The Bermuda Triangle mystery

In past years, many articles and books have been published chronicling the strange disappearance, mainly unverified, of ships and aircraft that had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. These "Myths" have survived ever since Christopher Columbus told about strange phenomena in the Sargasso Sea.

The most recent scenario, at the time, was espoused by Charles Berlitz in his best seller, The Bermuda Triangle.

Berlitz writes: "On December 5, 1945, five Avenger torpedo bombers, with 14 crewman, took off from Fort Laurdervale Naval Air Station on a navigational training flight. They were to fly eastward toward the Bahamas, then north, then eastward back to their base. The student flyers were led by Charles Taylor, an experienced flight instructor.

About an hour after take-off, the radio tower at the base began receiving strange messages from Taylor. 'We seem to be off course...we cannot see land... everything is wrong...even the ocean doesn't look as it should... our compasses are off and going crazy..."

The signals gradually grew weaker and finally faded out completely. Flight 19 had vanished.

It wasn't until a man named Lawrence Kusche began researching the many explanations for the disappearances, that possible reasons were revealed.

In his book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved, he came up with some plausible thoughts. Flight 19's troubles were definitely an error in judgment on the part of the flight instructor, Charles Taylor, according to Kusche. The flight instructor (Charles Taylor's) error was attributed to the fact that he had previously been stationed at the Miami Air Station and had flown over the Keys many times during that posting. He had confused the tiny islands stretching across that part of the Atlantic, in the Bahamas, with the Keys, which looked the same from the air. The Flight eventually ran out of fuel, and ditched after dark into a stormy ocean.

Now here is the kicker — the five planes referred to earlier were Avengers all right. However, a closer look told the story, revealing that the plane's numbers and insignia did not match those of Flight 19.

Then, what five Avengers were those whose wreckage did actually appear on the Florida Coast?

So the romantic riddle of the Bermuda Triangle lingers on!