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.

The Bermuda Triangle Solved - Again, for the Fourth Time

No matter how many times I post about the Bermuda Triangle and the true explanation for it, someone comes up the scientific find that will explain it all. The latest was an article by Ryan Unger in an article entitled “Scientists Find Evidence that May Finally Explain the Bermuda Triangle.”

My response?

Seriously?

As those of you who visit here on a regular basis know, I have explained, repeatedly, that the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery. That means that those who have written about or investigated the Triangle have overlooked the evidence, misrepresented the case or just repeated what others have written about it. They haven’t gone to the original sources to learn the truth, just repeated whatever

C-119

seemed to support their belief structure.

As I have mentioned, I was, at one time, a member of the 440^th Tactical Airlift Wing which lost a plane in the Triangle. Before you all go searching the Internet about this, I was in a subordinate unit, the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group. While visiting the Wing Headquarters, I asked about the loss of the plane, and was told that it had crashed. They had some of the wreckage from it. That means, of course, it didn’t vanish without a trace, only that it crashed. You can read the longer article here:

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

Anyway, this latest “explanation,” was that Rogue Waves were the culprit in pulling down the ships. It is a very plausible explanation, given that the waves can be 100 feet high and can swamp a ship in seconds. There would be no chance for a distress call and if the ship turned turtle, meaning capsized, it would sink nearly intact.

The problem here is that Unger mentioned the loss of Flight 19. A Rogue Wave would not take down an aircraft. They just aren’t tall enough to do that. Although Unger mentioned Flight 19, he didn’t say a word about the impossibility of a wave knocking an aircraft out of the sky. There are some interesting ideas about what happened to Flight 19 and I did explore those on my radio show/podcast. You can listen to those interviews here.

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/27935137

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/27935137

My real point is that Unger didn’t address the problem with aircraft and he didn’t really write about anything that hasn’t been suggested before. This seemed to be click bait, which worked on me until I got tired of the story moving into arenas that has nothing to do with the Bermuda Triangle. Just be glad that you didn’t have to click through 40 pages of three sentence text and 9 million ads to learn nothing new. I did that for you.

Flight 19: The Last Post (Probably)

This is what I hope is the last posting on this aspect of the loss of Flight 19. To recap briefly, John Steiger sent a link to a headstone for George Paonessa, a Marine sergeant who was lost with the flight. In wondered why there was a grave for him at Arlington National Cemetery and if that meant a body had been recovered. Information sent by Arlington said that those lost at sea, lost in combat or who were buried at sea were sometimes honored by a headstone in a special section of Arlington. The request, according to the information had to come from a family member, and I learned that such was the case of Paonessa.

However, there was other information presented that suggested that he had survived the disaster. This included a telegram, allegedly sent by Paonessa to his brother several weeks after he had been declared lost. Douglas Westfall thought that this was good evidence that Flight 19 hadn’t disappeared completely, and on the radio show/podcast A Different Perspective made a case for this. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/25933762

A week later, I spoke with Andy Marocco who believed he knew where Flight 19 had disappeared, some thirty or forty miles outside the Bermuda Triangle. I asked, specifically, about the telegram, but he said that it was a hoax. His reasoning was that it hadn’t entered the public arena until twenty or thirty years after the loss. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/26397002

Doug Westfall believed that George Paonessa had made his way to California and became a contractor. It was his theory that Paonessa could operate out in the open

Douglas Westfall

because President Truman had pardoned those who had deserted after the conclusion of World War II. The theory behind the pardon was that they had served honorably, but with the war over, there was no need for them to remain on active duty. President Carter pardoned those who had fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War, so the idea wasn’t unprecedented.

This George Paonessa, that Doug mentioned, had died in either the 1960s or the 1970s. I was unable to find either a headstone or an obituary for him, which might have mentioned family and allowing us to verify the connection to Flight 19.

Andy Marocco said that he had actually visited the cemetery where that George Paonessa was buried. There was nothing there to connect him to the lost flight or to the family living in New York, home of the original George Paonessa.

I did contact one of the family members, which was how I learned about the request for the headstone at Arlington. In that same email, he mentioned the

Andy Marocco

telegram, so I asked about this. My thinking was that if George had contacted the family in the weeks following the loss, then he certainly would have been in touch with them in the years that followed. There would be no reason for him to avoid the family if he was operating a business under his own name in California and no one was looking for him for desertion.

