I've been rather bored with stories of the Bermuda Triangle for years but I've just finished reading a book that's really sparked my interest. In fact, I was so into this book that I read all 200 pages in 2 days - something that rarely happens with non-fiction books. It's entitled The Fog, by Rob MacGregor and Bruce Gernon. The book deals with a new theory on the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle and it actually makes a very strong, compelling case. According to pilot Gernon, the strange happenings in the area can be attributed to something he calls "electronic fog." Bruce Gernon has encountered The Fog on 2 separate occasions over the span of 30 years and believes it is this unknown meteorological phenomenon that's caused the disappearances of hundreds of planes and boats, as well as scaring the shorts off of countless other boaters and pilots who've survived.
The Disappearance of Flight 19
The first largely public unexplained disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle involves the infamous Flight 19 story involving 5 Navy planes with 14 crewmembers. With all the experience of the pilots they became lost in a mysterious fog after their controls went haywire. They could not tell north from south and couldn't see the horizon line to tell which way was up and down. Broken conversations with radio controllers (who could not spot them on radar) could not help them. The flight commander, Lieutenant Charles Taylor, seemed to be in a state of profound confusion and had forgotten all his emergency training procedures. Since none of the compasses or navigation equipment were working in any of the 5 planes, the squad had to guess where they were going. Rather than flying towards what some of the pilots believed to be Florida, they probably flew 100's of miles into the Atlantic Ocean. One of the largest rescue missions in naval history, involving 100's of boats and aircraft could find no trace of wreckage.
Strange Events Since Columbus
Hundreds of similiar cases have been recorded since then and strange occurences in the Bermuda Triangle have been written down since Christopher Columbus - who also had the experience of spinning compass needles and strange lights blinking in the night from a distance. Columbus tried keeping these things from the crew to avoid superstitious fears during their long, famous journey. Even Charles Lindbergh, the famous solo pilot, experienced something wrong in the area. On February 13, 1928, Lindbergh was taking a flight around the Gulf of Mexico and over the Caribbean when his compass started rotating, his earth-inductor-compass needle began jumping back and forth and he begun seeing a strange haze. Lindbergh said in his biography published after his death, "I had no idea whether I was flying north, south, east, or west." Another strange statement says, "Nothing on my map of Florida corresponded with the earth's features I had seen. But if I was not flying over a Florida key, where could I be? Was it possible I had returned to Cuba, that my attempt to read the twirling compasses had put me one-hundred-eighty degrees off course?" He kept flying towards what he believed was the direction of mainland Florida. When he finally reached it, the magnetic compass returned to normal and he was able to finish his trip to St. Louis without further incident.
Travelling Through A Vortex
The book is full of other cases but the main one behind the book comes from the mouth of Bruce Gernon. His first encounter reads like an extremely interesting short-story, thanks to the writing of Rob MacGregor. Gernon was flying with his father and another passenger back in 1970 when he witnessed a cloud forming. This cloud grew in size at a remarkable rate and he was trying to find some way of avoiding it since flying through such a cloud could have disastrous consequences. The cloud continued to grow and another cloud began to form behind them. Since the two clouds were beginning to join, creating a complete ring around the aircraft, Gernon would have to change course and try flying out between them before they joined together to form a giant stormcloud. Time was short and the clouds were already touching each other at the top and bottom - forming a tunnel through the clouds with clear blue sky beyond. Gernon's pilot experience was the only thing that kept them on a straight course through the tunnel which was continuously shrinking. The tunnel turned into a vortex with spiral wisps of clouds circling through the tunnel - think of the stripes on a candy cane. Gernon then felt a strange feeling of weightlessness as the plane passed through the tunnel.
Nothing But The Fog
When they exited and Gernon was finally feeling his weight back in the seat, they noticed all the magnetic navigational instruments were malfunctioning. Gernon contacted radio control in Miami and was told they could not located him - they were invisible to radar and their trasnponder wasn't showing up. Around this time, Gernon noticed something wrong - the clear blue sky at the end of the tunnel had now turned to a dull, grayish white. "Visibility appeared to be more than two miles, but there was absolutely nothing to see - no ocean, no horizon, no sky, only a gray haze." The haze was not accompanied by lightning or rain. Gernon says, "We seemed to be in some sort of fog, but unlike the usual fog where visibility is never much over a few hundred feet, we could see much farther." Since Gernon had no idea which way they were headed, he had to rely on what he calls his "internal compass" to guide him in the correct direction. They continued along until they heard the radio controller yell that he had spotted their airplane over Miami Beach. They were safe.
Time Distortions?
But there was something else very strange they noticed. They had only been flying for 34 minutes and a normal trip from Andros Island to Palm Beach (which he had flown regularly) usually took at least 75 minutes on a direct route. The plane's timer agreed with all 3 of their watches. They had flown for less than half the time they would normally have flown and this flight had been slower and not a direct route due to the fog problems. They did not know what to make of it. Time travel phenomena reported in the Bermuda Triangle cases are by no means unique to this case. There have been many other similiar reports of time lost and time gained - even as much as arriving 6 hours after departure and still having a full tank of gas!
I had to break this one up. Click the link below for the final part including possible causes of The Fog.
Bermuda Triangle - Page 2
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