Bermuda Triangle

by Corwin

Nearly everyone knows of the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious area in the Atlantic where ships and planes have been disappearing without a trace. All manner of bizarre occurrences have been reported there, from magnetic anomalies to freak storms and waves, to the complete cessation of all electrical activity. On almost the exact opposite side of the planet, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan, there is a similar, though less widely known, mystery of the sea. The Japanese call it the Ma-no Umi: the Sea of the Devil, but it is also known as the Dragon's Triangle or Dragon Sea. The area has been designated a "Danger Zone" by the Japanese government, and even the United States Air Force has expressed concern over aircraft disappearances there.

... the Dragon Triangle in the Western Pacific forms a generally triangular pattern. It follows a line from western Japan north of Tokyo to a point in the Pacific at approximately latitude 145 degrees east. It then turns west-southwest past the Ogasawara Shinto (the Bonin Islands) and then down to Guam and Yap, west to Taiwan and then returns north-northeast back to Japan, near the measuring point of Nojima Zaki on the Bay of Tokyo. - Charles Berlitz, describing the location of the Dragon's Triangle. With his 1989 book The Dragon's Triangle, acclaimed linguist and author Charles Berlitz seeks to present a definitive guide to the Dragon Triangle. He begins by describing the area in general terms and noting some of the strange phenomena found there: mysterious lights, unexplained disappearances, sudden fogs and storms, and so forth. He makes the inevitable comparison to the Bermuda Triangle off the coast of Florida, a theme to which he returns throughout the book. The two areas are on opposite sides of the Earth in both longitude and latitude, and both are located on the eastern edges of continental shelves, where the ocean floor drops off into deep trenches where strong currents sweep over actively volcanic areas...

A new examination in to the mysterious disappearance of two planes over the Bermuda Triangle in the 1940"s has suggested that one aircraft crashed due to technical failures while thesecond would have run out of fuel."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 areaof ocean with imaginary points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. "

View: Full Article | Source: BBCNews

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 points in Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico. But journalist Tom Mangold's new examination for the BBC 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 have 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.

To view the rest of this article, please visit the source

[img]fpiconarticle.gif[/img] [url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8248334.stm"]Source

The Bermuda Triangle is a region that is infamous for the mysterious disappearances of boats and planes with people never being seen or heard from again. In a story revealed this week a couple from Manchester have described how they became stranded at sea in the region when their boat"s rudder broke, leaving them stranded for 40 days until finallybeing rescued."A man from Greater Manchester has spoken about being rescued near the Bermuda Triangle after being lost at sea for 40 days.

Stuart Armstrong, 51, from Stockport and his partner Andrea Davison, 48, from Newcastle, got into difficulty when their yacht"s rudder broke. The couple had set off from the Cape VerdeIslands and were 1,200 miles from their destination in Antigua. "

View: Full Article | Source: BBCNews