The answer was that the telegram was the last that anyone heard from him… if it had been him. In the world today, with everyone who had violated a law, if anyone had actually violated a law, beyond prosecution, there is no reason to maintain the fiction that George Paonessa had perished in 1945, if he had, in fact survived. In other words, they would be able to confirm that he had survived if he had. There is no family history to suggest he did. The telegram, even though it mentioned his family nickname, is a cruel hoax.

Here’s where we are, according to what I have learned. All members of Flight 19 were lost on December 5, 1945. The best evidence is that the flight stuck together, just as the Flight Leader said for them to do, and all ditched together. Although neither Doug Westfall nor Andy Marocco have hard evidence for their respective theories, given that Andy’s is based on the official Navy documents relating to the case, and with other evidence, it seems that his theory is the most accurate.

This then, is the end of this part of the discussion. At this moment, none of the aircraft have been found and it seems that the idea that they all ditched at once is the most logical explanation. When there is new information on this particular aspect of the Bermuda Triangle, well, you’ll read it here.

A Flight 19 Mystery in the Bermuda Triangle

John Steiger, a friend who has helped me with research in the past, sent a comment about Flight 19. He’d found a grave marker for Marine Staff Sergeant George R. Paonessa, who was one of those lost on December 5, 1945, when his aircraft, along with four others disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. This set me to thinking. Why

was there a grave for him at the Arlington National Cemetery?

If the flight disappeared and nothing of them was found, then how could there be a grave? And if there was a grave, did that suggest that the Navy knew more about the disappearance than they had let on?

Douglas Westfall, who appeared on the radio version of A Different Perspective and who, indirectly set all this in motion, told me a little more about this. According to him, Paonessa’s family hadn’t requested the marker, and they were surprised by it. He also said that those at Arlington didn’t know who had made the request and that there was no body in the grave.

All this struck me as a little strange. Why a marker at Arlington if there was no body in the grave? And, if there was a body in the grave, well then, Flight 19 hadn’t disappeared without a trace.

I sent an email to the Arlington National Cemetery, and they responded quickly, confirming that Paonessa’s grave existed, which we already knew. But it turns out that it is not uncommon for there to be a marker and grave at Arlington even if there isn’t a body to be buried in it. Those at Arlington sent the rules and regulations covering the placement of a marker when the body is unavailable. These are:

In the absence of remains, Arlington National Cemetery offers memorialization in specially designated memorial areas. Under federal regulations (32 CFR § 553.16), a memorial marker may be placed at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the memory of service members or veterans who are otherwise eligible for interment or inurnment and:  

Who are missing in action;

Whose remains have not been recovered or identified;

Whose remains were buried at sea, whether by the member's or veteran's own choice or otherwise;

Whose remains were donated to science; 

Whose remains were cremated and the cremated remains scattered without interment or inurnment of any portion of those remains. 

The one-gravesite-per-family policy applies to memorialization:

When the remains of a primarily eligible person are unavailable for one of the above reasons, and a derivatively eligible person (e.g., a dependent) is already interred or inurned at Arlington National Cemetery, the primarily eligible person may be memorialized only on the existing headstone or a replacement headstone, ordered with a new inscription. 

When a memorial marker for a primarily eligible person is already in place, and a derivatively eligible person (e.g., a dependent) is subsequently interred or inurned at Arlington National Cemetery, an inscription memorializing the primarily eligible person will be placed on the new headstone or niche cover. The memorial marker will then be removed from the memorial area. 

The second question was if there were others from Flight 19 who also had markers at Arlington? I already knew the answer because I have a list of all those lost from the Avenger flight. I had been able to

trace all of them except for two and found that a few of them had markers placed on family plots in other cemeteries. One of them mentioned, “Lost at Sea,” for example.

But then, a Martin Mariner, launched as part of the search activity for Flight 19 was also lost that night. It turns out that one of the crewmen on that aircraft, Alfred J. Zywicki, also has a marker in that section of the Arlington National Cemetery.

The information about the locations of both Paonessa and Zywicki was supplied by the officials at Arlington. According to them, “George R. Paonessa is memorialized at ANC at Section MG, Grave 191. In addition, Alfred J. Zywicki is memorialized at ANC at Section MG, Grave 73. Zywicki (US Navy) was on PBM-5 (Bureau Number 59225) that

went out to find Flight 19…”

It seems that part of the mystery is now solved. The last question is simply, who requested the marker for Paonessa? It is clear that someone had to do it.

