaster bomber took off from Buenos Aires airport on a scheduled flight to Santiago. There were 5 crew and 6 passengers on board the plane - named "Stardust". But Stardust never made it to Santiago. Instead it vanished when it was apparently just a few minutes from touchdown. One final strange morse code radio message - "STENDEC" - was sent, but after that nothing more was heard from the plane.
 
Well they found the aircraft....but I still have'nt seen a convincing explanation of STENDEC, although it being an anagram for descent is interesting.:confused:
 
Spotted this (nice keywords!!):

''Can a Single Bubble Sink a Ship?''
Deming D.
Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1 June 2004, vol. 18, iss. 2, pp. 307-312

Abstract:
Anomalies are the source of all scientific investigation and discovery. The mysterious disappearance of ships at sea has long been recognized as a standard type of anomaly. A new theory proposes that the catastrophic release of giant methane bubbles from the ocean floor can possibly account for the disappearance of some ships. The theory is both novel and plausible. However it has limited applicability.

Keywords: ANOMALIES; BERMUDA TRIANGLE; CHARLES FORT; THOMAS KUHN; METHANE
 
Bermuda Triangle plane mystery 'solved'

Two of the so-called Bermuda Triangle's most mysterious disappearances in the late 1940s may have been solved.

Scores of ships and planes are said to have vanished without trace over the decades in a vast triangular area of ocean with imaginary apexes in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico.

But a new examination for a BBC series provides plausible explanations for the disappearance of two British commercial planes in the area, with the loss of 51 passengers and crew.

One plane probably suffered from catastrophic technical failure as a result of poor design, while the other is likely to have run out of fuel.

Sixty years ago, commercial flights from London to Bermuda were new and perilous. It would require a refuelling stop on the Azores before the 2,000-mile flight to Bermuda, which at that time was the longest non-stop commercial overseas flight in the world.

The planes would have been operating at the limit of their range. Today planes arriving at the tiny Atlantic island deep sufficient reserve fuel to divert to the US East Coast 700 miles away, in case of emergency.

And the planes of the post-war era were far less reliable than today's airliners.

British South American Airways (BSAA), which operated the route, had a grim safety record. In three years it had had 11 serious accidents and lost five planes with 73 passengers and 22 crew members killed.

On 30 January 1948, a BSAA Avro Tudor IV plane disappeared without trace. Twenty five passengers and a crew of six were on board The Star Tiger. No bodies or wreckage were found.

The official investigation into the disappearance concluded: "It may truly be said that no more baffling problem has ever been presented.

"What happened in this case will never be known and the fate of Star Tiger must remain an unsolved mystery."

But there are a number of clues in the official accident report that reveal the Star Tiger had encountered problems before it reached the Azores.

The aircraft's heater was notoriously unreliable and had failed en route, and one of the compasses was found to be faulty.

Probably to keep the plane warmer, the pilot had decided to fly the whole trans-Atlantic route very low, at 2,000 feet, burning fuel at a faster rate.

On approaching Bermuda, Star Tiger was a little off course and had been flying an hour later than planned.

In addition, the official Ministry of Civil Aviation report considered that the headwinds faced by Star Tiger may have been much stronger than those forecasted. This would have caused the fuel to burn more quickly.

"Flying at 2,000 feet they would have used up much more fuel," said Eric Newton, one of the Ministry of Civil Aviation's most senior air accident investigators, who reviewed the scenario for the BBC.

"At 2,000 feet you'd be leaving very little altitude for manoeuvre. In any serious in-flight emergency they could have lost their height in seconds and gone into the sea."

Whatever happened to the plane, it was sudden and catastrophic - there was no time to send an emergency signal.

The Avro Tudor IV was a converted warplane that was eventually taken out of passenger service because of its poor safety record. Only BSAA continued to fly the aircraft.

Gordon Store was chief pilot and manager of operations at BSAA. In an interview with his local newspaper last November, he said he had no confidence in the Tudor's engines.

"Its systems were hopeless… all the hydraulics, the air conditioning equipment and the recycling fans were crammed together underneath the floor without any thought. There were fuel burning heaters that would never work," he said.

etc...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8248334.stm
 
TV tonight:

Bermuda Triangle: Mystery Revealed

Revealing documentary following scientists as they embark upon a world-first dangerous expedition beneath the sea to uncover the secrets of the notorious Bermuda Triangle. Laden with sonars and satellite surveys, the divers attempt to investigate the triangle from the bottom up, and they make some startling discoveries along the way. SUB
Documentary

Today on FIVE from 8:00pm to 9:00pm
 
Not a very informative programme, although the undersea topography was good to see.

