List of Bermuda Triangle incidents

This is a list of incidents attributed in popular culture to the Bermuda Triangle or Devil's Triangle.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Aircraft incidents
Thomas Arthur Garner (c. 1945)
  • 1945: July 10, Thomas Arthur Garner, AMM3, USN, along with ten other crew members, was lost at sea in a US Navy PBM3S patrol seaplane, Bu. No.6545, Sqd VPB2-OTU#3, in the Bermuda Triangle. They left the Naval Air Station, Banana River, Florida, at 7:07 p.m. on July 9, 1945, for a radar training flight to Great Exuma, Bahamas. Their last radio position report was sent at 1:16 a.m., July 10, 1945, with a latitude/longitude of 25.22N 77.34W, near Providence Island, after which they were never heard from again. An extensive ten-day surface and air search, including a carrier sweep, found nothing.[1]
  • 1945: December 5, Flight 19 (five TBF Avengers) lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19.[2]
  • 1947: July 3, According to the Bermuda Triangle Legend a B-29 Superfortress was lost off Bermuda. Lawrence Kunsche investigated and found no reference to any such B-29 loss. In fact the aircraft loss was that of a Douglas C-54 which was lost in a storm off the Florida coast [3] A B-29 was lost in the vicinity of Bermuda;-on November 16, 1949, a B-29 was lost in the Atlantic; 2 crewmen were missing but on November 19, 1949, 18 survivors were rescued 385 miles northeast of Bermuda.[4]
  • 1948: January 30, Avro Tudor G-AHNP Star Tiger lost with six crew and 27 passengers, en route from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores to Kindley Field, Bermuda.[5]
  • 1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002 lost with three crew and 36 passengers, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami, Florida.[6]
  • 1949: January 17, Avro Tudor G-AGRE Star Ariel lost with seven crew and 13 passengers, en route from Kindley Field, Bermuda, to Kingston Airport, Jamaica.[7]
  • 1956: November 9, Martin Marlin lost ten crewmen taking off from Bermuda.
  • 1962: January 8, A USAF KB-50 51-0465 was lost over the Atlantic between the US East Coast and the Azores[8]
  • 1965: June 9, A USAF C-119 Flying Boxcar of the 440th Troop Carrier Wing missing between Florida and Grand Turk Island[9] The last call from the plane came from a point just north of Crooked Island, Bahamas, and 177 miles from Grand Turk Island. On July 18, 1965 debris from the plane was found on the beach of Gold Rock Cay just off the northeastern shore of Acklins Island.[10]
  • 1965: December 6, Private ERCO Ercoupe F01[11] lost with pilot and one passenger, en route from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Bahamas Island.[12]
  • November 3, 1978 - Irving Rivers, arriving at St. Thomas from St. Croix, vanished after being sighted by the control tower, and no trace was ever found.[13]
  • 2005: June 20, A Piper PA-23 disappeared between Treasure Cay Island, Bahamas and Fort Pierce, Florida. There were three people on board.[14]
  • 2007: April 10, A Piper PA-46-310P disappeared near Berry Island after flying into a level 6 thunderstorm and losing altitude. Two fatalities were listed.[15]
  • 2017: February 23, The Turkish Airlines flight TK183 (an Airbus A330-200) was forced to change its direction from Havana, Cuba to Washington Dulles airport after some mechanical and electrical problems occurred over the triangle.[16]
  • 2017: May 15, A private MU-2B aircraft was at 24,000 feet when it vanished from radar and radio contact with air traffic controllers in Miami.[17] Plane wreckage was found later.[18]

