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00:00:00It's one of the great mysteries of our time.
00:00:06There's something weird going on in that area.
00:00:09For centuries, it has swallowed up its victims.
00:00:12I'm going down, repeat, going down.
00:00:15Who ever heard of five aircraft disappearing in one night?
00:00:19Leaving many buried in an underwater graveyard.
00:00:23They would explore these wrecks and find bodies at the depths of the ocean.
00:00:29But is the story more legend than truth?
00:00:32If you put all the facts down and put it down as nonfiction,
00:00:36people wouldn't believe you.
00:00:38And what can science tell us?
00:00:41I lose control of the airplane that went into a spiral dive
00:00:44and would end up with a disaster.
00:00:46About the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.
00:00:59OK.
00:01:00OK.
00:01:01Big in hoist.
00:01:02I'm in.
00:01:03Rescue briefing.
00:01:04It's complete.
00:01:05Off the coast of southern Florida,
00:01:07the United States Coast Guard has been searching the skies and seas
00:01:11for a twin engine private plane with three passengers on board.
00:01:17Shortly after 11 AM, it disappeared from air traffic control radars.
00:01:21There was an aircraft, a Piper Aztec,
00:01:31that was lost within the area called the Bermuda Triangle
00:01:34this past June of 2005.
00:01:36And the circumstances of that flight are still fairly sketchy.
00:01:41It was a Part 91 flight, which means it's a private flight conducted
00:01:45under instrument flight rules, which means the pilot is in contact
00:01:49with a radar facility for the entire duration of the flight.
00:01:53Coast Guard would launch some of their resources in the area,
00:01:56both in the form of helicopters and in the form of ships.
00:02:01And any other aircraft that might be transiting the area
00:02:05would be asked to either listen for an ELT,
00:02:08an emergency location transmitter,
00:02:10or if they were in VFR conditions,
00:02:12to look for possible survivors.
00:02:16After an exhaustive 24-hour search,
00:02:19no wreckage, no evidence,
00:02:22no survivors are found.
00:02:25The search is suspended.
00:02:29Unfortunately, that happens.
00:02:32And some searches will go on for a longer duration.
00:02:37But in general, a search for a light aircraft
00:02:41that disappears off radar in the middle of the ocean,
00:02:44it's a probably one or two day search at the most.
00:02:47And then those resources are recalled.
00:02:53This recent tragedy is just the latest in a string of mysteries
00:02:57to unfold over what some call
00:02:59the most treacherous waters on the planet,
00:03:03a half million square miles sometimes referred to as
00:03:07the Bermuda Triangle.
00:03:12The Bermuda Triangle is where planes take off,
00:03:15never to be seen again, where ships sail over the horizon,
00:03:19never heard from again.
00:03:21Yachts disappear from the face of the Earth for no known reason.
00:03:26And it's probably the core motivation for more sea stories,
00:03:34legends, and tales of the ocean than any other place
00:03:38in all of the oceans on the Earth.
00:03:43The Bermuda Triangle is an area of the Atlantic Ocean
00:03:46that runs from Miami southeast to Puerto Rico,
00:03:50northeast to Bermuda, and heads west back to Miami.
00:03:57For centuries, the area has been plagued
00:03:59by the unexplained disappearances of planes and ships.
00:04:05The area known as the Bermuda Triangle has a history,
00:04:07and I guess when something happens out here, it's magnified.
00:04:11The triangle is so exotic to people and so attractive
00:04:14because it's the last place on Earth that is undiscovered.
00:04:18Everything else has been physically discovered.
00:04:25As early as the 16th and 17th centuries,
00:04:28European explorers have reported seeing strange lights
00:04:32and finding ships floating intact but devoid of crew.
00:04:40Author Rob Simone finds this a common thread.
00:04:43Woven through the Triangle's folklore.
00:04:46But when it comes to the subject of ghost ships, yes,
00:04:49there has been cases reported of ghost ships
00:04:52from many different wayfaring cultures.
00:04:57In 1780, the warship General Gates disappears.
00:05:01Yet no British vessel claims to sink her.
00:05:05During the 19th century, at least three more stories
00:05:10of ghost ships surface.
00:05:13Cargo and merchant vessels are found silently riding the waves
00:05:17without anyone on board.
00:05:20I think there are things that happen out in sea
00:05:22that can only be described in terms of mythology or poetry
00:05:27because they go beyond the limits of our rational thinking.
00:05:32Throughout the 20th century and still today,
00:05:35commercial, military, and private aircraft
00:05:38have vanished without a trace.
00:05:41The most famous case is that of Flight 19,
00:05:45when five Navy planes disappeared in 1945.
00:05:52In his 2004 book about the Bermuda Triangle,
00:05:55John Quasar suggests that the number of mysterious cases
00:05:58are countless.
00:06:01The old line is that there's 20 aircraft that have disappeared
00:06:05and 50 vessels that have vanished in the history
00:06:07of the Triangle.
00:06:08And you have some websites, you have some books
00:06:11maybe still repeating that, when actually there's
00:06:13about 200 aircraft disappearances in the last 50 years.
00:06:17And if you count all the yachts and smaller vessels,
00:06:20close to probably 1,000, 2,000, who knows?
00:06:23Explanations for what has caused these tragedies
00:06:28run from the scientific to the paranormal.
00:06:33The main theories to explain the Bermuda Triangle
00:06:36have been UFOs.
00:06:37They've been very popular.
00:06:39Power sources from Edgar Cayce's Atlantis.
00:06:43Sea serpents, electromagnetic phenomenon,
00:06:46which bends time and space,
00:06:48or can just disintegrate an aircraft or a ship.
00:06:52Many natural causes, mini canes, subsea earthquakes,
00:06:56plain old clumsy pilots and ship masters.
00:07:00There have been many exotic theories that run the gamut
00:07:02from the very prosaic to the very complex.
00:07:06The US government officially denies
00:07:08there is anything unusual about the area.
00:07:12In fact, the US Board of Geographic Names doesn't even
00:07:15recognize the name Bermuda Triangle.
00:07:21From my understanding, any branch of the government
00:07:25has gone on record to say that there is a mystery happening here.
00:07:29No.
00:07:30It's really not their business to do so.
00:07:32And it's really not in their best interest to do it either.
00:07:35There's a combination of factors at work in this particular area.
00:07:39Beyond the myths, beyond the legends, beyond the speculations,
00:07:42it is a dangerous and mysterious part of the ocean.
00:07:48But are there other explanations that have not yet been fully explored?
00:07:55Well, I think certainly you can explain a lot of the disappearances due to the weather,
00:07:59the inclement weather that comes in very quickly
00:08:01and the sailors that are not prepared for it,
00:08:04whether they have too much sail up or they ran into some strong winds
00:08:07from a water spout or a hurricane or whatever.
00:08:09But I also think there are things out there that we haven't investigated enough,
00:08:13like bubbling of gas from the ocean, which could reduce the buoyancy of ships.
00:08:19Certainly that could affect whether they made it to port or not.
00:08:24December 5, 1945, five pilots and their nine crew members set out
00:08:42on a routine training mission.
00:08:44Their flight plan will take them to the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.
00:08:48Within hours after their takeoff from Fort Lauderdale,
00:08:52the planes and the crew disappear without a trace, never to be found.
00:08:59The famous Flight 19 of the World War II era
00:09:02out of Fort Lauderdale has been hyped over the years.
00:09:06Again, it's one of those stories that has been built upon
00:09:09and built upon as it's been passed around.
00:09:12When it comes to the Flight 19 legend,
00:09:15I seriously doubt that were it not for this particular case,
00:09:18we simply would not have a Bermuda Triangle mystery to this day.
00:09:21It was the disappearance of Flight 19 that spurred some writers
00:09:25to search back in time for other unexplained incidents
00:09:29in and over the waters of the Triangle.
00:09:32They would discover ancient tales of people
00:09:35and even whole ships lost at sea.
00:09:38Long before it got its name, its Bermuda Triangle,
00:09:43there were legends of the Sea of Doom,
00:09:45Graveyard of the Atlantic, Sargasso Graveyard,
00:09:48and they all called to mind an area where ships mysteriously disappeared
00:09:51or were found derelict.
00:09:53So when Flight 19 disappeared in 1945,
00:09:56writers made the connection between these old legends.
00:09:59In 1950, the Associated Press published an article
00:10:03that compiled many of the region's unexplained incidents.
00:10:06Other news reports followed.
00:10:08Then in 1952, it finally got its name as the Watery Triangle
00:10:12by George X. Sand, who wrote an article in Fate magazine.
00:10:15And throughout the 1950s, it was known as the Deadly Triangle.
00:10:20The Bermuda Triangle has become such a legend
00:10:24because there's so much hype about it.
00:10:27The Bermuda Triangle really didn't become much of anything
00:10:30until 1964.
00:10:32That's when journalist Vincent Gaddis
00:10:35coined the phrase Bermuda Triangle
00:10:37in a magazine article for Argosy.
00:10:40The legend began to spread.
00:10:43Media coverage of the Bermuda Triangle
00:10:45mostly relayed stories of vanished planes and ships.
00:10:49Few forwarded any theories to explain
00:10:52the mysterious disappearances.
