The Bermuda Triangle: Beneath the Waves

Somewhere in these waters lies the answer

to one of the world's most beguiling mysteries

in an area of sea that has claimed hundreds of lives.

Over the last century a thousand ships have been reported lost

without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle.

Using state-of-the-art technology, we're going to unlock

one of the ocean's deepest secrets.

Can science prove if a recently discovered natural phenomenon

could be dragging ships down to a watery grave?

We will reopen the investigation

into the Triangle's oldest myth -

the doomed Flight 19,

a routine mission interrupted, but by what?

We'll reveal a new mystery that was unexplained...

Holy cow!

Here the truth can be far stranger than fiction.

There are powerful - some would say evil - forces at work here.

Since 1492, when Columbus first sailed into the area

and saw strange lights in the sky,

the list of bizarre disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle has grown.

Thousands of ships and planes have simply vanished without a trace -

no warning, no distress calls, no wreckage.

The Triangle covers the seas between Bermuda

to Miami, down to Puerto Rico.

One and a half million square miles of treacherous water.

Hurricanes, intense storms and rough seas are the main killers

out here. The weather can change from benign to deadly in minutes.

According to the coastguard, around 120 boats vanish each year

without a trace.

It is these unexplained disappearances

that keep the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle alive.

Richard Weiner has written

many best-sellers about bizarre forces at work in the Triangle.

We don't know our own planet.

We know more about the moon,

we're probably learning more about Mars than our own planet.

We don't know about the sea.

The boat yards of Key West echo with stories

of those who never came back.

In 1898, Joshua Slocombe was the world's most famous sailor.

He was the first man to sail solo across the world in his boat.

Yet in 1909, this man who had defied pirates and hurricanes

sailed into the Bermuda Triangle and was never seen again.

For years, stories of giant sea monsters, cosmic time warps,

spinning compasses and holes in the ocean that swallowed ships

have echoed throughout the world.

The disappearances continue.

There's some kind of anomaly going on down there

that we can't explain. Something that goes on

down far, far below the last rays of sunlight.

There's something going on down there.

If Richard Weiner is right, you'd have to be brave

or foolish to dive into the Bermuda Triangle.

Graham Hawkes, explorer and submersible designer,

intends to do just that.

We have all these mysteries in the Bermuda Triangle

and they exist because here's the surface of the ocean,

the light bounces off, a ship sinks through that and it's gone.

We don't know where it's gone.

What we can do is peel the lid off that and go down and look.

They're all there.

Graham has come to Miami to put his new machine to the test.

One of the things we can do with this sub

is to move relatively fast.

Launched from an inflatable cradle,

the sub is a revolutionary design that works like a jet fighter.

OK, clear to go. Let's go.

It is one of the fastest submersibles in the world,

and at full speed it can reach a depth of 150 feet in four seconds.

Graham believes that answers to the Triangle's myths

are down here somewhere.

These wrecks look so ominous in this low visibility.

Down here is perhaps the answer to the greatest of all mysteries -

the strange disappearance of Flight 19.

Six months after the end of World War II,

Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale on the east coast of Florida

was still busy.

The 14 members of routine training Flight 19

had just departed on their final qualifying flight over water.

In charge was an experienced pilot, Lieutenant Charles Taylor.

The flight would take them east, to the Bahamas, and then back again

in just over two and a half hours.

What follows is based entirely on the original radio transcripts.

FT-28 to Bossy.

You're taking us off the assigned navigational course.

Negative. According to my compass I'm on the correct course.

You're not on the planned route.

I'll assume leading correct air position. Over.

Roger, Lieutenant.

Powers, this is not making much sense.

How long have we been in the air?

We've been airborne 1 hour and 45 minutes.

We should be seeing land by now. There's nothing out there.

Maybe we're flying too far east.

Fort Lauderdale, this is Fox Tear 28. We seem to be off course.

We cannot see land. Can you give us a fix? Over.

Command control to control tower.