According to what Douglas Westfall told me, the family didn’t do it. You might say the Marines did it to honor one of their own, but Paonessa wasn’t the only Marine in Flight 19, so you have to wonder why one and not the others.

I had asked a follow up question. “Do you know who asked for the marker to be placed at Arlington? Family say that they were surprised to learn that it was there.”

Those at the Arlington National Cemetery tell me that they are not allowed to release information about who requested the marker. They wrote:

Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) cannot release the interment or inurnment records without special legal permission from the family. Arrangements are made by the decedents primary next of kin (PNOK) or person authorized to direct disposition (PADD). The funeral operation, funeral elements and grave marker are provided by the United States government and the military service branches. So long as the service member is eligible for burial at Arlington National Cemetery, their funeral is scheduled and operated with government and military resources. Transportation and/or delivery of remains of retired personnel, veterans, and their dependents from place of death to the cemetery are the responsibility of the next of kin. 

While this doesn’t help solve the mystery, it does provide us with some information. It suggests that the family had requested the marker… or in this case one member of the family had made the request. It might be that whoever made the request had not conferred with other members of the family so they didn’t know what had happened. Given the rules and regulations, it had to have been a family member.

At this point, I might be done with this. One of the leads I had to a member of the family ended when the phone was answered with, “The number is not in service.”

The second was an email address of someone who was likely related to Paonessa. I have had no response.

Still, I’m not sure that this particular part of the story needed to be traced any farther. There is nothing unusual about an empty grave at Arlington, the rules require the request for the marker to be made by a member of the family, and since the other members of Flight 19 have no similar markers at Arlington, but do in their local cemeteries, that seems to pr

ove the point.

As evidence of a cover up or of something even more sinister, this fails. I found nothing to suggest this proves the flight vanished off the face of the Earth or that the Navy had a hand in creating this conundrum. Instead, it is a family honoring a member who lost his life while serving in the Marine Corps.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Douglas Westfall, Flight 19 and the Bermuda Triangle

There has been a number of shows recently about the Bermuda Triangle and especially Flight 19. I found a couple of guys who were well versed in what happened to the flight. First up was Douglas Westfall. He and I talked about the disappearance of Flight 19. You can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/25933762

For those who aren’t as familiar with Flight 19 as those of us who have studied all of this for decades, Flight 19 was a group of five

Douglas Westfall

Avenger Torpedo Bombers on a training mission that took off on December 5, 1945. They were supposed to make a practice torpedo run on Hens and Chicken Shoals off the coast of Florida. They were then supposed to turn north, and finally back to the east to return to the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station. They never made it. All five vanished.

This is the cornerstone of the Bermuda Triangle mystery. What sort of force could destroy five aircraft at once? There had been no wreckage found which deepened the mystery. There has been a great deal written about the flight so a google search will provide additional details.

I did mention the disappearance of a C-119 in the Bermuda Triangle that provides some perspective. I had a personal connection to this and you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bermuda-triangle-and-c-119.html

Doug Westfall, however, mentioned that three of the aircraft had been found. The Navy swooped in to confiscate the wreckage and then destroyed it. Doug provides some information and some documentation to support this theory, not to mention that one of those crewmen survived the disaster. It makes an interesting theory. You can search for the Flight 19 information at his website at:

www.SpecialBooks.com

Next week, I’ll be talking with Andy Marocco who has investigated Flight 19 for many years and believes that the remains of the flight have been found. His theory is slightly different from that we heard from Doug. It will be interesting to learn how they disagree and maybe more importantly how the do agree.

Bermuda Triangle and the Witchcraft - Part Two

Looking at the case of the disappearance of the Witchcraft, again, I had a couple of thoughts. Clearly, the boat was not near Buoy Number 7. I believe that writers of Bermuda Triangle lore thought that since Dan Burack reported he was one mile off Miami and Buoy Number 7 is about one mile off Miami, they just assumed that he was near the buoy. While he might have been about one mile off shore, and he was near Miami, that doesn’t mean he was close to the buoy. You have to wonder why

Witchcraft

the Coast Guard would have asked him to fire a flare if he had been near to that landmark, which would have been easy to find.

The searches, then, have always been in the wrong place, and as noted, the wind was pushing the Witchcraft one direction but the current flowed in another. That caused the search area to be too far to the south. Of course, if the boat hadn’t been near Buoy Number 7 as reported, using that as a base for the search means they were searching in the wrong place regardless of wind and current.