Incidents at sea
  • 1492: On the night of October 11, Christopher Columbus and the crew of Santa Maria reported a sighting of unknown light, just days before the landing at Guanahani.[19]
  • 1800: USS Pickering, on course from Guadeloupe to Delaware, lost with 90 people on board.[20] {Possibly lost in a gale}
  • 1814: USS Wasp, last known position was the Caribbean, lost with 140 people on board.[20] {Possibly lost in a storm}
  • 1824: USS Wild Cat, on course from Cuba to Tompkins Island, lost with 14 people on board.[20] {Note lost in a Gale with 31 on board}
  • 1840: Rosalie, found abandoned.[20] {Possibly the "Rossini" found derelict{?}[21]
  • 1881: According to legend a sailing ship the Ellen Austin found a derelict vessel and placed a crew to sail the vessel to port. Two versions of what happened to the vessel are: the vessel was either lost in a storm or was found again without a crew. Lawrence David Kusche author of "The Bermuda Triangle Mystery-Solved" found no mention in 1880 or 1881 newspapers of this alleged incident-he did trace the legend to a book by Rupert Gould "The Stargazer Talks" published in 1943. The "Ellen Austin" did exist; a check from Lloyd's of London records proved the existence of Meta, built in 1854, and that in 1880, Meta was renamed Ellen Austin. There are no casualty listings for this vessel, or any vessel at that time, that would suggest a large number of missing men were placed on board a derelict that later disappeared although one website includes the alleged derelict vessel incident it does find that Rupert Gould talked about the legend on radio in the 1930s;[22] likewise the website traces the derelict story to a June 1906 newspaper story-which claims the derelict ship incident took place in 1891;[22] however the 1906 story does not give a reference of where this story came from.
  • 1918: USS Cyclops, collier, left Barbados on March 4, lost with all 306 crew and passengers en route to Baltimore, Maryland.[23]
  • 1921: January 31, Carroll A. Deering, five-masted schooner, Captain W. B. Wormell, found aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.[24]
  • 1925: 1 December, SS Cotopaxi, having departed Charleston, South Carolina two days earlier bound for Havana, Cuba, radioed a distress call reporting that the ship was sinking. She was officially listed as overdue on 31 December.[25] In 1985 an unknown shipwreck was found off St Augustine, Florida; in 2020 it was identified as the remains of the SS Cotopaxi.[26]
  • 1941: USS Proteus (AC-9), lost with all 58 persons on board in heavy seas, having departed St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands with a cargo of bauxite on 23 November. The following month, her sister ship USS Nereus (AC-10) was lost with all 61 persons on board, having also departed St. Thomas with a cargo of bauxite, on 10 December. According to research by Rear Admiral George van Deurs, USN, who was familiar with this type of ship from their service in the USN, the acidic coal cargo would seriously erode the longitudinal support beams, making these aging and poorly constructed colliers extremely vulnerable to breaking up in heavy seas.[27] They were both sister ships of the USS Cyclops.
  • 1958: Revonoc. A 43-foot racing yawl was lost with owner Harvey Conover and four others between Key West and Miami Florida in a hurricane. The only trace found was the Revonoc 14-foot skiff near Jupiter Florida[28]
  • 1963: SS Marine Sulphur Queen, lost with 39 crewmen, having departed Beaumont, Texas, on 2 February with a cargo of 15,260 tons of sulfur. She was last heard from on 4 February, when she was in rough, nearly following seas of 16 feet, with northerly winds of 25–46 knots, and listed as missing two days later. The Coast Guard subsequently determined that the ship was unsafe and not seaworthy, and never should have sailed. The final report suggested four causes of the disaster, all due to poor design and maintenance of the ship.[29]
  • 1980: On January 12, 1980, HMCS St. Laurent (DDH 205) sank off Cape Hatteras, the closest point on the North American mainland to Bermuda. The ship took on water after encountering the tail end of a hurricane.
  • 2015: In late July 2015, two 14-year-old boys, Austin Stephanos, and Perry Cohen went on a fishing trip in their 19-foot boat. Despite the 15,000 square nautical mile wide search by US Coast Guard,[30] the pair's boat was found a year later off the coast of Bermuda, but the boys were never seen again.[31]
  • 2015: SS El Faro, with a crew of 33 aboard, sank off of the coast of the Bahamas within the triangle on October 1, 2015, after sailing into Hurricane Joaquin. Search crews identified the vessel 15,000 feet below the surface.