'I got a call on the intercom

'or the squat box, as we used to call them.'

Control tower called me and said,

"We've got a flight in trouble".

RADIO PLAYS

Roger that. Over.

So what exactly is going on out there?

Sir.

Fox Tear 28, Fort Lauderdale. What is your current position? Over.

'Fort Lauderdale tower.

'We are unable to confirm our current position.'

FT-28, FT-28, you need to head due west. Due west. Do you read?

'Roger that.

'We don't know which way is west.'

Everything is wrong.

DON POOLE: 'I don't know what they all thought.

'I know I was very concerned'

and getting more concerned as time passed.

I soon realised that flight was in real trouble.

60 years later the file on Flight 19 is about to be reopened.

Phil Giles is one of the UK's leading air accident investigators.

Advancements in aviation theory will help him determine what happened, where and why.

It's fascinating that you can still look at something

which happened that long ago and put a new light on it.

You can probably read things in the evidence

which an inquiry would not read.

To cut into that is quite rewarding.

A few miles south of Fort Lauderdale

at Port Everglades Communication Centre,

radioman second class Melvin Baker

began to pick up signals that a flight was in trouble.

'This is Fort Lauderdale. Can you now confirm your position?'

Fort Lauderdale, this is FT-28.

We now have land in sight.

The winds have blown us over the Florida Keys. I'm not sure how far.

'I'm not sure how to get to Fort Lauderdale from my current position.'

'If you're in the Keys put the sun on your port wing

'and fly north up the coast until you get to Miami.

'Fort Lauderdale is 20 miles on.'

Roger that.

They can't be over the Keys.

The winds are coming from the southwest. Hand me the mic.

Thank you.

This is Port Everglades, Fox Tear 28. How do you read me? Over.

This is Fox Tear 28. Reading you loud and clear.

This is Baker here, sir.

By my reckoning I don't think you could be over the Keys.

STATIC ON RADIO

FT-28, do you read me?

STATIC AND FEEDBACK ON RADIO

'FT-28,'

this is Commander Poole. Do you read me?

STATIC ON RADIO

'The personnel in the tower and myself just got pretty quiet'

because of the hopeless feeling that there was nothing you could do.

Tried everything.

Hang on.

How much flying time do they have left?

Enough fuel to fly until 20.00 hours.

This gives us three hours to get them back.

Flight 19 had been airborne for over two hours.

According to the original plan,

they would have been on the second section, having turned north

over a small island Cistern Cay.

Instead, they were over empty ocean.

At this point, three hours into the flight,

the weather was deteriorating. Taylor had been given

all the right directions to get home, but remained unconvinced.

The rest of the flight were becoming increasingly concerned.

Taylor, if your compass doesn't work, maybe one of us should lead?

-'Negative.

-Lieutenant Taylor, Sir?'

Should we go west? My instruments are working.

-'Do you want me to take the lead, Sir?'

-Maintain your position. Over.

At 5.20pm, radio man Baker began to realise that Flight 19

were closer to home than they thought.

MUDDLED RADIO SIGNAL If I just turn down the power.

-'We don't seem to be getting very far.'

-FT28, this is Port Everglades.

-How do you read me? Over.

-'This is FT28 reading you clearly.'

I estimate that if you fly south west it should bring you toward me.

As I turn down the power, if I can still hear you, it means you're flying toward me.

'Roger.'

He's definitely not over the Gulf.

If he was, we wouldn't hear him so clearly. He's got to be closer.

FT28 to Port Everglades. If I am so close, I should be able to see land.

You might not sight land if you're parallel to us or...

Sir, please. You have enough fuel to reach us. Just keep flying toward me.

Baker. I don't think this is the right direction.

-Fort Lauderdale. Do you have a fix yet?

-'Your transmission is fading.

'What is your bearing? Over.'

FT28. This is Port Everglades. You have enough fuel to reach us.

-Do you read me?

-'Fort Lauderdale. Do you have a fix yet?'