But all this speculation isn’t doing us much good. The thought I had, and it’s not something that I can do, is what about the probate of the will. At some point Burack would have been declared dead and his will would have entered probate. These records, I believe, are public. Since he was supposed to be a millionaire, I got to wondering what happened to his fortune. Was there anything to be distributed to heirs? Were any sort of taxes paid on those inheritances? Who were the beneficiaries?

While searches of the ocean floor are exciting television, I’m wondering if anyone ever checked these records. If Burack’s wealth disappeared along with the boat, then we have a different sort of mystery. Or, if Burack didn’t have the wealth he claimed, then we have a different motive for the disappearance.

It just seems to me that this is one of the Triangle’s disappearances that might be explained in the records housed somewhere in courts of Miami or the state of Florida. It is an intriguing puzzle and if I lived in Florida, it is something that I would pursue… after the various lock downs are reversed and we have the opportunity to engage in these sorts of searches. If anyone has any answers, I’d sure like to hear them.

The Bermuda Triangle - The New Programming

If I remember correctly, I first learned about the Bermuda Triangle in a book by John Godwin called This Baffling World. It was a compendium of stories of the strange from around the world that included a section on the Bermuda Triangle he

called, “The Hoodoo Sea.” Although he used the terms “Danger Zone,” and “Devil’s Sea,” in his book, he did not say “Bermuda Triangle.” Vincent Gaddis had invented that term (it seems) in a 1964 magazine article.

It was in 1974 that the Lorenzens of APRO were holding a convention or symposium in Denver, Colorado. Circumstances meant that I would be able to attend and one of the few things I remember is Jim Lorenzen on the stage, talking about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. Specifically, he mentioned Flight 19, the five Avenger Torpedo planes that disappeared in December 1945. Lorenzen said that there was no way that all five planes would have crashed as once. What was there that could take all five planes at once, without warning.

Years later, as I was studying some of the cases from the Bermuda Triangle, I learned the answer to that question. According to the available records, at 5:22 p.m., Lieutenant Taylor, the flight leader was heard to say, “When the first man gets down to ten gallons of gas, we will all land in the water together. Does everyone understand that?”

Of course, that might not have happened but that would explain how five aircraft can all disappear at once… but I digress.

In those early years, I believed there was something weird going on in the Bermuda Triangle. Planes and ships just don’t disappear like that… unless there is something strange happening.

I also thought, if you are going to promote a point of view, you should understand what the enemy claims. Given that, I picked up a book, The Bermuda Triangle

Mystery – Solved by Lawrence David Kusche. I wanted to be able to refute what he had to say by examining the evidence he presented. Imagine my surprise when he convinced me, with facts and documents, that he had discovered what was really going on. There was no mystery until it was invented by imaginative magazine and book writers. Sure, Flight 19 seemed to be really strange and once you have found that, well, then there were other strange disappearances to be found as well.

One of the disappearances that Kusche covered was that of a C-119. In his write up, he used the Miami Herald as a source, but the newspaper doesn’t supply much in the way of evidence. He theorizes that the plane might have ditched, but he doesn’t really know. He brings up the UFO sighting by Gemini 4, which is completely irrelevant.

I wouldn’t bother with this if I didn’t have additional information. I covered all that “new” information on this blog a number of years ago. You can read about the disappearance and the solution here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bermuda-triangle-and-c-119.html

But the point here is to look at these shows that are now searching for answers in the Bermuda Triangle. I had thought it would just be more of the same hype that solves nothing but adds to the mystery. It seems that this assumption might be wrong.

My pal (and I use the term loosely since I only met him once but did have a late lunch with him), Josh Gates, got sucked into the Bermuda Triangle lore. But the

Josh Gates on the right.

tone of the program seemed to be more about finding an answer or two and the attempts to use science in the search. Sure, he talked to some of those who have had weird experiences in the Triangle, but those experiences don’t really take us outside the realm of modern physics. Nothing that would suggest an otherworldly presence or some sort of interdimensional warp. Just weird weather in an area where weird weather seems to be a regular occurrence.

Although it seems that he is going to attack the problem of Flight 19, I haven’t seen that episode yet. I do know that there have been several Avenger Torpedo Bombers found in the Triangle, but none, according to official sources, have been proven to be part of Flight 19. For example, in 1991, treasure hunter Graham Hawkes said that he had found the wreckage of all five aircraft. The tail number of one of the aircraft came from a crash some two years earlier. Hawkes later said that the Pentagon and therefore the Navy had pressured him to make the case “go away.” Then in 2012, he said that he believed that he had actually found Flight 19, but he couldn’t prove it.