00:10:55But in 1974, 10 years after the Argosy article,
00:10:59a book called The Bermuda Triangle,
00:11:01An Incredible Saga of Unexplained Disappearances
00:11:04was written by Charles Berlitz.
00:11:07Berlitz's book was more or less theories based on the incidents,
00:11:11while other books were mostly just a compilation of incidents
00:11:14without any insight whatsoever.
00:11:17Berlitz's book was the first to suggest
00:11:19that disappearances, like Flight 19,
00:11:23were caused by mysterious energy anomalies, aliens,
00:11:28and even the lost city of Atlantis.
00:11:33His book sold 5 million copies in hardback,
00:11:36and that's what really gave the area its enigma,
00:11:38and everybody wanted to talk about the triangle.
00:11:43About the same time, filmmaker Richard Weiner produced
00:11:46a documentary about the phenomenon.
00:11:49In it, he gave the region a more ominous name.
00:11:53Well, I like the name The Devil's Triangle better
00:11:55because Bermuda Triangle sounds too much like a honeymoon
00:11:58with a mother-in-law or ex-boyfriend going along.
00:12:01Weiner takes issue with more than the name of the region.
00:12:05He also questions its shape.
00:12:08The Bermuda Triangle is an area, they say it's a triangle,
00:12:12but it's not really.
00:12:13It's really a trapezoid.
00:12:14A trapezoid is a rectangle with no two sides
00:12:18or two angles the same.
00:12:19His film, chronicling the area's bizarre disturbances
00:12:24and unexplained tragedies became an instant cult classic.
00:12:31I thought, well, geez, you know, I'm going to do a film on this.
00:12:36So I was doing a lot of freelance work,
00:12:39and every place I went around this area,
00:12:41supposedly the Triangle, whether Bermuda or Puerto Rico
00:12:45or somewhere in the Caribbean,
00:12:47I would shoot some background footage for this movie.
00:12:50And I had it all pieced together,
00:12:52and then I started researching and getting people
00:12:54that were involved in it, firsthand eyewitnesses.
00:13:00I mean, the way they told it, these people lived through it.
00:13:03And they started, one of them was telling
00:13:05about ships that sailed off, never to be seen again,
00:13:11airplanes that flew into the clouds, never to come back,
00:13:15yachts that sailed off, never to be heard from.
00:13:18Books and movies established the Bermuda Triangle
00:13:21in pop culture.
00:13:23They also reported that the area's unexplained incidents
00:13:26could be traced back for centuries.
00:13:31Early sailors crossing the Atlantic feared a region
00:13:34known as the Sargasso Sea.
00:13:38In the Bermuda Triangle, there are a number of escarpments,
00:13:42they call them, and there's deep channels.
00:13:45These channels are a mile deep.
00:13:48You have the Sargasso Sea, and you go down to the Abyssal Plains.
00:13:51Those are 20,000 feet deep, so you get a perspective
00:13:54of the change in the topography of the bottom.
00:13:58For centuries, ships have sailed into the Sargasso
00:14:02and been immobilized by a lack of wind and motionless current.
00:14:07The earliest alleged Bermuda Triangle incident
00:14:10goes as far back as Christopher Columbus in 1492.
00:14:14And they got into an area known as the Sargasso Sea,
00:14:18which is kind of a large circling area with a lot of seaweed
00:14:22and clutter and things like that.
00:14:26It was these massive deposits of seaweed, waste,
00:14:30and red krill that ancient mariners and Sargasso travelers
00:14:34often mistook for sea serpents.
00:14:38The Triangle is not a superstition of seafarers
00:14:41or in the ports.
00:14:42The enigma of the Triangle can be found as far back
00:14:44as Columbus's log, who was the first to sail the area.
00:14:49He noted that on three occasions,
00:14:51the compass pointed in the wrong direction,
00:14:5311 and a quarter degrees off from the evening reading
00:14:56to the morning reading, which was unexplainable.
00:14:59They also noted that the sea rose without any wind whatsoever,
00:15:04which shocked them all.
00:15:05And then on the eve of discovering the New World,
00:15:08an unexplained light levitated on the horizon
00:15:12and then rose up and then vanished.
00:15:15And you have to think about that for a second.
00:15:17This man was a seasoned sailor.
00:15:20There wasn't much that had goes on in the night sky
00:15:23that he or his crew hadn't already seen.
00:15:26So for him to make such a special way
00:15:28notation about this event, that speaks volumes.
00:15:34However, not everyone considers Columbus
00:15:36to have been a masterful sailor.
00:15:40And of course, when they were crossing the ocean,
00:15:42they were legitimately afraid of what they were getting into
00:15:45because everybody thought the world was flat
00:15:47and they were going to drop off at the edge.
00:15:49And one of the stories is that Columbus saw a UFO.
00:15:57And another one, he saw a strange light at night
00:16:00when they were way out in the ocean.
00:16:02My research on that was Columbus did make a note in his log
00:16:07about a bright light overhead.
00:16:10And all the historians have always assumed that that was a meteorite
00:16:14that flashed across the sky.
00:16:16And another part of the story about Columbus
00:16:19is that the compass was acting strange.
00:16:22And, you know, the tools that Columbus had basically was,
00:16:27he had a compass and he had an astrolabe and he had a log.
00:16:31And those things were imprecise.
00:16:38Miami's inland waters are choppy,
00:16:40and the forecast calls for six-foot-high waves.
00:16:46Either undaunted or unaware, Dan Burek,
00:16:49aboard his cabin cruiser the Witchcraft,
00:16:52sets sail with his friend Patrick Hogan
00:16:54to view the colorful Christmas lights draped across the beachfront.
00:16:58Moments later, their plans change.
00:17:03Burek radioed the Coast Guard that he needed a tow back in.
00:17:07Something had happened.
00:17:08Either he hit something or lost power.
00:17:11He was well noted for his safety precautions.
00:17:14He had built-in floatation in the vessel.
00:17:16All of his seat cushions were floatable.
00:17:18In Miami, the Coast Guard immediately
00:17:20dispatch a rescue team.
00:17:22They were there at 9-18, and there was no trace
00:17:24of the Witchcraft.
00:17:25They scoured the whole area.
00:17:26They even searched 1,500 miles out to see it.
00:17:29It disappeared.
00:17:30You can't say anything else.
00:17:31It should not have disappeared.
00:17:32It should have been found.
00:17:33It is simply part of the enigma of the triangle.
00:17:38Disappearances such as that of the Witchcraft
00:17:41seemingly are nothing new here.
00:17:45I don't know how many instances there are
00:17:47where people are not recovered
00:17:49from having some difficulty in the triangle.
00:17:54For at least three centuries, ships and their passengers
00:17:58have apparently vanished.
00:18:01Passed down, these legends caused 19th century seamen
00:18:04to nickname the area we now know as the Bermuda Triangle
00:18:07as the Sea of Doom and the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
00:18:12Treasure hunter Madeline Burnside has learned how to navigate
00:18:17these underwater cemeteries.
00:18:19The Florida Keys become a real shipwreck graveyard.
00:18:22Shipwrecks here are actually piled up.
00:18:25You locate a 19th century wreck, and that will have some interest.
00:18:30But as you dig down, there'll be an 18th century wreck,
00:18:33and under that, a 17th century wreck.
00:18:35One of the earliest claims of an unexplained disappearance
00:18:40in the triangle happened in 1780 when the United States warship,
00:18:45the General Gates, was inexplicably lost.
00:18:51The ship simply disappeared between far-flung ports,
00:18:54and no one knew what happened to it.
00:18:57Many other mysteries purported to have taken place
00:19:00inside the triangle are similar in nature.
00:19:03In 1840, the French ship, the Rosalie,
00:19:06was found adrift with its cargo intact.
00:19:09But as for the crew, it's not that they were found dead,
00:19:14but that they were never found at all.
00:19:18Larry Cush, author of the Bermuda Triangle Solved,
00:19:22is skeptical about the account of the Rosalie.
00:19:26Nobody has presented any proof that it's a mystery.
00:19:31In the case of the Rosalie in 1840,
00:19:34it was found drifting about in the Bahamas somewhere.
00:19:38And try as hard as I could contacting all the sources
00:19:43that I could in the Bahamas and Lloyds of Lending
00:19:45and all these places, I could not find any evidence
00:19:50that any ship named the Rosalie had a problem in there,
00:19:55that that ship ever existed.
00:19:58But there are many strange stories of lost ships
00:20:02connected to the triangle.
00:20:04The Mary Celeste in, I believe it was 1872,
00:20:09was found abandoned at sea.
00:20:11And the usual thing with an abandoned ship,
00:20:14there was food on the table.
00:20:15It was in perfect order.
00:20:16And nobody could understand why it had been abandoned at sea,
00:20:21and the people were never found.
00:20:26Bound for Genoa, the Mary Celeste carried a crew of 10.
00:20:30When the Celeste was found on the 4th of December,
00:20:33the search party discovered cups of coffee still warm,
00:20:36set upon a table, undisturbed.
00:20:40While the Mary Celeste case is documented,
00:20:43Larry Cush claims it is part of a Bermuda Triangle myth.
00:20:48The Mary Celeste is not at all a mystery of the Bermuda Triangle
00:20:53because it happened about 3,000 miles to the east.