I'm turning down the volume and I can still hear them. They must be flying toward me!

Why are they ignoring me?

Should we fly 270 degrees until we hit the beach and run out of gas?

Taylor? 'Taylor, do you read?'

We didn't fly far enough east before we turned. How long have we been going in this direction?

Where in the hell are we?

OK, guys.

'When the first man gets down to ten gallons of gas, we'll all ditch in the water.

'Does everyone understand that?'

Radio man Baker was the last one to hear anything.

MIXED RADIO SIGNALS

FT28. This is Port Everglades. Do you read me? Over.

Their weakening radio signals meant they were heading out to sea.

This is Port Everglades. FT28. Do you read me? Over.

FT28, do you read me? Over.

(Oh, come on!)

Nothing was ever heard from them again.

The final twist to the mystery that night came when a Martin Mariner rescue plane went to look for them.

27 minutes later, it too vanished into thin air.

Solving the Bermuda Triangle's

iconic myth will take all Phil's experience.

But there's one mystery he can clear up immediately.

We don't know which way is west. Everything is wrong.

One thing Taylor said early on was that his compasses failed.

On most aircraft like this you have three different compasses.

One of them may have failed.

But he'd have had two others and there were 15 compasses in the whole formation.

So compass failure is very unlikely.

So compass failure was not the cause.

Phil also believes there is a straightforward reason why no trace of the flight was ever found.

It may also explain why so many others disappear without a trace.

The answer lies in Miami.

This is the 7th District Miami coastguard HQ.

The largest and busiest in the world.

Phil wants to know how it's possible Flight 19 could have disappeared without a trace.

Why no bodies and no wreckage were ever found.

Were they looking in the wrong place? Or was there something else?

Commander Bozano may have the answers.

-If you take it back to 1945.

-Yes.

-We had no technology.

-Right.

Probably 200 miles offshore. You had a rough sea.

-Rain showers. Completely overcast.

-Difficult.

-Any chance of finding...

Yes. To give you some perspective - today, even if we search perfectly

in the most benign weather conditions -

flat seas, no wind, perfect search conditions,

our best percentage of finding someone - what we call probability of detection - is 78%.

The coastguard have devised a potentially dangerous exercise

to demonstrate how difficult it is to find anyone or anything at sea.

Conditions today are pretty much ideal.

Light winds. Seas are two feet or less.

Excellent visibility.

A second helicopter will drop an experienced swimmer in the water.

In a few minutes they'll see if they can find him again.

We'll go about 200 yards to his left.

And then we'll go and see how close we have to be to actually find him.

We're going down. Going down!

Ah!

Help!

'Those aircraft were sunk very quickly.'

If you don't look in the first hour of them being reported lost,

and having an asset on-scene, you're looking for persons in the water.

It's very difficult to see something as small as a person.

Think about a basketball. You're looking for something that size - their head sticking out of the water.

If you don't know exactly where the person is - it's not impossible,

but it's extremely difficult to find someone. Especially at night.

The Gulf Stream runs between Grand Bahama Island and the Florida coast.

Sometimes that's a six-knot current. That's six nautical miles per hour.

So every hour, that piece of water that someone's stuck in moves six miles. Every hour.

You can imagine after 12 hours how quickly it moves up - 80 miles or so.

With only 30 minutes of fuel left

and the swimmer pulled more north every minute, the pressure's on.

But at least they know roughly where he is.

We've got something at 11 o'clock, keep it turning.

Keep it turning. Turn in.

Coming up at 12 o'clock. Roll out.

You can see all the white caps breaking around him. Makes him really hard to see.

HEARTBEAT You can barely see the man like this.

And he's wearing an orange suit with a big old snorkel on top.

You need to fly right over the top to be able to see him.

At night it'd be almost impossible to see him unless you had an extremely bright moon on flat seas.

Hold. Right.

Turn to the front of the basket.

The swimmer is approaching the cabin door. Prepare the cabin door.

Swimmer coming inside the cabin.