In 2015, there was a claim that an aircraft had been found near Sebastian, Florida with two bodies inside. Although the Navy initially said it was part of Flight 19, they later retracted the statement. FOIA requests for more information didn’t provide any conclusive evidence.

What was more interesting for me, the wreckage of an Avenger was found during the search for parts of the Challenger Space Shuttle. I say interesting because Jon Myhre raised the wreckage, which he thought was part of Flight 19.

I mention this because Myhre did publish a book about Flight 19 which suggested the aircraft had been found. I’m working to learn a little more about this because, if even one of the aircraft has been found, then we might have a solution to this mystery.

But, back to the original point here. I’ve seen a couple of other episodes of Curse of the Bermuda Triangle. While they seem to be doing quite a bit to fill the hour with their investigations, they also seem to have a real mission of finding answers. I mean did we really need to show that a powerful magnet would affect the operation of a compass? We all know this and if I remember correctly, there are documented magnetic problems in the Triangle area. According to the program, the yacht, Yahtzee, which disappeared in the Triangle has been found.

At this point, I’m rather pleased with both the Curse of the Bermuda Triangle and Josh Gate’s Expedition Unknown. Although they talk of thousands of disappearances, none of the research I’ve done suggest anything like that. True, as mentioned, there have been 300 shipwrecks found around Bermuda but a shipwreck isn’t a disappearance. Of course, that report didn’t mention the massive reef system around Bermuda that was responsible for some of those wrecks. Lloyd’s of London did look at the statistics and suggested that the Bermuda Triangle was no more dangerous than some other areas of the world.

While some of those believe that Atlantis and that mythical civilization had some power source that causes the disappearances, others thought that proof for Atlantis had been found. I believe it was Josh Gates who dove on the “Bimini Road” which supposed to have been built by the Atlanteans. But in the program, they concluded that the road was a natural formation based on wave action.

If both Josh Gates and the crew of Curse of the Bermuda Triangle continue to investigate for real rather than ratings, then these programs are both interesting and useful… True, a mystery is more fun than the solution, but ignoring the solution for the sake of the mystery does none of us any good

Curse of the Bermuda Triangle -- Witchcraft

For several decades I have been of the opinion that the Bermuda Triangle was a manufactured mystery. I thought that most of the disappearances had a rational if tragic explanation. When all the nonsense was stripped away and the facts were examined, then we would know what happened. Much of the Bermuda Triangle lore was based on faulty information. Given all that, it was strange that I was caught up in an episode of Curse of the Bermuda Triangle.

The episode concerned the disappearance of the Witchcraft, what I would consider a pleasure boat or cabin cruiser. The story as told today is that at about 9:00 p.m.

Witchcraft

on December 22, 1967, the Coast Guard received a distress call from one of the boat’s two-man crew. They had hit something and the engine was no longer functioning properly. They were at the Number Seven Buoy in what was called the Government Channel. The Coast Guard arrived in nineteen minutes, but they could find no trace of the boat, the crew, or any debris that suggested it had sunk. The Coast Guard searched a huge area over the next several days, but nothing was ever found. Just another of those mysterious disappearances that haunt the Bermuda Triangle.

In the show, there were two facts that were repeated. They were at the Number Seven Buoy and that the Coast Guard only took nineteen minutes to get there. Whatever happened, had to have been swift and complete. The boat was literally in sight of Miami and it shouldn’t have been difficult to find it no matter what had happened.

My first thought was that the boat hadn’t been at Buoy Number Seven. It had been some place else. The crew had been mistaken but that didn’t seem likely. The buoy is rather obvious. It is lighted and has a bell or something on it so that boaters don’t sail into it at night.

In the program, they took a trip out there and used sonar to scan the ocean bottom. They didn’t find much of anything. The bottom was smooth suggesting no wreckage down there. But they still couldn’t figure out how the boat sank in nineteen minutes, since as they mentioned several times (Did they ever hear of Titanic?) and left no wreckage for the Coast Guard to find.

The real story however, as reported in the Miami Herald on December 24, was that the crew, Dan Burack and Rev. Father Padraig (Patrick) Horgan, had radioed that the boat had become disabled about a mile off Miami Beach. The Coast Guard told Burack to fire a flare in about twenty minutes to help guide them to the disabled boat. The Coast Guard crew never saw a flare, there was no other radio contact and there was no sign of wreckage when the Coast Guard arrived on the scene.