Waffling on about the North Atlantic Gyre was a bit irrelevent - the fastest part of this is the Gulf Stream, which flows up past Florida, as has been well known for centuries. And a strong current combined with storm winds can create bad situations.

There were errors of fact too - a sailing ship was described as a 'three masted brig', but there ain't no such animal - a BRIG by definition is a two-masted vessel. (If the pics they showed of the Marques were correct, then the vessel was a brigantine.)

And the stuff abut solar flares failed to address why they should impact the 'Bermuda Triangle' more than other places.

The idea that the infamous Flight 19 crashed in a swamp in Florida also didn't discuss why five planes should go down there without any survivors.

I'd like to bang a few heads together!
 
rynner2 said:
...There were errors of fact too..
That's often the problem with this kind of documentary - glossy and slickly-produced they may be, but when they get basic, established facts wrong then any extrapolations are immediately thrown into serious doubt as well.
 
The idea that the infamous Flight 19 crashed in a swamp in Florida also didn't discuss why five planes should go down there without any survivors.

Well it could have been 'gators or banjo playing Cajuns.
 
These channel five documentaries do tend to fall into a pattern of big title, shotgun full of unfounded theories, snazzy graphics, no conclusion. Last night's one had a classic 'expert' on it, introduced as a metrologist he then espoused a theory of time warps. :roll:

Could be worse though, the Channel Five Egyption ones fall into an even more predicatable pattern of expensive looking but endlessly repeated reconstruction, outlandish theory, then Zahi Hawass pops up and declares he thinks it's true. :roll:
 
What puzzles me about the triangle is that some experts come out with the methane bubble theory etc to explain why there are so many disappearances,while other experts say that they are no more disappearances then in any other heavily trafficked area. :?
 
Salem-News.com (Aug-06-2010 14:30)

How Brilliant Computer Scientists Solved the Bermuda Triangle Mystery

Terrence Aym Salem-News.com

(CHICAGO) - According to two research scientists the mystery of vanished ships and airplanes in the region dubbed "The Bermuda Triangle" has been solved.

Step aside outer space aliens, time anomalies, submerged giant Atlantean pyramids and bizarre meteorological phenomena ... the "Triangle" simply suffers from an acute case of gas.

Natural gas—the kind that heats ovens and boils water—specifically methane, is the culprit behind the mysterious disappearances and loss of water and air craft.

The evidence for this astounding new insight into a mystery that's bedevilled the world is laid out in a research paper published in the American Journal of Physics.

Professor Joseph Monaghan researched the hypothesis with honour student David May at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

The two hypothesized that large methane bubbles rising from the ocean floor might account for many, if not all, of the mysterious disappearances of ships and aircraft at specific locales around the world.

Researcher Ivan T. Sanderson identified these mystery areas during the 1960s. Sanderson described the actual shape of these regions as more like a lozenge rather than a triangle. Some of the more famous spots include an area in the Sea of Japan, the North Sea, and of course the infamous "Bermuda (or Devil's) Triangle."

Oceanographic surveyors of the sea floor in the area of the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea region between continental Europe and Great Britain have discovered significant quantities of methane hydrates and older eruption sites.

Because of the correlations and existing data, the two envisioned what would happen when gigantic methane bubbles explode from natural fissures on the seafloor.

The methane—normally frozen at great pressure as gas hydrates embedded within subterranean rock—can become dislodged and transform into gaseous bubbles expanding geometrically as they explode upwards. When these bubbles reach the surface of the water they soar into the air, still expanding upwards and outwards.

Any ships caught within the methane mega-bubble immediately lose all buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the ocean. If the bubbles are big enough and possess a high enough density they can also knock aircraft out of the sky with little or no warning. Aircraft falling victim to these methane bubbles will lose their engines-perhaps igniting the methane surrounding them-and immediately lose their lift as well, ending their flights by diving into the ocean and swiftly plummeting.

Copyright © 2010 Salem-News.com (via MetaFilter)
 
How does an aircraft lose it's lift if it hits a methane bubble?

I can see the engines would fail if too much oxygen is displaced, but the aircraft would still be intact and have forward momentum. And presumably at say a modest 120mph for a prop, they'd be out of a big bubble quite quickly anyway, and could restart the engines?
 