A successful recovery.

But back in 1945, the weather was bad.

For six days the largest air-sea rescue since the war searched.

Nothing was ever found.

I'm not surprised they disappeared without a trace.

'That does happen occasionally - the people we look for, sometimes we don't find anybody, even to this day.

'But if the weather conditions were so bad,'

there'd be very little evidence of any debris or oil slick on the water's surface - even after an hour.

So even today, the chances of finding anyone alive

or any evidence of Flight 19 would be slim.

But it's not enough to explain why the flight went so badly wrong.

Phil is convinced there is something else.

Under the stern you can see the props in the gloom.

Four miles out to see, Graham has found a strange wreck.

-It's not clear how she got here.

-Then coming up,

take a look at the top of the bow.

Many who know these waters believe they are the world's most dangerous.

But how did they get such a fearsome reputation?

Things still happen in the Triangle today. We don't hear about 'em.

At least once a week, maybe twice,

some Bahamian fisherman never comes back from fishing. Just disappears.

It's so commonplace out there that they don't make a big issue of it.

Sailors talk of massive freak waves

appearing as if from nowhere and hammering ships into oblivion.

Could this bizarre but real phenomenon account for one of the most baffling ship disappearances?

The Marine Sulphur Queen, a 500ft cargo ship was in good order

when she left Texas for Virginia.

SHIP'S HORN BLASTS

Early on February 4th, 1963, she sent a routine radio message from 270 miles west of the Keys.

A few hours later, the Sulphur Queen and her 39 crew were never seen again.

There is another old mariners' tale that describes the sea literally opening up and swallowing ships.

Could there be any truth in this?

The first clue emerged in 1985 when cameras captured these extraordinary pictures.

An oil platform in the North Sea punctured a vast gas pocket beneath the sea floor and very nearly sunk.

Gas deposits like this exist all around the coastlines of the world

and the Bermuda Triangle is no exception.

Trapped in the sediment, the methane gas is highly volatile.

An undersea earthquake or landslide

could release the gas into the waters above.

Could gas bubbles really create a hole in the ocean?

Naval physicist, Professor Bruce Denardo has come to Florida to find out.

We have a rough idea - I need to refine the third - what it's going to take to sink that boat.

I'm real excited. I think we'll be able to do it.

Bruce is going to try and sink this boat in the ocean off this beach

in order to see if ships like these can sink in a mass of gas bubbles.

Up until now, it's all been theory.

The experiment is large-scale and will be the first of its kind.

Bruce is going to be helped on the practical side by Hollywood special effects designer Phil Beck.

I'm 50-50 on it. The theory seems right to me, but, I don't know.

It's a lot of bubbles.

No-one has ever attempted an experiment like this before.

The aim's to recreate a small-scale methane gas eruption similar to the one in the North Sea.

So they are building a large lattice of pipes which will then be sunk onto the sea floor.

They'll then pump in a vast amount of air, which behaves like methane, into the lattice.

The air will be forced out through small holes into the water above.

My experience in the laboratory

is it takes a lot more bubbles than you'd think to sink something.

I don't know what's going to happen. We'll just have to wait and see.

By mid-afternoon, the divers have lowered the lattice to the sea bed.

The plan is to blow a mass of air

into the sea above and try and create a hole in the water.

With the pipes connected they're now ready to start the experiment.

Turn 'em on. Yeah!

Come on.

The boat's bobbing up and down, but there's a definite loss of buoyancy.

With 25% air in the water, the boat should've sunk.

-But there is something they haven't anticipated.

-It's not dropping much.

The bubbles lower the density and makes it sink.

But the upward force due to the flow of the water's keeping the boat up. The two roughly cancel each other.

There is a neutralising effect in the centre of the bubble field.

So the sinking zone must be just outside the centre.

Time's running out and there's only one more thing Bruce can try.

If it's a little bit off-centre, it's much better. There the flow doesn't push the boat up, but out.

You saw the boat, it dropped. The buoyancy clearly reduced there.