00:20:58Regardless, stories of doomed ships and crews that vanish
00:21:02dominate triangle lore.
00:21:06If at least some of these cases are true,
00:21:09what could be the cause?
00:21:11Piracy has been around as long as ships have set sail.
00:21:16Out on the high seas, it's every man for himself.
00:21:22That's part of the excitement.
00:21:24It's also part of the danger.
00:21:28According to experts, the area of the Bermuda Triangle
00:21:31was a favorite playground for some of history's
00:21:33most notorious pirates.
00:21:36Right around the Keys, and especially the Bermuda Triangle,
00:21:38the pirates were sailing around this area
00:21:40because it's directly through the trade route
00:21:42from South America, Latin America, Cartagena,
00:21:45through to Europe.
00:21:47The most common pirates around the area
00:21:49were Blackbeard, which everybody knows about,
00:21:51Calico Jack, who was most famous for having the two women pirates,
00:21:54and also Black Caesar.
00:21:56Some of these ships might have run afoul
00:21:58of some pretty nasty pirates.
00:22:00Their ships could have been plundered,
00:22:02their people sold into slavery,
00:22:04or worse, thrown off the side.
00:22:09Another theory floated is that a ship's crew
00:22:12could have been wiped out by diseases carried by slaves.
00:22:17But there is also a particular thing
00:22:19that happened fairly commonly,
00:22:21and that is that both the crew and the Africans
00:22:25would contract ophthalmia, which renders you blind.
00:22:29There are known cases of both the crew and, of course,
00:22:34the Africans dying in huge numbers.
00:22:38A lot of people freaked out and really just jumped into the ocean
00:22:41because they were terrified.
00:22:42They didn't want to live day to day blind.
00:22:46But neither disease nor piracy explains
00:22:49one of the most unusual triangle legends.
00:22:53On March 4, 1918, the Cyclops, a 542-foot Navy collier,
00:22:59left Barbados bound for Norfolk, Virginia.
00:23:03On board was a crew of 309 men.
00:23:08USS Cyclops was coming up from South America,
00:23:12and it had a load of iron ore on it.
00:23:17It was a US Navy ship, and it disappeared.
00:23:20And that added to the story of the Devil's Triangle
00:23:24and the Bermuda Triangle.
00:23:28Strangely, although the Cyclops was among the first ships
00:23:31ever radio equipped, it never issued so much
00:23:34as even the most preliminary SOS.
00:23:38I can't come out with the right adjectives
00:23:40to describe what happened aboard that ship.
00:23:44If you put all the facts down and put it down as nonfiction,
00:23:49people wouldn't believe you.
00:23:51They say, this has to be fiction.
00:23:52This can't be true.
00:23:54The Navy suspected the boat was attacked
00:23:56by an enemy submarine.
00:23:59But many years later, another fantastic theory emerged
00:24:02to explain the loss of the Cyclops and other missing vessels.
00:24:07I think among the most famous fabled dangers
00:24:10of the Bermuda Triangle is the infamous giant squid.
00:24:14This giant thing comes up.
00:24:19It's got a hand-like form.
00:24:21It clasps the tiny ship, which is actually a huge ship
00:24:24that is now terrified because this thing is even more giant.
00:24:27And it pulls it down for purposes unknown.
00:24:31But that is part of the whole myth.
00:24:33While at first glance it sounds far-fetched,
00:24:37the existence of a species of cephalopod called
00:24:40the giant octopus is no myth.
00:24:45In 1896, a carcass was found on the beach in St. Augustine
00:24:49by two boys.
00:24:50And they reported it to Yale University.
00:24:53And it would have been 200 feet long.
00:24:55At the time, scientists identified the carcass
00:24:58as a giant octopus.
00:25:00Based in part on this finding, in 1918,
00:25:04the Literary Digest speculated that a giant octopus might
00:25:08have seized upon the Cyclops and brought it down
00:25:11with its tentacles.
00:25:14The St. Augustine carcass turned out
00:25:16to be a section of whale.
00:25:20Dr. Jeff Marlyov studies octopus behavior
00:25:23at the Vancouver Aquarium.
00:25:25Giant octopus only occur in the Northeast Pacific Ocean.
00:25:32The kind of octopus that might occur
00:25:34in the region of the Bermuda Triangle
00:25:36would be a very small species.
00:25:37And it would most likely be associated
00:25:39with rocky drop-offs from the islands,
00:25:41not with the center area of the Bermuda Triangle,
00:25:45which is basically sand bottom.
00:25:47Now, when people talk about giant octopuses attacking boats,
00:25:51it likely stems from these very large,
00:25:54very old stories from the days of whaling
00:25:57and sailing ship exploration,
00:25:59when there were engravings showing some kind
00:26:03of tentacled animal attacking small rowboats and such.
00:26:06Most likely, this would not be an octopus.
00:26:09The only species that could conceivably attack a small boat
00:26:13would be relatives of octopuses, the giant squids.
00:26:17Ah, the legend of the giant squid.
00:26:20Actually, it's not a legend.
00:26:21They exist.
00:26:22Some of them over 150 feet long, if you can imagine this.
00:26:28In October 2005, Japanese scientists made a startling discovery
00:26:33off the coast of Tokyo near the Bonin Islands,
00:26:37a giant squid close to 30 feet in length.
00:26:41Researchers from Japan's National Science Museum
00:26:44identified the creature as an architeuthis,
00:26:47a rare species that seizes upon bait with extreme force
00:26:51and violence.
00:26:53We don't know what lies under the depths of the ocean.
00:26:56Could very well be a giant creature that is particular
00:27:01to that part of the ocean.
00:27:03Maybe its food source is contained there.
00:27:05We don't know.
00:27:06But it could explain some of the ships
00:27:09that were mysteriously lost.
00:27:21Among the more creative explanations for strange occurrences
00:27:24within the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle
00:27:26is one that has roots in ancient Greece with the lost city
00:27:31of Atlantis.
00:27:35Atlantis is a story told by Plato approximately 400 BC.
00:27:42It is a story of a civilization that he described
00:27:47as being larger than Asia and Africa combined
00:27:51that sank into the Atlantic Ocean outside the pillars of Hercules.
00:27:57He described it in great detail.
00:27:59It had giant palaces and gold encrusted decorations
00:28:04and springs that ran hot and cold running water
00:28:07and it grew all kinds of stuff.
00:28:09But Atlantis met with a swift and violent demise.
00:28:14He actually described an island continent of Atlantis.
00:28:18And that continent exploded volcanically.
00:28:23And then he described it having this catastrophe,
00:28:27a natural catastrophe of volcanic explosions
00:28:30and sinking into the sea in a very short period of time.
00:28:39The mystery of where the lost city of Atlantis lies
00:28:42has inspired historians and fortune seekers alike.
00:28:48In the 1930s, the famous clairvoyant Edgar Cayce believed
00:28:52he had solved the mystery when he was contacted by the soul
00:28:55of an Atlantean while in a trance.
00:28:58Edgar Cayce was a prophet, a visionary, who lost his voice
00:29:07when he was a teenager and couldn't talk anymore.
00:29:11And so he communicated by telling people in this hoarse whisper
00:29:17what he had dreamt.
00:29:19And he had all these dreams.
00:29:21And what started on the basis of his dreams
00:29:24was this enormous society that still exists.
00:29:28Cayce was convinced that the lost civilization lay under the sea,
00:29:33where the island of Bimini now stands,
00:29:36sitting in the eye of the Bermuda Triangle.
00:29:39Cayce said that Atlantis existed as a civilization 50,000 years ago,
00:29:44and it was going to rise up from the sea in 1968 in the Bahamas.
00:29:52Bill Donato dives in the waters around Bimini
00:29:55in search of artifacts from Atlantis.
00:30:00Most people don't realize that the Bahamas, for example,
00:30:02were a very large land mass of thousands of square miles
00:30:06before the end of the Pleistocene.
00:30:08Around 9,600.
00:30:10In fact, the islands out there would be seven miles from shore,
00:30:14as opposed to what they are now.
00:30:15And in the Bahamas, Bimini would literally have been a mountain.
00:30:18It was, it would be the highest point.
00:30:22If there was indeed an advanced civilization
00:30:25that sank into the sea,
00:30:27then its technology would also have been lost
00:30:30to the watery depths.
00:30:33According to Cayce and his followers,
00:30:35powerful Atlantean crystals that generate light-emitting energy
00:30:39may still remain buried.
00:30:42According to Cayce, the great crystal itself,
00:30:45the way he describes it, suggested it was something
00:30:47that was cylindrical.
00:30:48He had found a quartz source that was growing near something
00:30:52that was naturally radioactive.
00:30:56Could it be that the power these crystals emit
00:30:58is so strong that it could cause ships and planes to disappear?
00:31:05As far-fetched as this may seem,
00:31:07reports of magnetic anomalies in the Bermuda Triangle
00:31:10have been recorded, lending another thread of possibility
00:31:14to those who believe.
00:31:15Well, I believe that if there was an Atlantis and they were advanced,
00:31:24that they probably did have some way to harness this energy.
00:31:30But not everyone is convinced.