A search was launched by the Coast Guard, the Civil Air Patrol, and other boats and aircraft. It covered about 1200 square miles, reaching from Miami to Delray Beach and Bimini. The boat was carrying all the required safety equipment and Burack was a good swimmer. That seemed to make the whole disappearance inexplicable.

While the show’s narrator continued to tell us that the boat had been at Buoy Number Seven and that the Coast Guard got there in nineteen minutes, I kept saying that the boat wasn’t at the buoy. That was before I saw the article from the newspaper that said they were about a mile off Miami Beach. I believe that one of those who have written about the Bermuda Triangle assumed that they would have been near Buoy Number Seven because it is about mile off the beach in an area traveled by all sorts of boats.

To their credit, the members of the Triangle Research and Investigation Group (TRIG), Moe Mottice, Mike Sill, Dave Cziko and Chuck Meier, who are the investigators on the show, sought out a weather/ocean expert because the weather on that night wasn’t the best. There were winds blowing at some twenty knots pushing the boat to the south of the buoy, so that the search was focused to the south. But what they learned is that the current in the area was to the north, and given the height of the waves, which would have protected the boat from the wind somewhat, and according to the computer model created by the weather expert, the boat would have drifted to the north. The search had been in the wrong place. They recalculated, using Buoy Number Seven as the starting point and the nineteen-minute figure as the time the boat would have drifted to find a new search area. This area had not been searched.

Again, I said, “The boat wasn’t at Buoy Number Seven,” but now added, the nineteen-minute figure is wrong as well because, the Coast Guard was looking the wrong way as they searched for the boat in the twenty knot winds blowing to the south.

Searching the new area with sonar they did find some anomalies on the ocean floor. Thinking they had found the Witchcraft, they dove down. What they found were… Tanks… World War II Sherman Tanks that had been sunk in the 1990s to form reefs. Not sure how well that worked, but hey, they found something.

I was about to give up on the show, but they had one more person to interview. The woman had spent sometime researching the case and she told them that the boat hadn’t been found because… it wasn’t there. Everyone was looking in the wrong place.

The one thing they didn’t do, and the one thing that I haven’t done, is attempt to learn if Burack was in any kind of financial trouble. He seemed to have been leading the life of a millionaire, though it seems, at least to me, that his finances were a little shaky. That would be an avenue to explore. Burack had arranged for his own disappearance and in 1967, that would certainly be easier than it would be today.

The TRIG guys seemed to prefer that explanation, that Burack had arranged his disappearance, to one that suggested the boat had slipped into another dimension or though some sort of parallel vortex into another world.

But the truth is that the boat wasn’t where it was reported to be, that is, near Buoy Number Seven, and that before the search started in earnest the boat would have drifted farther to the north. The thing that impressed me here was that TRIG didn’t just accept the disappearance into some sort of parallel dimension or whatever. They looked for an alternative explanation that had a basis in reality. Even if they hung their hats on the nineteen minutes and the location near Buoy Number Seven, they didn’t tell us that this was proof of anything other than the boat disappeared and that no one knows exactly what happened.

SS Cotopaxi - No Longer a Victim of the Bermuda Triangle

On December 1, 1925, the crew of SS Cotopaxi radioed that the ship was taking on water and listing during a storm. On December 31, the ship was officially listed as overdue. With that, it entered the legend of the Bermuda Triangle as one of those mysterious disappearances that so many find fascinating. Charles Berlitz in his

SS Cotopaxi?

book The Bermuda Triangle lists the SS Cotopaxi as one of the major ships that disappeared. Although there are sources that suggest 32 passengers, the description of the ship suggests that those 32 people were sailors and not really passengers.

I will note here that many of the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle were not all that mysterious. In many cases, such as this one, the weather was bad and was, at least, a contributing factor. This is not to mention that many of the “facts” reported about these disappearances were not actual facts but speculations by the writers who believed that something strange was happening.