See that? Instant drop.

-Here we go. Is it going?

-Yeah. The front's more buoyant than the back.

Lookin' good.

If you're in a 500-foot boat and 200 feet hit one of these and the back 300 feet didn't,

your boat would snap in half and sink instantly.

The front is lifting and the stern is dropping because the front is in more dense water than the stern.

30 seconds, she's gone.

-It's lookin' real good.

-Nope, she's gone, she's gone.

-That's it. Bye-bye!

Bye-bye.

They've done it. A gas eruption in the ocean

really could sink a boat.

What hits me is how utterly minor what we did compared to what nature can do.

We went through all this trouble to make bubbles to sink a little boat.

It makes you appreciate a lot more what nature can do.

In the Triangle, gas hydrate deposits amount to

over 70 times the gas used by the entire USA in a single year.

That's enough to sink a whole fleet of freighters.

The chances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time are slim, but possible.

So it seems there is truth in the old mariners' tales.

Some of the more bizarre disappearances are turning out to have very real explanations.

In 1991, Graham Hawks stumbled onto a mystery himself.

At first he thought he'd found the remains of Flight 19.

We were searching for Spanish galleons.

We came across one Avenger and thought nothing of it, just logged it.

We came across another Avenger, logged it.

A group of explorers believed they've found five American war planes...

-The story hit the headlines. Had they found Flight 19?

-Shocked and surprised.

We just didn't expect to find a fifth. It fit too closely with Flight 19.

He promised the media an answer within two weeks.

After studying the grainy images taken by an old camera lowered over the side,

the team concluded that these aircraft were probably not from Flight 19. But who were they?

The answer would turn out to be just as strange.

If that wasn't Flight 19, you mean to tell me there's another five Avengers linked up here?

I'd like nice easy answers. To me it's much easier that this is the five, of course it's the five.

Here they are, there's no mystery here. Here they are.

It's much more untidy if it isn't Flight 19 and we have to find out what they are.

Graham Hawks is going to return to the phantom five and using a new submersible,

he's going to go down there himself and find out once and for all who they are.

12 miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, a state-of-the-art scientific research vessel,

is also going to join the hunt for the lost Avengers.

It's a very big ocean out here and to find a group of five together like that,

that's the question - what are they doing there?

There's something about coming back in person.

You find things with remote technology and it leaves this itch.

This time we have this sealink submersible, so this time we get to almost touch and smell them.

I think we'll have a much better chance of finding out who they are.

Graham has waited 12 years for this moment.

-Good morning.

-Good morning.

Let's go see some airplanes.

It will take 15 minutes to reach the sea bed,

734 feet below the ship.

In the back of the submersible, is Harold Larkin, an expert on Avenger design.

The trip is deeply personal to Harold because not only did he fly Avengers,

but one of his relatives was on Flight 19 when it disappeared.

-OK, Craig, your lines are free, you have permission to dive.

-Roger, I got 200 yards, 310.

This submersible can take Graham deeper and is perfect for detailed forensic work.

The object of the mission is to find each wreck's unique code

called the bureau number.

This is the only way to make a definite identification.

SONAR SIGNAL BEEPS

-I love that sound.

-Yeah.

-Yes.

-The sonar signal is getting stronger.

Target's holding up, still there.

'We have contact on sonar.

'A large contact and we're moving in on it.'

The chances of five planes being as close together, are the same as

getting a hole in one and being struck by lightning while having a winning lottery ticket.

They'd have to go in at the same speed and time

or the currents would have spread them further than this, even if they were all from the same flight.

-So whatever happened, happened all at once for these five planes.

-Wow!

Huh!

But there is no record in the naval archives

of another flight of five Avengers going down at the same time in the same place.

The mystery deepens.

Could you give us a status update?

We have a plane in sight.

-FT twenty...

-Could be an eight or a three.

-It looks... Yeah.

-It's more like a three.

Yeah.

OK. Busted off tail's gone.