00:31:33I don't know how somebody would think
00:31:36that Atlantis would be causing this.
00:31:38I don't know if there are, like, death rays from Atlantis
00:31:40or something.
00:31:41So I have never been able to figure out
00:31:44why anybody would think that Atlantis
00:31:46has anything to do with disappearing ships and airplanes.
00:31:52To prove that Atlantis really does exist at this site,
00:31:55Edgar Cayce's followers point to a long, smooth configuration
00:31:59of rocks that appear to have been fitted together by human hands.
00:32:04A 200-foot-long structure known to some as the Bimini Wall
00:32:08and others as the Bimini Road.
00:32:12The Bimini Wall is, as originally discovered,
00:32:17was a series of what looked like large paving stones underwater.
00:32:23And scuba divers found these things
00:32:25and could not explain them in geological terms.
00:32:29And so they therefore made the assumption
00:32:32that this must be somehow related to some underwater city,
00:32:36perhaps Atlantis.
00:32:39In order to investigate the theory
00:32:41that a magnetic force emanating from Atlantis
00:32:43could cause planes and ships to disappear in the triangle,
00:32:47one has first to determine whether the story of Atlantis
00:32:50is real in the first place.
00:32:55At the United States Geological Survey
00:32:57in St. Petersburg, Florida, geologist Eugene Shin
00:33:00has spent more than 30 years studying the formations near Bimini.
00:33:06Back in the mid-'70s, I got involved in looking at the famous road
00:33:13or wall, depending on what you would call it, off of Bimini.
00:33:17Many people thought that was something to do with Atlantis.
00:33:21I would admit that when you see it underwater,
00:33:23it's very impressive and has a man-made look to it.
00:33:28Shin bore down into the structure
00:33:30and took core samples from several parts of the wall.
00:33:34Back at his lab, he analyzed the rocks
00:33:36to determine their age, makeup, and origin.
00:33:41We sliced these cores so that we could see
00:33:44if the bedding was dipping that way or this way or so on.
00:33:47Then we x-rayed them to make the bedding show up better.
00:33:50What we did not find is any evidence of anything made by humans.
00:33:57But those who believe in the lost city of Atlantis
00:34:00are undeterred by the findings.
00:34:03I do have belief in the facts
00:34:06that Atlantis is a historical fact.
00:34:09Although we don't have artifacts,
00:34:10I believe eventually it will be proven historically
00:34:14that Atlantis did exist.
00:34:16But so far as being the principal civilization
00:34:18that's called Atlantis, I don't believe
00:34:20that the Bahamas was that place.
00:34:24If Atlantis does not exist under Bimini,
00:34:27then the theory of energy crystals disrupting ships and planes
00:34:30in the triangle may be nothing more than fantasy.
00:34:35The Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis have really nothing in common,
00:34:38except that they're both mythological made-up stories.
00:34:43One more point in its history.
00:34:45One more point in the world
00:34:48by the war that was something sexual
00:34:50and that's not at the moment in the time.
00:34:56December 5th, 1945.
00:34:59As the afternoon sun begins its journey to the west,
00:35:02the crew of the ill-fated Flight 19
00:35:05takes off toward the east, on the first leg of their sortie.
00:35:09The official weather observations
00:35:14from Naval Air Station, Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
00:35:17indicate winds are starting to gust,
00:35:19blowing toward the east at over 30 knots,
00:35:22and clouds are forming at various altitudes.
00:35:30When they took off, the wind, we had prevailing winds,
00:35:35trade winds coming from the southeast,
00:35:39and that's our prevailing winds in South Florida
00:35:41and the Bahamas.
00:35:43But during their flight, we got a weather change.
00:35:47The five aircraft, Grumman Avenger Torpedo Bombers,
00:35:51are piloted by Ensign Joseph Bossie,
00:35:55Second Lieutenant James Gerber, Captain George Stivers,
00:36:02Captain Joseph Powers, Jr., and Lieutenant Charles Taylor,
00:36:07the flight leader.
00:36:09Each plane carries a pilot, bombardier, and gunner,
00:36:12except for one, whose gunner, Alan Kosner,
00:36:15is curiously unable to make the flight.
00:36:19He had a strange feeling that he didn't want to fly that day,
00:36:23and so he begged off and got out of that flight.
00:36:26The mission calls for the team to fly east for 56 miles
00:36:30towards Hannon Chicken Shoals, part of the Bahama Island
00:36:34chain, to conduct a low-level bombing exercise.
00:36:40David White was a flight instructor stationed
00:36:42at Fort Lauderdale during the time of the Flight 19 tragedy.
00:36:46Flight 19, on the day that they turned up missing,
00:36:50was on a routine navigational training flight.
00:36:53And that is to fly out to the Henn and Chicken Islands,
00:36:58about 60 miles straight east of here.
00:37:01And we had a sunken ship out there that we used
00:37:03to drop miniature smoke bombs on.
00:37:06And so as an instructor, I would fly down low to the water,
00:37:09circle around, and score the students
00:37:13as they dropped their smoke bombs.
00:37:18The first signs of trouble appear just two hours
00:37:21into the flight.
00:37:27Howard, what heading does your compass read?
00:37:31Flight 19, mystery is that the flight instructor,
00:37:36he said that his compasses were out.
00:37:38Well, if you're in a thunderstorm,
00:37:40there were thunderstorms in the area.
00:37:42A thunderstorm will make a magnetic compass spin,
00:37:46and you just kind of lose control.
00:37:51But none of the airmen report a storm.
00:37:54The five pilots compare compass readings,
00:37:57but none can agree on the direction they are heading.
00:38:01I don't know where we are.
00:38:03We must have gotten lost on that last turn.
00:38:06Near Flight 19's operational base in Fort Lauderdale,
00:38:09a pilot overhears Taylor and Powers debating their present course.
00:38:13Lieutenant Robert Cox tries to lend assistance.
00:38:17This is Fox Trotango, 7-4, plane or boat calling Powers.
00:38:24Please identify yourself so that someone can help you.
00:38:27Both of my compasses are out.
00:38:31I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
00:38:35I'm over land, but it's broken.
00:38:38Cox tells Taylor to orient his plane by positioning the western sun
00:38:43on his port side, and instructs Taylor to lead the squadron
00:38:47northward as Cox flies to the south.
00:38:52But it was a very unusual circumstance.
00:38:54I've flown over that flight so many times, that route,
00:38:58and there's no way that when you're out over the ocean here
00:39:01off the east coast of Florida, and you get lost,
00:39:04well, go to the west, fly west toward the sun.
00:39:09He didn't do it.
00:39:11I know where I am now.
00:39:13I'm at 2,300 feet.
00:39:16Do not come after me.
00:39:19Roger, you're at 2,300 feet.
00:39:21I'm coming to meet you anyhow.
00:39:24Lieutenant Cox flies around the southern tip of the mainland
00:39:26and the Florida Keys in conditions described as CAVU,
00:39:31or Clear and Visibility Unlimited.
00:39:35He sees no sign of the five Avengers,
00:39:38but hears intermittent radio transmissions from flight 19
00:39:41growing fainter.
00:39:42Do you read?
00:39:43To the east, the skies over the Bahamas
00:39:46are shrouded in low clouds.
00:39:51I think a well-prepared flight would not get
00:39:55into that kind of confusion.
00:39:58If you're depending on what you see down below,
00:40:02and you're looking at the Bahamas or the Florida Keys,
00:40:07and if that is your crutch or your dependence for navigation,
00:40:13then I can see where things could get very confused.
00:40:18The Navy's Air-Sea Rescue Task Unit overhears a transmission
00:40:22between the flight 19 pilots that reveals at least one of them
00:40:26thinks they are flying in the wrong direction.
00:40:31Radio operators up and down the Florida coast
00:40:34strain to hear the pilot's fading voices.
00:40:37Repeat once again.
00:40:39This is on the front, hang on 28.
00:40:42And roll their gun.
00:40:47This, what you might call a tragedy of errors,
00:40:51rather than a comedy of errors, at least one or two
00:40:56of the pilots of the planes in the flight were heard on the air
00:41:02saying, well, let's fly due west.
00:41:05We certainly can do no worse if we're lost than flying due west.
00:41:12They didn't say all of that, but they were urging the flight
00:41:15leader to get the flight on a heading of due west.
00:41:19And that would have been smart.
00:41:22Minute by minute, radio operators
00:41:24try every possible frequency to make contact with flight 19.
00:41:29Only the distant voices of the pilots
00:41:31are heard questioning their course, their fuel, their fate.
00:41:40When the first man gets to his last 10 gallons of gas,
00:41:44we'll all land in the water together.
00:41:48Does everyone understand?
00:41:54Sir, can you repeat that?
00:42:00At 7.04, the last transmission is received from flight 19.
00:42:06The pilots are never heard from again.
00:42:08Within minutes, the Navy dispatch a Martin mariner
00:42:13with a crew of 13 to search for the missing planes.
00:42:18But soon, radio communication with the mariner is also lost.
00:42:23So this added to the mystery.
00:42:24Now they had this search plane that was also missing.
00:42:28The SS Gaines Mill patrolling off the waters of Cape Canaveral
00:42:32witnesses a giant fireball slowly fall from the sky.