But those of us interested in facts, try to check beyond the original story which means not giving up once we have the preliminary information. On my radio program, A Different Perspective, I did mention the Cotopaxi had been found. CBS news was one of the sources that I used in that preliminary work. You can see that story here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bermuda-triangle-ship-found-underwater-explorer-believes-hes-found-ship-that-vanished-nearly-100-years-ago/

and this is from the Science Channel (and yes, it’s a tad bit long):

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrJ61f.BTJeu.EAIipXNyoA;_ylc=X1MDMjc2NjY3OQRfcgMyBGZyA21jYWZlZQRmcjIDc2ItdG9wBGdwcmlkA2hOeXBpeklfUjlTU3U0TnVfZ2s2cUEEbl9yc2x0AzAEbl9zdWdnAzQEb3JpZ2luA3NlYXJjaC55YWhvby5jb20EcG9zAzAEcHFzdHIDBHBxc3RybAMwBHFzdHJsAzMzBHF1ZXJ5A3NzJTIwY290b3BheGklMjBmb3VuZCUyMHNjaWVuY2UlMjBjaGFubmVsBHRfc3RtcAMxNTgwMzM2NzU5?p=ss+cotopaxi+found+science+channel&fr2=sb-top&fr=mcafee&type=E211US105G0

and another source found here:

http://whatliesbeyond.boards.net/thread/10666/lost-ship-cotopaxi-augustine-coast

It seems, however, that a number of years ago, there was a story circulating that suggested the Cotopaxi, floating and abandoned, had been found by the Cuba Coast Guard. The story circulated widely on the Internet. This turned out to be a hoax. But this latest tale is different if for no other reasons than the ship was found underwater and divers, working with the Science Channel were among those who found it.

To add a bit of perspective to all this, I’ll mention again, I was an Air Force intelligence officer and I served, for a number of years with the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group, which was subordinate to the 440^th Tactical Airlift Wing. Those you follow the Bermuda Triangle nonsense, know that the 440^th lost a C-119 in the Bermuda Triangle in June 1965. Contrary to reports in many of those earlier sources such as the Berlitz book, wreckage was found during the search for the missing plane and crew.

Once, while at 440^th Wing Headquarters, I asked a couple of the officers about the loss. They told me they’d found wreckage and wanted to know if I wanted to see it… in those pre-cell phone days, we all didn’t have cameras in our pockets so, no, I don’t have any pictures. I did see some of the wreckage and reported on this case here:

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

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2017/05/fake-news-abc-and-bermuda-triangle.html

According to some researchers, there are many victims claimed by the Deadly Triangle… but some of those others have been found. The Freya, a German Bark was discovered drifting and abandoned in the Bermuda Triangle… Except, of course, it was actually found in the Pacific Ocean, which means it wasn’t lost in the Triangle.

But I digress for the moment…

I believe, given the latest and best evidence, that the SS Cotopaxi has been found under water. The Science Channel will supply the evidence in a couple of days. At that point we’ll all have the information and can judge if this is another hoax, a mistake, or if the ship can be removed from the list of the disappearances in the Triangle as some of those others have been.

I will note, as mentioned in one of the latest articles, that the geographical coordinates put it north of the original Triangle, which means it hadn’t belonged there in the first place.

Fake News, ABC and the Bermuda Triangle

I have to wonder about ABC News. When I heard that an airplane had vanished on a flight from Puerto Rico to Miami, I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone had to mention it was another mysterious disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle. A solution for that mystery has been available for decades and some of the planes listed as having vanished, in fact, did not. Wreckage has been found. I mentioned much of this a long time ago on this blog, and have, of course, promoted the book, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved by Lawrence Kusche a number of times. For those earlier posts see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bermuda-triangle-and-abc-evening.html

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

In this latest tragedy, ABC was the first that I saw that mentioned the Bermuda Triangle complete with a map showing the anchors of the triangle at Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami. They also mentioned the number of crashes of aircraft and sinking of ships in the area, never mentioning that the numbers are not significantly higher than those for other heavily traveled sea lanes.

From the information readily available, it seems that the aircraft crashed, though I have nothing to suggest why that happened. Wreckage identified as coming from the lost aircraft has been recovered by the Coast Guard. That tells me that the aircraft crashed, not that it disappeared.

A 440th Tactical Airlift Wing C-119.

Once again, I will note that while I was assigned to the 928^th Tactical Airlift Group, which was a unit subordinate to the 440^th Airlift Wing, I had an opportunity to talk with the pilots, crew, and command post staff about the loss of one of their aircraft in the Bermuda Triangle. They had wreckage from the aircraft that was identified with the unit numbers on it, not to mention the serial numbers of some of the parts recovered. The aircraft crashed; though it is still listed in many of the books about the Bermuda Triangle as having disappeared.