On steam radio:

Inside the Bermuda Triangle: The Mysteries Solved - Episode 1

Broadcaster and investigative journalist Tom Mangold begins an epic quest to uncover the truth behind one of the world's most famous mysteries.

In this first of two omnibus editions of his series from 2009, Tom Mangold begins an epic quest to uncover the truth behind one of the world's most famous mysteries.

The Bermuda Triangle is one of the great iconic stories of our time. Within its half million square mile borders between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico some 1000 people are said to have perished in the sixty or so ships and planes that have vanished without trace since 1854.

The stories are legend.
From the USS Cyclops en route from Barbados to Baltimore with 300 people which vanished in 1918 and has never been found - to the most recent Triangle event in 2002 - the disappearance of a small Piper Pawnee airplane over the Bahamas - the mystery persists.

Tom Mangold turns his journalistic skills to the myth of the Bermuda Triangle - and separates fact from fiction, speculation from recorded history, and barefaced lies from long forgotten truths. He discovers just was the genesis of the story, how it grew, and why it persists to this day.

In the process he'll be speaking to the authors who first spun the tales of inexplicable events in the area, investigating some of the supposed mysteries in the light of new evidence, and travelling around the Triangle itself to find out if there really is anything out there.

Think you know the truth behind the mystery? Think again. And join Tom Mangold as he travels - Inside The Bermuda Triangle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Episode_1/
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 9:00PM Fri, 23 Mar 2012

Available until 11:00PM Fri, 30 Mar 2012
 
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-bermuda-triangle-bunk-20140208,0,2887142.story

Now it's official: The Bermuda Triangle is a bunch of bunk.

For decades, rumors persisted that hundreds of ships and planes mysteriously vanished in the area between Miami, Puerto Rico and Bermuda because it was cursed or patrolled by extraterrestrials.

Most of us already suspected that was a myth. Yet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just posted a story declaring the Devil's Triangle, as it's also known, is no different than any other open ocean region — and that foul weather and poor navigation are likely to blame for any mishaps.

"There is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur with any greater frequency in the Bermuda Triangle than in any other large, well-traveled area of the ocean," the agency stated this month on noaa.gov.

Ben Sherman, spokesman for NOAA's National Ocean Service, said the agency wrote the story as part of an educational program where it responds to readers' questions.

The story was based on information from the U.S. Navy and U.S. Guard, which make no bones about saying the mythological area is so much balderdash.

"The Coast Guard does not recognize the existence of the so-called Bermuda Triangle as a geographic area of specific hazard to ships or planes," the military branch said. "In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes."

Not everyone is in full agreement, including Minerva Bloom.

She's a volunteer docent at the Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum, which pays homage to Flight 19, perhaps the highest-profile incident involving the Bermuda Triangle. The five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine training exercise in December 1945, never to return.

"I don't think there are aliens or anything like that, but I do think there's something going on there," Bloom said.

One reason for that: In the early 1990s, she and her family flew in a seaplane operated by the now defunct Chalk's International Airlines from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale.

"The pilot said, 'We're going over the Bermuda Triangle,' and all of the sudden, a screw fell from his panel," she recalled. "He said, 'that's happened before, don't worry about it.' But it was just spooky."

Otherwise, more scientific study should be done to determine if the Bermuda Triangle is inhabited by "some form of energy that hasn't been explained yet," Bloom said. "The Earth is full of pockets of energy, and there might be some sort of scientific explanation."

Since the early 1950s, some outrageous theories have surrounded the Bermuda Triangle. Among them: Space aliens hunt for human study subjects there; the lost continent of Atlantis exerts an evil influence there; or black-hole vortices pull objects into other dimensions from there.

There also are more reasonable explanations, such as methane gas, erupting from ocean sediments, have overwhelmed vessels or that strong magnetic forces can confuse sailors and pilots.

NOAA contends that hurricanes and tropical storms, which frequently churn through the triangle, and other bad weather are more likely explanations for ships or planes getting into trouble.

Additionally, the Gulf Stream, a fast-moving current that runs parallel to the U.S. East Coast, can cause "rapid, sometimes violent, changes in weather" — and that numerous shallow water areas near Caribbean islands can be treacherous to ship navigation, the agency said.