00:42:39The ship races to the point of impact only
00:42:42to find an oil slick shimmering on the surface.
00:42:45Additional search and rescue units are deployed.
00:42:49Franklin Daly is one of the hundreds who tried
00:42:51to find the missing aviators.
00:42:53And we spent about four hours just combing the ocean,
00:42:58just making tracks up and down the Atlantic Ocean
00:43:01to see if we could see what we presume might be some wreckage
00:43:06or life preserver or something from one of those aircraft.
00:43:10We never saw anything.
00:43:14So in one night, six aircraft and 27 naval personnel
00:43:17simply vanished without trace.
00:43:20The search for Flight 19 lasts five days,
00:43:23ending on December 10, 1945.
00:43:28A board of investigation immediately gathers radio logs,
00:43:32transcripts, charts, weather data, and testimonies
00:43:35to determine what went wrong.
00:43:37On January 24, they conclude that the primary reason
00:43:41for the disappearance of Flight 19 is the confusion
00:43:45of flight leader Charles Taylor.
00:43:49But objections to the determinations from the pilots'
00:43:52families and naval personnel initiates a review
00:43:55of the facts by the Navy's Judge Advocate General, or JAG.
00:44:00On August 23, 1946, the official determination is reversed,
00:44:05stating that Lieutenant Taylor had been blamed erroneously
00:44:08for the unfortunate incident, and the five planes disappeared
00:44:13as a result of causes or reasons unknown.
00:44:17Flight 19 is so famous because whoever
00:44:19heard of five aircraft disappearing in one night?
00:44:22At the time, the popular press associated so many dramatic lines
00:44:25with the flight, supposedly, the last words coming from it
00:44:30are, I am lost.
00:44:32And after that, there was nothing ever reported,
00:44:34so it was quite dramatic, the way it was reported.
00:44:36As far as Bermuda Triangle mysteries goes,
00:44:39Flight 19 is by far the biggest mystery.
00:44:44It was a very confusing incident.
00:44:53In a region plagued by shipwrecks and plane crashes,
00:44:56one 1945 accident begs a closer look.
00:45:01Flight 19 is one of these cases which, regardless of which theory
00:45:06people go for, to a great extent, still defies explanation.
00:45:11And, you know, it wasn't just one aircraft that vanished.
00:45:13It was a whole fleet of aircraft.
00:45:16So what is the most likely cause of the most legendary of all
00:45:20Bermuda Triangle mysteries?
00:45:22Aviation accident investigator Peter Leffy
00:45:24has examined all available flight records
00:45:27and reconstructed the facts of Flight 19 minute by minute.
00:45:32The first unusual notation comes from before the squadron even
00:45:36left the ground.
00:45:38Well, the significant aspect of that
00:45:41is that the flight commander, Lieutenant Taylor,
00:45:44asked to be relieved of his obligation for the flight.
00:45:49He arrived at the briefing room late.
00:45:50The flight was late taking off because of his tardiness.
00:45:54And it was never explained why he wanted to be relieved of command
00:46:00that day, whether or not he had any psychological problems,
00:46:05any stress on him, he wasn't feeling well medically.
00:46:10But the flight leader's request was denied.
00:46:13Other than Taylor's questionable health,
00:46:16he was an accomplished pilot.
00:46:18Taylor, who was the flight commander,
00:46:21had approximately 2,500 hours.
00:46:23He was a well-qualified pilot, although he wasn't particularly
00:46:27familiar with this area.
00:46:29The other pilots all had in the range of 300 hours,
00:46:33which we would all consider quite a low-time pilot.
00:46:38Already behind schedule, Taylor and his students
00:46:41finally depart on the first leg of their mission.
00:46:45Flight 19 was a military training flight that
00:46:49left Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and went out to the east
00:46:54over the Atlantic Ocean to do some bombing practice.
00:47:00Afterwards, the flight continues to the east.
00:47:05Then turn to a north-northwest heading,
00:47:07which would bring him up this way for a fixed number of miles,
00:47:13and then make a turn to the southwest like this,
00:47:16which would have brought him right back into Fort Lauderdale.
00:47:20The training mission includes a basic navigation
00:47:22exercise learned by all pilots, ironically
00:47:25called dead reckoning.
00:47:28Well, dead reckoning navigation is a form of navigation
00:47:32where you use time, speed, and distance.
00:47:35So it doesn't rely on ground-based radio navigation aids.
00:47:41A critical component to planning such a flight
00:47:44is consideration of prevailing wind currents.
00:47:47Well, the winds were primarily from the southwest
00:47:51or west-southwest, so they would actually add airspeed
00:47:56or ground speed to the flight.
00:47:58So they might have been getting in the area of 20 to 25 knots
00:48:03of push.
00:48:03And that push would have moved them even further out
00:48:08than they were anticipating.
00:48:11Less than two hours into the mission,
00:48:13the first sign of trouble, Commander Taylor
00:48:17senses something is wrong.
00:48:20At some point, either during the second leg
00:48:23or during the third leg, when they turn to the north-northwest
00:48:27on a heading of, I believe, 346 degrees true,
00:48:32that Taylor became convinced that they somehow
00:48:38had made a wrong turn.
00:48:40I don't know where we are.
00:48:42We must have gotten lost on that last turn.
00:48:45Taylor next reports problems with his compass.
00:48:48Howard, what heading does your compass read?
00:48:52Pilots are typically trained, particularly in instrument
00:48:55conditions, to rely on their instruments and not
00:48:58to fly by the seat of the pants.
00:49:00Without a compass, Taylor relies on the horizon
00:49:03and landmarks for direction.
00:49:05Both of my compasses are out.
00:49:08I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
00:49:11I'm over land, but it's broken.
00:49:16He was seeing land, and he had been formerly based in Miami
00:49:21and had been familiar with the Keys.
00:49:22He said, ah, we're over the Keys.
00:49:25I don't know how we got here, but we're over the Florida Keys.
00:49:28And at this point in time, he's so disoriented that he thinks
00:49:33he's in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:49:35According to radio transmission transcripts,
00:49:38Taylor's confusion about his location is overheard
00:49:40by another pilot flying above the mainland.
00:49:44This is Foxtrot Tango, 7-4, plane or boat calling powers.
00:49:48Please identify yourself so that someone can help you.
00:49:51Flight number 74, commanded by Lieutenant Cox.
00:49:56And part of the conversation was that Taylor communicated
00:50:03to Cox that he felt he was over the Florida Keys
00:50:08and he needed to find his way back to Fort Lauderdale.
00:50:12Communication between the pilots is fading.
00:50:16Repeat once again.
00:50:18This is Fox Front, 8-28.
00:50:21You're going to freeze down.
00:50:26In the case of these Flight 19 flying easterly out into the ocean,
00:50:31it should be obvious that the farther you got away
00:50:36from the receiving station, the weaker the signal would get.
00:50:39Eventually, you get out of range of the station
00:50:41and you don't receive a signal at all.
00:50:44And as Cox flew south, the transmissions between the two
00:50:48aircraft became weaker and weaker.
00:50:51They were diverging rather than converging.
00:50:54And that is significant evidence that helps us be sure
00:51:00that Taylor was never anywhere near the Florida Keys.
00:51:05Radio operators on the mainland mark Flight 19's position far
00:51:09from the Gulf Coast of Florida.
00:51:11According to the triangulation that they determined
00:51:14from radio triangulation, he was somewhere out here
00:51:18in the Atlantic Ocean, about up in this area, I would say.
00:51:23These reports indicate that Taylor was flying over the Bahama
00:51:27Islands and mistook them for the Florida Keys.
00:51:31In radio logs, Peter Leffey has discovered a clue that
00:51:34illustrates Taylor's worsening confusion.
00:51:38This is MT-28.
00:51:40I read you.
00:51:42Not clear, but I read you.
00:51:44When he started calling himself MT-28 instead of FT-28,
00:51:50that was a clear indication that his mental function was
00:51:55starting to diminish, and he's under the belief
00:51:59that he's somewhere where he isn't.
00:52:01Now, all of these things could be consistent with his mental
00:52:07status not being up to par, and that relates back
00:52:13to his asking to be relieved of command on that particular day.
00:52:18Could Taylor's health have actually
00:52:20impaired his ability to fly the plane?
00:52:23Pilot fatigue and confusion is a very real problem in aviation.
00:52:28Ronald Oberholzer is the chief instructor
00:52:31for American Flying Academy.
00:52:33He demonstrates a life-threatening condition
00:52:35called spatial disorientation, which
00:52:37can occur when a pilot's vision becomes blurred
00:52:40or his visual reference is limited.
00:52:43I put a pair of goggles on that restricted my vision,
00:52:46and I turned my head down so that I couldn't see the instruments
00:52:49in the airplane, and I attempted to fly the airplane solely
00:52:53by my body motion, how my body felt, what it was telling me
00:52:59that I was doing.
00:53:00And we found out that I can't, even as an experienced pilot,
00:53:05that I cannot keep the airplane straight and level
00:53:08under those conditions.
00:53:09And eventually, in a very short period of time,
00:53:12the airplane ended up in a right turn with the nose down
00:53:16and it's accelerating.
00:53:18And it's what we call a spiral dive.