I suggest that the news media try to be a little more topical and get off their lazy butts and use Google. There they could learn that the Bermuda Triangle is a manufactured mystery that was the result of incomplete facts, flawed research and an abundance of imagination. Rather than fan the flames of mystery, try to learn the truth so that the story doesn’t become one more sensational chapter in a tale that is untrue. 

Cosmic Whistleblowers - Simon Sharman

The other day I had the opportunity to watch a documentary by Simon Sharman called Cosmic Whistleblowers. You can see a preview, or rather a short trailer about the film, here.

http://cosmicwhistleblowers.com/

This is sort of his pursuit of the “Roswell Slides” tale, his discussions with various individuals including some of those who were directly involved in the Roswell crash in some fashion, and with Don Schmitt and Tom Carey who have been investigating it for years. It ends just after the big fiasco in Mexico City and what

Tom Carey. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle

he learned about this after the fact, including information from the Roswell Slides Research Group and how they deburred the placard. It is an interesting story if for no other reason that you get to see the players in this little drama before Mexico City, during that presentation, and then the aftereffects of learning the truth.

Their website provides a short synopsis for the film. They describe it like this (and please ignore the all caps, but this is take directly from their site):

WHEN YOU LOOK AT ALL THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT EVER WAS, THERE'S ONE THAT'S BIGGER THAN ALL OF THEM - THE ROSWELL INCIDENT.

THE LAST LIVING WITNESSES WHO SAW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN ROSWELL IN 1947 ARE FEW IN NUMBER AND ALL TOO SOON THEY'LL BE GONE FOREVER. WHEN THAT DAY COMES ANY CHANCE AT GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THE MYSTERY WILL BE LOST AND THE ROSWELL UFO CASE WILL BECOME NOTHING MORE THAN A MYTH.

COSMIC WHISTLEBLOWERS IS ONE MAN'S QUEST FOR TRUTH ON A JOURNEY THAT TAKES HIM AROUND THE GLOBE IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS. YEARS IN THE MAKING, THE INVESTIGATION TAKES US TO THE HEART OF WHAT RETIRED THE NUCLEAR PHYSICIST STANTON FRIEDMAN ONCE DESCRIBED AS THE 'COSMIC WATERGATE'.

IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE FULL STORY BEHIND THE ROSWELL INCIDENT, YOU'D BETTER THINK AGAIN.

What caught my attention and this segment was obviously recorded before everything came crashing down (pun intended), was a statement by Tom Carey. He was explaining who was conducting which parts of the investigation and why they were allegedly being careful in their research, something that we all can understand. He said:

Don Schmitt and I want to get our own analysis. We’re not going to sign to something that blows up in our face. In this business that’s terminal.

It really does no good to go through all this again and you can read my analysis, reports, conclusions and opinions on all this by looking back on the blog, especially starting in February 2015 as more information was being revealed by those conducting their investigations. It is clear that bits and pieces of the story were being leaked by all sorts of people for their own purposes and to build suspense until the big reveal in Mexico City.

Tom said that a mistake of the proportions that had been made would be “terminal” but anyone who has been around the UFO field for a while knows that simply isn’t true. The only real mistake is to reveal the truth of a case that suggests something other than alien visitation. As long as you embrace all that suggests there is alien visitation, it really doesn’t matter all that much what mistakes you have made in the past.

The point is that they didn’t actually do their “due diligence” on the case, they didn’t get their own analysis and seemed to reject anything that suggested the slide showed anything other than an alien creature. We all seem to know this and most of us just ignore it. After all, anyone can make a mistake, even a huge one, and come back from it once enough time has passed.

Yes, I’m beating the dead horse here, but I found that one statement by Tom to be rather ironic. He wanted to be careful in his research of the slides because an error made there could be “terminal.” The error was huge, the data badly corrupted, the red flags ignored for a variety of reasons and even when the image was identified and other pictures of it found in a museum in the southwestern United States, there were, and are, arguments that it isn’t the same image. An examination of the slide, reveals the setting, and an examination of the picture taken as the child was recovered in 1898 show it to be the same as that on the slide, but people still seem to disbelieve it.

I mention all this simply because I’m not surprised by this. I have seen it time and again in the UFO field. Find the plausible (and that is the key word) explanation and no matter how solid that explanation is, it will be rejected by some… but then we know the moon landings were hoaxed, the Bermuda Triangle is dangerous and the Cardiff giant is real.