As a matter of argument we are quick to add that we have long tested the strengths of the magnetic field.

An explanation for some of the disappearances has focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates (a form of natural gas) on the continental shelves. The bathypelagic zone includes most of the deepest waters, reaching more than 13,000 feet down, while the mesopelagic extends roughly from 3,000 feet upward to 700 or so feet below the surface. It has been our experience that the combined forces of nature and the unpredictability of mankind outdo even the most far fetched science fiction many times each year.One plane crash was said to have taken place in 1937, off Daytona Beach, Florida, in front of hundreds of witnesses.

In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and, like a river, it can and does carry floating objects. When they took off that day they were one man short: the radioman in Gerber’s plane, FT-81, failed to show up, leaving him with only his gunner, Billy Lightfoot.

Large ships have included the 504-foot tanker Marine Sulphur Queen, the 520-foot Poet, and the 590-foot Sylvia L. The Bermuda Triangle (1973), a paranormal book by Charles Berlitz, looks at the unexplained phenomena involving this area of the Western Atlantic and puts forward possible explanations for the disappearances. For even now in the opening decade of the twenty-first century, we look beneath us to our past accomplishments rather than up to gaze at this vast and final horizon, where the secrets of the very force fields that hold this planet together remain more unknown to us than was the germ before Pasteur. Large continent maps show the origin of 150 weird and wonderful breeds like the Greenland Dog with wicked sledging skills. Followers of the purported psychic Edgar Cayce take his prediction that evidence of Atlantis would be found in 1968, as referring to the discovery of the Bimini Road.

It would take them no farther from base than 123 miles east over the Bahamas, less than an hour’s distance at their cruising speed of 140 mph, in case an emergency required them to fly straight back to the coast. Carefully sifting through these accident reports brings to light a pattern interwoven with tragedy and mystery.

A whole squadron of five Navy torpedo bombers, the famous Flight 19, vanished on a routine training flight off Florida on December 5, 1945, after the flight leader radioed, among other things, that both his compasses were no longer working. Even before it was named, the Bermuda Triangle--roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico--had gained a mythic reputation. For instance, between 1964 (the oldest dates for the Brief records) and 1974 thirty-seven planes vanished.