00:53:21And of course, at that point, I looked up
00:53:23and referenced my instruments in the outside
00:53:26and righted the airplane.
00:53:28But that's a demonstration of what can happen.
00:53:31If Taylor was disoriented and flying
00:53:33with inaccurate instruments, why didn't he defer navigation
00:53:37to one of the student pilots?
00:53:40Those pilots are really relying on the flight commander
00:53:45to make the ultimate decision.
00:53:47And the flight commander, in this case,
00:53:49was completely confused and totally lost as far as where
00:53:54he thought he was versus where he was.
00:53:57The flight started to proceed on a heading of 270,
00:54:00back towards land.
00:54:02And there was a fix obtained on the flight
00:54:06off of New Smyrna, Florida, approximately 130 miles offshore.
00:54:12Another transmission is intercepted
00:54:14that reports the flight may have turned back to the east.
00:54:19And at that location, they had approximately 20 minutes
00:54:23of fuel left.
00:54:24They would have never made land even
00:54:26if they knew where they were.
00:54:29As the sun sets, the Avengers will be close
00:54:32to running out of fuel.
00:54:36When the first man gets to his last 10 gallons of gas,
00:54:41we'll all land in the water together.
00:54:44Does everyone understand?
00:54:52Although it's not 100%, and they made a decision
00:54:58that if they were going to go down,
00:55:00they would go down together.
00:55:02I think they felt that they were so lost at this point in time,
00:55:06they weren't going to find land.
00:55:08And that if they were going to ditch,
00:55:09they'd have a better chance of being picked up
00:55:11if they were together.
00:55:12Knowing that a ditch into rough seas
00:55:15has slim chance of survival, why would the pilots of Flight
00:55:1819 follow Taylor into the water?
00:55:21Well, in the military operations like that,
00:55:25where you're doing formation flyings,
00:55:27the pilots are taught to follow the leader.
00:55:29And that's the way, just the way it is.
00:55:33So if the leader makes a mistake and flies into a mountain,
00:55:36usually everybody else in the formation
00:55:38flies into the mountain also.
00:55:42Official records declare 7.04 PM
00:55:45as the final transmission of Flight 19.
00:55:47Hours later, contact is lost with one of the search teams,
00:55:59a Mariner seaplane with a crew of 13.
00:56:02This aircraft proceeded up the coast of Florida
00:56:04to New Smyrna, and then turned east
00:56:07and started flying offshore.
00:56:09And during its course offshore, it disappeared from radar.
00:56:15There are eyewitness reports of a giant fireball
00:56:18plummeting to the ocean.
00:56:20Is it possible that the missing Mariner blew up?
00:56:25Leffy thinks that's exactly what happened.
00:56:29It's unusual for an aircraft to explode,
00:56:31but an aircraft like that loaded with over 1,000 gallons
00:56:36of aviation fuel, high volatility, very, very prone
00:56:42to an in-flight explosion if someone smokes in the aircraft.
00:56:47It's very, very tragic, but really not out of the realm
00:56:52of something that might be ordinary.
00:56:56Although no wreckage was ever found of the Five Avengers
00:56:59or the Mariner, investigator Peter Leffy
00:57:02thinks the records speak for themselves.
00:57:06Well, the conclusions I reached after reviewing a tremendous amount
00:57:09of information about Flight 19, there was nothing unusual about it.
00:57:13In most airplane accidents, one finds that it's not a single problem
00:57:21that brings the airplane down.
00:57:23It's a compounding of one problem on top of another problem
00:57:27on top of another problem until the pilot is overwhelmed
00:57:30with his ability to manage multiple problems simultaneously.
00:57:35And in this case, we start to see a multiplicity of problems,
00:57:39bad weather, disorientation, a belief
00:57:44that he's somewhere where he isn't.
00:57:48Leffy contends the tragedy is no mystery at all.
00:57:53But I saw nothing to suggest any anomalies that would suggest
00:57:59anything other than spatial disorientation of a flight leader.
00:58:03I didn't see anything to suggest aliens, supernatural forces,
00:58:08magnetic anomalies, gas clouds, or anything out of the ordinary.
00:58:22Hurricanes, lightning storms, water spouts,
00:58:31the region known as the Bermuda Triangle is notorious for erratic,
00:58:37often violent, changes in weather.
00:58:41The United States Coast Guard are exceptionally experienced
00:58:44at responding to distress calls off the sandy Florida beaches.
00:58:50On average, they receive about 8,000 distress calls annually
00:58:53from this area, 700 calls a month, close to 25 calls each day.
00:59:00The Coast Guard attributes most of the accidents
00:59:02to human error, mechanical failure,
00:59:05and the area's harsh weather conditions.
00:59:09South Florida is prone to having thunderstorms and squalls blow up
00:59:13all the time in this area.
00:59:15Factors that would make these waters difficult to navigate
00:59:19are the same factors we would find anywhere else.
00:59:21People not being prepared, people drinking while boating.
00:59:24Each year, the Bermuda Triangle is the site of numerous tropical
00:59:31storms and hurricanes.
00:59:34Could some of the many accidents in the Triangle simply be a result
00:59:37of volatile weather?
00:59:40The Bermuda Triangle is a special area, both meteorologically
00:59:44and oceanographically.
00:59:46It's an area where cold air and warm air meet,
00:59:49and whenever you have two different air masses meeting,
00:59:51you get severe weather.
00:59:53Bart Hagermeyer is head meteorologist
00:59:55at the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Florida.
00:59:59We're responsible for forecasting the marine conditions
01:00:01off the east coast of Florida.
01:00:02And we know it's a really wild and dynamic marine environment.
01:00:06Hagermeyer has been an eyewitness to innumerable hurricanes.
01:00:12The most awe-inspiring one for us was back in August of 1992
01:00:17when Hurricane Andrew was moving over the Bahamas.
01:00:19And so you could tell just by looking at the radar
01:00:21that it was going to be terrible.
01:00:24Andrew left 41 dead and caused $25 billion of damage
01:00:28in Florida alone.
01:00:34The 2005 hurricane season was a terrifying reminder
01:00:38of the destructive power that can be spawned in the waters
01:00:41off Florida.
01:00:43Off the east coast of Florida, the Caribbean,
01:00:45the Bahamas area, it's a very dynamic area.
01:00:47I mean, the weather can evolve rather rapidly.
01:00:50A good example is just that we're working the hurricane season
01:00:53here, and we've had four storms develop right over the Bahamas area
01:00:57this year, which is really unprecedented.
01:01:00Hagermeyer and his colleagues don't put much stock
01:01:03in the legends of the Bermuda Triangle.
01:01:06They have more tangible issues to contend with.
01:01:10In the National Weather Service, we're trying to predict the weather
01:01:13over the land and over the sea, and we've got a big enough challenge
01:01:16forecasting the weather for the normal without worrying
01:01:21about the paranormal.
01:01:22And our job is to get the forecast and get the information out
01:01:25to try and keep people safe.
01:01:29The region's powerful storms can often catch both experienced
01:01:33and inexperienced boaters by surprise.
01:01:35If you're not watching the weather before you go out because you
01:01:39didn't take a safe boating class, you're going to run into trouble.
01:01:42You're going to run into some heavy winds, some heavy rain.
01:01:48There's the potential for strong currents, strong winds, bad weather,
01:01:55thunderstorm, and all of these things add up to naturally occurring
01:02:01phenomenon that increase the probability of an accident.
01:02:06Adding to the possibility of fatal accidents
01:02:09is the presence of dangerous water spouts,
01:02:13tornadoes that pass over the sea and pick up a column of water.
01:02:18For centuries, these ocean twisters were a genuine fear
01:02:21for any sailor attempting to navigate the waters
01:02:24of the Bermuda Triangle.
01:02:26The winds inside a water spout can get up to at least 190 miles
01:02:29an hour.
01:02:30That is plenty, plenty enough wind to spin over a boat.
01:02:36Storm photographer Jim Edds has witnessed a water spout's
01:02:39fury firsthand.
01:02:42Water spouts come in two types.
01:02:45One is they call a fair weather water spout where you have a long,
01:02:49dark, flat base, a cumulus cloud base,
01:02:52and you'll get a column of warm air circulating up.
01:02:55Generally, they're not too strong.
01:02:57They don't move too fast, and they're easy to steer around
01:03:00or get around.
01:03:02The other type is what they call a tornadic water spout,
01:03:04where you have a supercell, a severe thunderstorm,
01:03:07that's rotating, and you have a much more intense water spout
01:03:11circulating underneath that.
01:03:12Those move a little faster, stronger winds,
01:03:16and more dangerous.
01:03:19The Florida Keys alone get more than 500 water spouts a year.
01:03:24Most water spouts don't move that fast.
01:03:27But if you're in a boat, and say you're down there eating at the
01:03:31galley, and you're not paying attention to what's happening
01:03:34in the air, what the clouds are doing,
01:03:36you could sail right into a water spout.
01:03:37It could flip your boat over, and you never hear from them
01:03:40again.
01:03:41You won't know what happened.
01:03:44With the waters off the coast of Florida plagued by deadly and
01:03:47quick-developing storms, could weather have played a part
01:03:51in the loss of Flight 19?
