Drain the Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda triangle,

one of the most enduring mysteries of all time.

Strange lights, phantom fogs,

ships that go missing with no wreckage.

For over 70 years, people claimed mysterious forces

caused boats and planes to disappear without trace.

Our instruments are going haywire.

But is all that just a myth that's grown out of hand?

One of them just disappeared and never came back.

Experts try to get to the bottom of this enigma...

It's like a water cage of ice.

So this is what it's like to be right on top of a hurricane.

By using the latest technologies

to discover the truth.

We kind of think of ourselves

as high-tech forensic detectives.

Can science finally answer what decades

of legend and myth cannot?

Look at that!

What actually happens in the Bermuda triangle?

captions paid for by discovery communications

over the last 70 years, a popular legend

originating deep in the waters off Florida

refuses to die.

That's where the DC-3 was last reported.

Hundreds of boats and planes

have disappeared seemingly without trace.

Star tiger was here.

Investigator Brian j. Cano has it all mapped out.

In 1950, we have the ss Sandra,

which was last reported here.

Scorpion, 1968.

Flight 19, a little closer to Miami.

That was in 1945.

This is where the USS cyclops was last reported.

1996, the intrepid.

Each one of these x's represents a lost ship or plane,

and it's forming a shape

with concentrations here in Miami,

here in Bermuda,

and finally, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A triangle, and in this case,

the Bermuda triangle.

The stories behind these disappearances

have grown to often-outlandish heights,

as people struggle for an explanation.

So what's fact and what is fiction,

and where did it all begin?

The first Bermuda triangle mystery

was the disappearance of flight 19.

On December 5, 1945,

flight 19 left fort lauderdale on a low-level bombing exercise.

The pilots were mostly trainees,

but the commander, Charles Taylor,

was an experienced combat pilot.

Weather clear over fort lauderdale,

over the Bahamas, cloudy.

The five bombers flew east

and completed their mission over sandbanks in the Bahamas,

but their problems began when they hit fog.

The pilots appeared to lose track of where they were

and in what direction they were heading in.

What does your compass read?

We must have got lost after that last turn.

The crew of flight 19 were lost,

but luckily, a separate mission

flying over the Bahamas overhead their confusion.

The lead pilot,

lieutenant Robert Cox,

offered his help.

What is your trouble?

I'm trying to find fort lauderdale.

Cox asked Taylor for his position.

I will come meet you.

He replied that his squadron

had somehow drifted over the Florida keys,

hundreds of miles south of his flight plan.

Put the sun on your port wing if you are in the keys

and fly up the coast until you get to Miami.

Taylor took Cox's advice and headed north,

but found no sign of the mainland.

The radio cut out.

And now, in fading light, the squadron began

to be battered by hurricane-force winds.

Taylor was desperate.

He still couldn't see land.

So he started to think he must be to the west of Florida,

in the Gulf of Mexico.

The five bombers were now running dangerously low on fuel.

Taylor made a series of

increasingly irrational commands.

Turning east...

Change course to zero-90 degrees for ten minutes!

Then west...

We'll fly 270 degrees west.

Then east again.

But it was all in vain.

At 6:20 P.M., over four hours after taking off,

flight 19's last message came over the airwaves.

When the first plane drops below ten gallons,

we all go down together.

The pilots were never heard from again.

That same night, a Martin mariner seaplane

was dispatched to search for the missing squadron,

but it too disappeared.

A nearby warship reported a distant fireball

on the surface of the sea.

The Navy spent five days searching for the wreckage,

but astonishingly, they didn't find a single trace

of either of the missing planes.

What are the hard facts behind this dramatic disappearance?

How could simple fog cause such confusion?

And why has no wreckage ever been found?

We're going to go out to where the last

reported position was and we're going to start...

start running a survey around that area.

We've already bounced between...

Former army pilot Jon myhre

has spent the last 30 years trying to find them.

Looks like we are where for the position?

Today, with aviation archaeologist Andy marocco,

he's surveying yet another patch of the Bermuda triangle

for the aircraft remains.

Flight 19 is probably the biggest aviation mystery

in... in the world.

The answer to what happened, nobody really knows.

Jon believes that finding the wreckage

is the only way to solve the mystery of flight 19.

Started in 1982.

Read a short article on flight 19.

And I said, based on some data in it,

I could probably figure out where one of the planes crashed.

And I've been on it ever since.

That wreck that we saw? Right.

I have all that in here.

So this is your position presently...

Jon and Andy search for answers

in order to separate fact from fiction.

We also have a search pattern...

we don't get paid to do this.

We're just researchers and we love it

because of the history and the subject matter.

So for us, we kind of think of ourselves as

high-tech forensic detectives

that are trying to solve mysteries.

29.59. Right.

They believe that when Taylor reported

he was over the Florida keys,

he was actually over the Bahamas.

Headed out on a 3-6-0 heading.

And if they're right,

it means that the squadron's desperate search for land

simply took them further and further

into the Atlantic ocean.

This is the background noaa map.

During each expedition, Jon surveys a different patch

of the ocean floor for wreckage, ticking it off the list

and then moving on to the next likely spot.

Basically we're using side-scan sonar

and echo sounding devices

that will help us build 3D models

of what is on the ocean floor

and be able to give us a profile of things.

Today, despite a full day of scanning,

the team draws yet another blank.

But it's a big ocean,

and they're not ready to give up.

I truly believe flight 19 is going to be found.

It's just a matter of when, and I think right now we have

the best shot in history to find them.

Jon's convinced he'll find flight 19

because the technology today is better than it's ever been.

But what if the planes aren't there to be found?

Is it possible the entire squadron

were transported somewhere else by a ripple in space-time?

This wild theory has long been derided many experts,

but one man believes he has proof,

because he claims it happened to him.

Experienced pilot Bruce gernon believes he once had

a brush with death inside the Bermuda triangle.

Was I lucky that day?

Yeah.

It was fate, really.

The extraordinary events he experienced

have convinced him that forces unknown to science

are to blame for disappearances in the area.

Could he be right?

In December 1970,

23-year-old Bruce took his father

and his father's business partner

on a short hop from andros island to bimini island

in the Bahamas.

It was exactly 3:00 P.M. when we lifted off.

Ten minutes into the journey,

Bruce encountered a gathering storm.

You can probably go over that.

Yeah, we can probably go over it.

He attempted to fly over it,

but the storm clouds below expanded,

engulfing the tiny plane.