The fuselage is sheared off just after the trailing edge of the wing.

We may never find it.

The fuselage number FT23,

means it came out of Fort Lauderdale.

But it's not enough to identify the aircraft.

When an Avenger was lost, the same number was often re-used on its replacement.

With no tail, there's no bureau number.

The wing flaps are down, which means the plane ditched but why may never be known.

OK.

OK. We need to move on.

I hate to give up on this.

It seems the Bermuda Triangle doesn't want to give up its secrets so easily.

Phil is now ready to investigate why Flight 19 went wrong.

The problem with looking back at something in the past like this,

is you can never ask that extra question.

So you have to deal with the evidence available.

The one thing that isn't covered in detail,

is one of the most significant causal factors in the flight being lost.

That is the human factors.

It wasn't normal at that time to look in any detail into human factors.

Each year around 30 light aircraft go missing within the triangle.

Carol Collins, an experienced instructor,

is helping Phil get into the mindset of a pilot in difficulty in this area.

OK, we're level at 1,500 feet.

When you're flying over an area that has no visual landmarks,

it's very easy to lose your sense of motion.

For instance, if we started out on a heading of east,

made a turn to the west as we did

and then turn south... If you're making turns and not being very cognizant of what you're doing,

you'll find yourself in another direction than you thought you were.

One of the unique navigational hazards in the Bermuda Triangle,

is becoming more obvious to Phil from the air.

When you're looking at strings of islands, if there's no houses or anything to identify them,

one island can look like another as you'll see as we come around and go up here.

Right now we're in good shape because we can look back and see there's the highway.

But if we couldn't see that, one of these islands would look so much like another.

In times of poor visibility, that's a serious issue.

So getting lost does happen.

We must be over the southern gulf. That's the gulf, don't you think?

The gulf negative. We've gone too far east.

I suggest we fly west until we run out of gas. We have a better chance of being picked up close to shore.

I don't know, we didn't even see the shore.

Just watch the gas, man.

Back on the ground Phil can now piece together what happened to Flight 19, where and why.

Flight 19 was going on navigation -

plan one, they called it.

It was a triangle. It started at Fort Lauderdale naval air station.

They fly an easterly track from there to Hen And Chickens islands,

where they'd do 20 minutes' low level bombing practice.

The next leg was on to a track passing over Grand Bahama, to Great Sale Cay,

up in the north of the island.

Then return to Fort Lauderdale.

At what point in the training leg do you think they went wrong?

After the bombing run at Hen And Chickens.

The winds were stronger than anticipated that day,

pushing them north-east from their intended trek.

They overshot the turn north at Cistern Cay,

and made the turn at Great Abaco Island.

If they had been on course, they'd have seen Grand Bahama in front of them.

If he'd been on track, he'd have expected to see Great Bahama lying across his track.

But what he's actually seeing

is land parallel to his track.

So he may think, "Hang on, my compass says north, but the land is to my right.

"Therefore, my compass reads wrong."

They've carried on till they've got to the northern part of the island.

Then they've seen this small run of islands going in a north-westerly direction.

They've followed that when they're saying, "We're over the Keys."

The winds blew us over the Florida Keys. I'm not sure how far down.

I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale from my current position.

It was at this point Commander Poole became concerned.

Taylor was flying over a string of islands north of Great Abaco.

He mistook them for the similar looking islands at the Florida Keys, over 200 miles away.

This error means Taylor thought he was over the Gulf of Mexico, on the opposite side of Florida.

All the headings he flies thereafter are taken on the premise that he is over here, in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not here, in the north Atlantic.

They are virtually opposite to the headings you'd need to fly.

He's actually trying to get back to mainland Florida,

and flying further out to sea.

Yes. He's heading for the wrong part of the coast.

I can't see nothing in this.

'Taylor, are you OK?'

'The first magazine, ten gallons of gas will land in the water together.'

'Everyone check their Mae Wests.'

We're out of gas.

We're going down. We're coming down!