Incidents on land

Incident table
YearType of incidentNumber of fatalitiesSurvivors
1945Air121
1945Air140
1945Air130
1947Air218
1948Air330
1948Air390
1949Air200
1956Air100
1965Air20
2005Air30
2007Air20
2007Air20
2017Air30
2017Air??
2019Air70
2019Air03
2019Air03
1800Sea900
1814Sea1400
1824Sea310
1918Sea3060
1941Sea580
1941Sea610
1963Sea390
2015Sea20
2015Sea330
1969Land20
Total92425

References
  1. Garner family records. Further information available upon request from dgarner@PacBell.net
  2. "The Loss Of Flight 19". Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center. Archived from the original on July 9, 1997.
  3. Harro Ranter (3 July 1947). "ASN Aircraft accident Douglas C-54G-1-DO Skymaster 45-519 Florida coast, USA".
  4. "The Milwaukee Sentinel November 20, 1949". google.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  5. G-AHNP Aviation Safety Network – Avro 688 Tudor 1 G-AHNP
  6. NC16002 Aviation Safety Network – Douglas DC-3DST-144 NC16002
  7. G-AGRE Avro 688 Tudor Mk.1 G-AGRE c/n 1253 – Jack McKillop
  8. Harro Ranter. "ASN Aircraft accident 08-JAN-1962 Boeing KB-50K Superfortress 51-0465".
  9. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild C-119G Flying Boxcar 51-2680 Crooked Island, Bahamas". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  10. "The Milwaukee Journal August 11, 1965". google.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  11. [The Legend lists plane loss as a "Cessna" But see NTSA report]
  12. "NTSB Record as NTSB Identification: MIA66A0065". ntsb.gov. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  13. "Bermuda Triangle: Vanished Without a Trace". dreamstakingflight.com. 22 June 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  14. "Recent Disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle". lovetoknow.com. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
  15. "ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 43829".
  16. "The Turkish Airlines plane en route to Cuba landed to the US".
  17. Li, David K.; Sheehy, Kate (2017-05-16). "Small plane carrying family vanishes in Bermuda Triangle". New York Post. Retrieved 2017-05-17.
  18. Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft 15-MAY-2017 Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 N220N". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  19. "Columbus: The Light of 11 October, 1492". The Islands' Sun. March–April 1990. Archived from the original on September 7, 2008. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
  20. Berlitz, Charles, and J. Manson Valentine. Without a Trace. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977. Print.
  21. "The derelict Rosalie". www.bermuda-triangle.org. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016.
  22. Sometimes Interesting (2015-12-10). "The Ellen Austin Encounter". Sometimes Interesting. Retrieved 2017-07-17.
  23. USS Cyclops Archived 2010-08-10 at the Wayback Machine Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center – Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
  24. Simpson, Bland (2005). Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9780807856178.
  25. "Mails and Shipping". The Times (44157). London. 31 December 1925. col D, p. 18.
  26. Popular Mechanics 2020
  27. Rob Fisher. "Naval History.ca – History of the Royal Canadian Navy – Canadian Merchant Ship Losses, 1939–1945".
  28. Nature Keeps a Grim Date at sea Sports Illustrated January 20, 1958 Archive accessed September 29,2018
  29. "Marine Sulphur Queen Coast Guard Report Summary of Findings". pacbell.net. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  30. "2 Boys in a Fishing Boat Vanish In the Bermuda Triangle". madmikesamerica.com. 26 July 2015. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  31. Angel, Greg (2017-04-23). "One Year Later: Austin & Perry Boat Found". cbs12.com. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  32. Quasar, Gian. Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2004), Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Vanished Ships, p.71.
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