The Bermuda Triangle Mystery, Solved -- Again

 In recent days I have come across a series of articles in various newspapers letting us know that an Australian author, Karl Kurszelnicki, has solved the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. He began his research in 2017 and has concluded that, based on his research the incidents attributed to the Bermuda Triangle are not anomalous but simply the result of probabilities, navigational challenges, natural hazards, weather, and human error.

Well, color me surprised. I had no idea.

First, a little personal background. I was introduced to the concept of the Bermuda Triangle in a book, This Baffling World by John Godwin, published in 1968. He had a chapter entitled, “The Hoodoo Sea,” which was about the Bermuda Triangle. It wasn’t a very comprehensive analysis and incorporated shipwrecks that were nowhere near the Triangle.

In 1974, I attended a UFO conference in Denver, Colorado. Jim Lorenzen was there and he spoke about the Bermuda Triangle, noting that five Navy Avenger Torpedo Bombers, on a training mission and flying in formation, all disappeared at once. His question was how do five aircraft, flying in formation, just disappear without a trace. (Hint: Based on the official documentation, they did it on order from the flight leader.) And a rescue aircraft, sent out in search of those torpedo planes, also disappeared, without a trace. (It was seen to explode not long after take-off.)

In fact, I blogged about the idea that the Bermuda Triangle was solved years ago. You can read it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-bermuda-triangle-new-programming.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/06/editorial-comment.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-bermuda-triangle-flight-19-and-josh.html

I had always thought the best way to defeat the skeptical arguments, was to read their arguments and analyze their research. That’s why I picked up a copy of Lawrence David Kusche’s The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved published in October 1975. That book answered the questions about those disappearances and provided the source material. Some of those original sources explained what exactly what had happened, but later writers simply repeated what others had written without following all the information to its original source. Kusche did that and came up with the answers and this is why I sometimes chase footnotes.

I was in a unique position to answer one of the Triangle disappearances. I was the group intelligence officer of the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group, which was a subordinate unit to the 440^th Tactical Airlift Wing, which was based in Milwaukee. In June 1965, a C-119 from the 440^th disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle and is listed in those various books and articles about the Triangle. I covered this in depth several years ago. You can read it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2006/09/disappearing-aircraft-part-3-bermuda.html

Here’s the point. The answers to the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle have been around for decades. I covered some of it myself with my connections to the 440^th. As I noted, while I was attending a staff conference in Milwaukee, they even showed me parts of the recovered wreckage. For some reason I didn’t bother to photograph the wreckage but some of it was clearly labeled with the aircraft number. It didn’t disappear without a trace. It crashed into the ocean.

C-119 cargo plane like that crashed in the Bermuda Trianglw.
Picture courtesy 440th Tactical Airlift Wing.

Too often, reporters simply don’t have time to do the proper research with daily deadlines pressing them for the constantly shifting stories. Book authors do have the time, but their personal bias often get in the way. I communicated with Charles Berlitz about his book about the Bermuda Triangle. It was clear from his response that he wasn’t interested in answers. He was interested in spreading the mystery with half-baked research and ignored fact.

I had a confrontation with an author about a book he’d published on another topic. I noted some of the errors in the books and provided the sources for verification. He wasn’t overly interested, saying, “I have a book to protect.”

Peter Robbins, on the other hand, learned the truth about his book written in collaboration with Larry Warren, Left at East Gate, announced that his book was filled with inaccurate information, largely supplied by a single, unreliable source. On learning the truth, and to his credit, Peter provided a retraction for the book and gave the reasons for it. You can read about that here:

http://www.kgraradio.com/peter-robbins-deception-a-review-and-critical-analysis-of-the-book-encounter-in-rendlesham-forest/

Peter Robbins at a MUFON Symposium.
Photo by Kevin Randle.

The real take away here is that another author, Kurszelnicki, made an independent study of the Triangle and came to the same conclusions that many of us did decades ago and yet we are still bombarded with TV documentaries suggesting there is something to this “mystery.”

A final note on this. A few years back, after one of those Triangle documentaries, I talked with some of the men in Florida who have doing in depth research on that very subject. What they told me is quite interesting and I did interview them on the A Different Perspective radio show/podcast. You can listen to it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Flight+19#google_vignette

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/05/flight-19-last-post-probably.html

I find nothing mysterious about the alleged Bermuda Triangle. I do watch out for material about it because I hope they find the five Navy aircraft at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, so that we can put that mystery to rest. That should mark the end of the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle but I fear until that happens, we are going to have more half-baked theories about this manufactured mystery.