Aargh!

At 734 feet down, Graham Hawkes has found the fifth and final wreck.

-There we go.

-We got it.

Will this ghostly Avenger be able to tell them its story?

FT-87.

Well, the good news is that the canopy is back.

It means the crew probably got out.

-Can we go and take a good look at the tail section?

-Yeah.

See if we can find anything there.

The wreck is in good condition, but like the others, it has no tail fin.

They're beginning to think the phantom five

don't want to be identified.

We want to show you something.

This may be the vertical rudder.

-In front of us now.

-Where?

Underneath, there's a wing coming into view now. The left wing.

-In the middle of what?

-In the middle of the screen.

I can see something out the porthole.

Holy cow.

-That's the bureau number.

-This is the difference between human eyes and a camera.

At last, NAV 23990.

It's the bureau number - unique to each aircraft, it will tell Graham how it came to be.

HE LAUGHS

With their mission accomplished, they head back to the surface.

While Florida celebrates July 4th,

Graham's stuck in naval accident reports.

It's the moment he's waited for for 12 years.

NAV 23990 - lost at sea.

On 9th October 1943, FT-87, piloted by Ensign George Swint,

was returning to Fort Lauderdale from a bombing run.

On board were Airmen Second Class Sam Treese and J Lewulis.

At precisely 12.20pm, the engine suffered a catastrophic loss of fuel and ditched.

Swint and his crew survived.

FT-87, lost for 60 years.

Graham now knows how she got here.

Of the remaining four wrecks, one is missing its whole tail section.

There is only one accident report from August 1944

showing a fatal mid-air collision where the tail was destroyed.

Could this be the final resting place of Pilot John Barry

and Airmen Third Class Joe Market and Fred Burns?

For Graham, it's the scenario he least expected.

Despite the odds, they are just a random collection of accidents

that came to rest in the same place, 12 miles from home.

Based on the information, Phil can make an accurate guess

at where Flight 19 ditched.

The various ATDF stations produced a very good fix at 5.50.

It's in the north Atlantic, 100 miles off Daytona Beach. Nowhere near the Gulf of Mexico.

By the time the tower got the fix, Flight 19 was already out of range.

Ironically, that fix put them only 25 minutes from Daytona Beach.

At that stage, they were still going west towards home.

At 7.15, they were overheard discussing turning east.

At 7.45, they would have had enough fuel to continue for another 15 minutes,

which means they probably ditched here...

about 220 miles east of Daytona Beach.

We now know what happened to the flight.

The question is, why did an experienced pilot like Taylor not realise this gross error?

What was going on in his mind?

He established the mindset fairly early on, after he had realised he wasn't on the correct track,

that he was in the Keys at Florida.

Phil thinks that as conditions deteriorated, Taylor had a mental breakdown, a tunnel vision,

that made him blind to the options.

I don't think you're over the Keys. You can't have been blown there.

Today, this condition is known as spatial disorientation.

It's considered to be one of the most dangerous threats to a pilot.

There was no shaking it.

This is not an unusual phenomenon.

People decide on something and then, with the stress of the occasion,

they will stick with that initial concept, because in their mind, it's very real.

Once he had this mindset, it would stay forever.

No-one would jolt him out of it.

This is why Taylor insisted his compass didn't work.

We don't know which way is west.

Everything is wrong.

But what about the rescue plane that also disappeared?

Martin Mariners were called "flying gas tanks". Several had exploded in midair due to a spark.

A few days into the search, a report from a ship

claimed an explosion had been seen in the sky at the time the Mariner vanished.

Right, men. It's 20.00.

'I felt hopeless, because there was nothing else you could do.'

The worst night I ever had in my life.

After 60 years, what happened to Flight 19 is now clear.

Like so many mysteries, there is always a rational explanation available...

if you choose to believe it.

People love a mystery.

They want one. No matter what it is, they want the mystery.

Which is why the Bermuda Triangle will remain the most romantic

of the ocean's great myths.