01:03:59There was surface winds in the range of 20 gusting to 30 knots.
01:04:04So it was a fairly uncomfortable day.
01:04:09There was some clouds fairly low, 2,500 feet.
01:04:13And the weather, if anything, was starting to deteriorate.
01:04:17I think I know more about what happened on Flight 19 than
01:04:20anybody else who was not on that flight themselves,
01:04:23anybody alive.
01:04:25The weather was not good that day.
01:04:27Experts seem to agree that if the squadron encountered
01:04:30a full-blown thunderstorm, the static electricity from lightning
01:04:34could have compromised Flight 19's communications
01:04:37and caused a compass malfunction.
01:04:39You're operating a boat or an aircraft
01:04:41into an intense thunderstorm or the immediate vicinity
01:04:43of a lightning.
01:04:44And of course, Florida is the lightning capital
01:04:46of the United States.
01:04:47You could have some certainly some instrument anomalies.
01:04:51So chances are they ran into some weather,
01:04:53lost their bearings in the clouds due to the weather,
01:04:55because they didn't have the sophisticated electronics
01:04:58equipment that we have today.
01:05:00If pilot disorientation combined with extreme weather
01:05:04conditions caused the Flight 19 disaster,
01:05:07then might the region's unpredictable weather
01:05:09be the primary reason for other unexplained triangle cases.
01:05:13There may be other reasons why things have disappeared
01:05:16in the Bermuda Triangle that we don't know yet.
01:05:18So I'm not going to write off everything as due to the weather.
01:05:39May 2, 1998, Captain John Willis sails his boat, the Miss Charlotte,
01:05:45out onto a calm Atlantic Ocean.
01:05:49After a long ride to his favorite spot for fishing,
01:05:52Willis lays down to rest before he starts to fish.
01:05:58Suddenly, the boat rocks violently.
01:06:00A large wave throws the captain from his bed
01:06:03and capsizes the Miss Charlotte, sending her to the ocean floor.
01:06:10An investigation reveals that the accident was caused by a phenomenon
01:06:13known as rogue waves.
01:06:17In the Bermuda Triangle area, we have some of the world's fastest
01:06:21currents, largest waves, and strongest winds.
01:06:25Examining these chaotic, violent seas is a passion of marine scientist,
01:06:30Arthur Mariano, a professor at the University of Miami.
01:06:34In the ocean, we have the occurrence of what's
01:06:37known as rogue waves.
01:06:41The region is known for the prevalence of giant,
01:06:44unpredictable waves that can reach hazardous heights.
01:06:48Most waves will have a size range, let's say,
01:06:51from 8 to 10 feet on the average.
01:06:54But every 100,000th wave that comes by, maybe 20 feet.
01:07:00These are waves that are two to three times bigger
01:07:06than the average wave in a fully developed sea.
01:07:09As the wave height doubles, the actual energy
01:07:12that it hits your boat with increases by a factor of four.
01:07:16A lot of boats can't handle that energy.
01:07:18And these rogue waves can be very destructive.
01:07:20Obviously, waves of this magnitude
01:07:22could adversely affect vessels.
01:07:25Large waves that are the result of the severe weather
01:07:29and the strong currents help fuel the mystery
01:07:33of the Bermuda Triangle.
01:07:43In addition to the destructive waves,
01:07:45the powerful currents in the Bermuda Triangle heighten
01:07:48the chances of shipwrecks.
01:07:49Mariano claims that these currents may solve the riddles
01:07:52of some mysterious disappearances from centuries past.
01:07:56The strong currents in the Bermuda Triangle
01:07:59have historically caused sailors many problems.
01:08:02In the old days, people sailed by dead reckoning
01:08:05and what was known as shooting the stars, celestial navigation.
01:08:09Strong currents can significantly take you off course
01:08:13and get you confused where you are in the ocean.
01:08:17Now, if you unfortunately are off course,
01:08:19you're far away from land, and a strong storm starts building,
01:08:25the combination of the storm and the currents increasing
01:08:29the average wave height puts you in a very dangerous situation.
01:08:35One of the unique aspects in the seas of the Bermuda Triangle
01:08:39is also the most treacherous, a liquid superhighway
01:08:43known as the Gulf Stream.
01:08:47The Gulf Stream system does flow through the Bermuda Triangle.
01:08:50It's a very strong Western boundary current
01:08:52that flows from south to north.
01:08:54It's very important in ocean climate dynamics.
01:08:57It brings a lot of heat from south to north.
01:09:01There's two major components to how the ocean currents
01:09:04move material around.
01:09:06One is due to the mean currents and the Gulf Stream
01:09:08is a very fast, mean current, 3, 4, 5 miles an hour.
01:09:13The powerful Gulf Stream current
01:09:15can pinch off into eddies, small, short-lived whirlpools
01:09:20below the surface of the ocean.
01:09:24Ocean eddies, they look like tornadoes and hurricanes
01:09:27in the atmosphere.
01:09:28Dynamics are slightly different.
01:09:30However, they're also very energetic features that
01:09:33can cause problems with navigation and also steepened waves.
01:09:38These eddies lead to a phenomenon called turbulent dispersion.
01:09:43That is, if you put a bunch of objects in a ocean, even if it
01:09:47has no mean current, the turbulent dispersion
01:09:49will take those objects and disperse them over a very large area
01:09:54in a short amount of time.
01:09:55And this leads to a very hard search and rescue problem.
01:09:59Turbulent dispersion may even provide clues as to why no bodies
01:10:05or plane wreckage were ever found from the ill-fated Flight 19.
01:10:12There is scientific explanations for why those planes are missing.
01:10:15My best guess is that Flight 19 ended up in the ocean due
01:10:19to bad weather.
01:10:20And once they were on the ocean surface,
01:10:22the large waves during a storm event ripped those planes apart.
01:10:26Some of the planes sank in areas, and we don't know exactly
01:10:29where they sank.
01:10:30But this happened in the area where the flow of the Gulf Stream
01:10:33was three, four, five knots.
01:10:38Using a wave tank, Mariano was able to demonstrate
01:10:42what may have happened to the debris from Flight 19.
01:10:46What we're going to do in this wave tank right here
01:10:49is look at the dispersion of dye at the surface.
01:10:52Now, of course, an airplane is metal,
01:10:55and it disperses much differently than dye.
01:10:58We're going to look under a couple of different conditions.
01:11:00We're going to look under very calm conditions.
01:11:02And as you look here at the dye during these calm conditions,
01:11:05what you see is that the dye disperses fairly slowly.
01:11:13Now, when we crank up the system here,
01:11:17we see that the dye disperses much more rapidly.
01:11:23This very simple experiment gives us an idea
01:11:26that what possibly could have happened on that day
01:11:28is that the plane went down and quickly dispersed
01:11:31and then sunk to the ocean bottom.
01:11:35Mariano applies computer animation
01:11:37to further illustrate his dispersion theory.
01:11:40If a boat breaks down in the Bermuda Triangle,
01:11:43it can experience real strong currents that
01:11:46will push a great distance.
01:11:48So whatever wreckage was left of those planes that didn't sink
01:11:51would get quickly dispersed all over the ocean.
01:11:54You could see in this video in 36 hours and then by 72 hours,
01:11:59the region that the wreckage can be found is 10,000 square miles.
01:12:04This is definitely a case of trying
01:12:06to find a needle in a haystack when you don't know
01:12:08the initial location and you're in a region
01:12:11of very large dispersion.
01:12:12So it would be extremely difficult to find that squadron.
01:12:16In the scientific community, the Bermuda Triangle
01:12:28is really no mystery at all.
01:12:31Most experts believe cases of planes gone missing
01:12:34and ships vanishing can be explained by science.
01:12:39When situations happen where a plane goes down
01:12:42or a vessel is lost, more oftentimes than not,
01:12:45it's error on the operator not having the knowledge that he
01:12:50needs to navigate the waters or it's a mechanical problem
01:12:53with the plane or the vessel.
01:12:57Others assert that strange and puzzling forces
01:13:00plague the region.
01:13:02But sometimes their theories straddle a fine line
01:13:04between science fact and science fiction.
01:13:11In 1970, Bruce Gernon experienced an event in the skies
01:13:16above the Bermuda Triangle that forever changed his life.
01:13:21While flying his airplane over the Bahamas,
01:13:24Gernon entered into an unusual cloud bank that seemed to appear
01:13:28out of nowhere.
01:13:33It was like a typical cloud inside with practically no visibility.
01:13:40This little lenticular cloud had spread out into an immense squall.
01:13:47But it was like no other squall I had ever seen because it
01:13:51appeared to be circular.
01:13:52As far as I could see, it was a semi-circle spread out
01:13:57on either side of me 10 miles in the shape of a huge donut.
01:14:05And I flew along the edge of the storm in a southerly direction,
01:14:10hoping that I would find an escape route.
01:14:14And it looked like there wasn't any because it just kept continuing
01:14:17in a circle.
01:14:19While caught inside this strange circular storm,
01:14:23Gernon claims he saw a tunnel through the clouds.
01:14:26To this day, he believes it was his only way out.
01:14:31Immediately upon entry into this tunnel,
01:14:36a bizarre thing happened.
01:14:38Lines instantly formed all around the walls of the tunnel.