"The ocean has always been a mysterious place to humans, and when foul weather or poor navigation is involved, it can be a very deadly place," NOAA said. "This is true all over the world."

NOAA noted the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an official name. Further, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have no official maps to delineate the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle.

"Their experience suggests that the combined forces of nature and human fallibility outdo even the most incredulous science fiction," NOAA said.
 
In the early 70's I was stationed aboard a U. S. Coast Guard Weather High Endurance Cutter for two years. Our primary mission at that time was performing Ocean Station Patrols, but we did some other things as well. Our travels during my time aboard took us all up and down the eastern seaboard, above the Arctic Circle, Europe and the Caribbean. We passed through the Bermuda Triangle several times and never noticed anything unusual while traversing it. We DID, however, encounter some unusual phenomena from time to time while at sea. On my first trip aboard we were sailing from Boston to Guantanamo Bay and I was being trained on lookout duty. The seaman who was breaking me in told me, "By the way, if you ever see a green flare over the horizon, don't even bother reporting it". He went on to explain that he'd seen a green flare rise up from the water over the horizon, arc around and come back down again. He reported his sighting and the ship diverted course and spent a long time performing a search of the area. Nothing was ever found. After that first trip I noticed that during most every voyage we made that someone on lookout duty would report seeing a green flare over the horizon. I never witnessed this phenomenon myself, but I heard about it when someone else did. Years later I read in a book that the green flare problem started during WWII and it was generally assumed that it was German U-boats sending signals. But WWII eventually ended and the green flare phenomenon continued on. Much more recently, my brother was aboard a sailboat racing with a bunch of other sailboats from Galveston to Cancun. Somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico they spotted a green flare arc up into the sky and fall back down again. It was dead astern of them. Thinking maybe another of the boats in their race was signaling distress, they turned around and went back to search. They found nothing and finally turned around again to continue the race.

I personally don't put much stock in the Bermuda Triangle 'mystery'. But I do believe there are some things in this world we don't understand.
 
Fascinating account!
I wonder what the green flares are?
 
I have no clue what the green flares might actually be. I've never seen one, myself. I've only heard descriptions and it's always simply a green flare in the distance that rises up and arcs back down again and disappears. It looks like a flare shot from a Very pistol. I've never heard of them described as fireballs in the sky.

I first heard of them on that trip from Boston to Cuba during my lookout training. I heard of them being seen by shipmates on subsequent cruises. I read about them in a book a year or so after I got out of the Coast Guard. And then more recently my brother and his fellow crewmen saw one in the Gulf of Mexico and he described it exactly such....as a green flare far off in the distance arcing up into the sky and falling back down again.

I do remember when I was just little, looking up into the night sky and seeing what I thought was a satellite. For some reason it left an intermittent green streak of light behind it. I wondered if it was skipping on the edge of the atmosphere and beginning to burn up. But thinking back on it now, I recall it traveling from south to north. That's not a typical satellite orbit, is it?
 
Interesting! The flare ingredients (green from Barium nitrate) usually leave a smoke trail, though, right? Maybe something was getting a look at you while you were seeing it?
 
There's an optical phenomenon called 'Green Flash' which I believe is most likely (although not exclusively) to be observed at sea over the horizon - wonder if it could have been that.

Wiki page on Green Flash here.
 
My limited understanding of the green flash phenomenon is that it happens mostly in the tropical latitudes, and very rarely, at that. It happens at sunset as the rays from the sun cross the atmosphere at just the right angle with just the right conditions. The atmosphere acts like a prism and bends the light rays into a giant rainbow of colors. The colors are all briefly visible, but only the color green really stands out as much different than the ambient light conditions and that's what you see as the flash.
 
Old_Shoe said:
My limited understanding of the green flash phenomenon is that it happens mostly in the tropical latitudes, and very rarely, at that. It happens at sunset as the rays from the sun cross the atmosphere at just the right angle with just the right conditions. The atmosphere acts like a prism and bends the light rays into a giant rainbow of colors. The colors are all briefly visible, but only the color green really stands out as much different than the ambient light conditions and that's what you see as the flash.
I thought of the Green Flash, but descriptions of the green flare are different:
I've never seen one, myself. I've only heard descriptions and it's always simply a green flare in the distance that rises up and arcs back down again and disappears. It looks like a flare shot from a Very pistol.
It might well have been. Signals, perhaps in a secret military exercise, hence the insistence that "you ain't seen nothing, roight!" to the look-outs.
 
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