01:14:44And they were like little puffs of clouds
01:14:46that created these lines.
01:14:49And they continued the whole length of the tunnel.
01:14:53And I noticed that they were rotating very slowly,
01:14:57counterclockwise.
01:14:58I aimed for the other end of the tunnel.
01:15:00And it should have taken me about three minutes
01:15:04to reach the other end.
01:15:06But it only took 20 seconds.
01:15:09It was incredible.
01:15:11Because I believe I was actually seeing time when I saw those lines.
01:15:17And I was actually seeing and flying through the fabric
01:15:21of time itself.
01:15:25Gernon calls the eerie mist into which he flew electronic fog.
01:15:30This fog has an electromagnetic energy within it.
01:15:35And once it captured us, when we exited the tunnel,
01:15:40our electronic instruments and the magnetic instruments,
01:15:44mainly, they all started malfunctioning.
01:15:46There was no blue sky.
01:15:48Everything was gray, a strange gray.
01:15:51Gernon maintains that it took him only three minutes
01:15:54to traverse through the entire area of electronic fog,
01:15:58a journey that would normally take 30 minutes.
01:16:01He compares it to entering a wormhole in space.
01:16:08Well, this is new science.
01:16:10They're discovering that there are many wormholes out there.
01:16:14And I believe there are wormholes right here on Earth.
01:16:19Wormholes are hypothetical connections
01:16:22between widely separated regions of space and time.
01:16:25It may sound far-fetched, but it's not that far-fetched
01:16:30when you get into subatomic sciences.
01:16:33You have particles reappearing and disappearing all the time.
01:16:37And on a grand, large scale, this could be applicable to,
01:16:41let's say, aircraft in their Bermuda Triangle region.
01:16:46Believers in the theory that the Bermuda Triangle
01:16:48is an area of wormholes and energy vortices often cite
01:16:52the work of self-educated physicist John Hutchison.
01:17:02I know Bruce Gernon and his experiences
01:17:04with the Bermuda Triangle because I felt the same thing
01:17:07when I was working around my equipment.
01:17:08I walked right into this electronic fog.
01:17:10I didn't even see it.
01:17:11I walked into it, and it seemed like I was in a fog,
01:17:15and I would walk back, and everything was clear as day.
01:17:20By somebody being rather unlucky getting
01:17:22into one of these areas, let's say a ship or an aircraft,
01:17:25and all of a sudden it either disappears,
01:17:28or they go off course and crash somewhere,
01:17:31or they're pulled down.
01:17:34The whole area of the Triangle is not that active.
01:17:37It's a wandering force that goes around in that region.
01:17:41But wormholes, time travel, and electronic fog
01:17:48are largely rejected by the scientific community.
01:17:51We've had some strange reports over the years,
01:17:53but I've never heard of anybody sucked into a time tunnel.
01:17:57The National Weather Service probably
01:17:59won't be investigating electronic fog anytime soon.
01:18:02No, I've never heard of electronic fog.
01:18:05We're busy enough obviously dealing
01:18:09with the meteorological fog.
01:18:12Meteorological fog is a very real and well-documented
01:18:16weather condition.
01:18:17It can wreak havoc on boats and planes trying to travel through it.
01:18:22And the area of the Bermuda Triangle
01:18:24has the perfect conditions to create this navigational hazard.
01:18:29It occurs when the air temperature is cooled
01:18:31to the point of the dew point, and that causes fog.
01:18:36And a good example of that is if you have cold air,
01:18:38moving off behind a cold front, and the front stalls out
01:18:41and over the Gulf Stream, that you've got perhaps still 80
01:18:45some degree water temperatures.
01:18:47So the immediate air temperature there close to the surface
01:18:50is in the low 80s.
01:18:51And you may have 40 or 50 degree air temperatures above that.
01:18:54And that certainly can cause an area of near zero visibility
01:18:57and sea fog.
01:18:59Hagermeyer and his colleagues at the National Weather Service
01:19:03have yet to identify anomalies lurking
01:19:05within meteorological fog.
01:19:09Sometimes we get just the right conditions,
01:19:10and sea fog can persist for quite a while
01:19:13off the east coast of Florida.
01:19:14That's the only kind of fog that I'm familiar with.
01:19:20But Bruce Gernon believes the fog he traveled through
01:19:23had a unique aspect to it, one that has yet to be explained
01:19:27by science, and one that he believes may have been a factor
01:19:32in some triangle incidents.
01:19:36Dozens of pilots have been in it.
01:19:38And I believe that dozens more have been in it and died.
01:19:43Gernon believes that, like him, the lost pilots
01:19:45from Flight 19 may very well have encountered electronic fog.
01:19:50Flight 19 encountered something very similar to what I did when
01:19:55I was in the electronic fog.
01:19:58They were only about 30 miles north of the time tunnel
01:20:02that I flew through.
01:20:05And their first report of entering this electronic fog
01:20:10was at 3.30 in the afternoon.
01:20:14That's the exact time that I was captured by this fog,
01:20:18only almost exactly 25 years later.
01:20:22I'm not sure if they experienced any time slips,
01:20:27but they definitely became totally disoriented,
01:20:32because it did affect their instruments.
01:20:34Their magnetic compasses weren't working.
01:20:37None of them could figure out which way was west.
01:20:41It also affected their electronic instruments.
01:20:46They had an instrument that pointed back to Fort Lauderdale,
01:20:50and all they had to do was follow the needle.
01:20:52While experts discount the electronic fog theory,
01:20:56could regular fog have contributed to the mysterious disappearance
01:21:00of Flight 19?
01:21:02Back at the time of Flight 19, there's really
01:21:04no reliable weather data other than a few isolated weather
01:21:07reports.
01:21:08So it's pretty easy to see how events that happened in the past
01:21:11where there wasn't a lot of detailed weather data available,
01:21:13you know, they may not necessarily think the weather
01:21:17was a factor, but it may well could have been.
01:21:18John Quisar believes the weather was indeed a factor
01:21:21on the night of December 5, 1945.
01:21:24He proposes a new theory that places Flight 19 over land.
01:21:28The entire Florida coast was completely covered
01:21:29by low cloud cover.
01:21:31It would have been impossible for them to have seen land.
01:21:33And Avengers had no landing lights,
01:21:35for whatever extraordinary reason that was.
01:21:36They had no way of even landing in the dark.
01:21:41Could Quisar's alternate explanation open a new chapter
01:21:44in Flight 19's history.
01:21:49I have the evidence that Flight 19 did continue to fly west.
01:21:54They did cross the coast near Flagler Beach, and finally ditched
01:21:58in the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia.
01:22:04I was able to get the Air Transport Command report that
01:22:07showed five unidentified aircraft near the swamp.
01:22:10At 8.50 PM that night, both Brunswick and Jacksonville
01:22:13reported five unidentified aircraft that
01:22:15was relayed to Miami.
01:22:17So here you have five unidentified aircraft on that very night
01:22:22that never land.
01:22:23They never arrive at any port, and they're unaccounted for.
01:22:27One very crucial bit of evidence is that the carrier Solomon's
01:22:31reported four to six aircraft crossing the coast on its radar
01:22:34at 7 o'clock that night when the flight was still known to be up,
01:22:37and had that flight ditched at sea, which is what the Navy claimed,
01:22:41it would have been on Solomon's radar when it did so.
01:22:45I was dismissed.
01:22:48Quisar feels that Flight 19, as well as many other Bermuda
01:22:51Triangle mysteries, should be scrutinized in greater detail.
01:22:58It's important for us to investigate
01:23:00because these disappearances are real.
01:23:02The ships and aircraft disappeared.
01:23:04They existed in records.
01:23:06The people were real, we know all that, and they are gone.
01:23:10And an answer must be found.
01:23:14Almost 60 years to the day, the Navy Airmen of Flight 19
01:23:18and the Mariner search plane were honored with a House
01:23:20resolution in Washington, DC.
01:23:23Representative Clay Shaw of Florida said,
01:23:26while the events of that day may go unexplained,
01:23:29the memories of those men will not go unrecognized.
01:23:32And he hoped the gesture would help bring closure
01:23:35for the surviving families.
01:23:44No matter how today's science explains the fate of Flight 19,
01:23:48there are some who will continue to believe that its disappearance
01:23:51remains part of a larger, unsolved mystery
01:23:55of the Bermuda Triangle.
01:23:58We can put a man on the moon.
01:23:59We can split the atom.
01:24:00Surely, this tiny mystery off the coast of Cuba
01:24:04should not keep us in the dark for so long.
01:24:07But it does.
01:24:08And we have to ask ourselves why.
01:24:10What forces are at work, both natural, supernatural,
01:24:14that's keeping us on the other side of fully understanding what
01:24:18lies at the heart of the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle?
01:24:26The disappearances of the triangle,
01:24:28I attribute to human error, mechanical malfunction,
01:24:33weather or atmospheric phenomena.
01:24:35Those account for 90% of the disappearances.
01:24:38The other 10% of the disappearances, I don't think
01:24:42we'll ever know about or ever discover the cause.
01:24:48I don't think the Bermuda Triangle
01:24:51will ever be explained to the satisfaction of science
01:24:53or the popular imagination.
01:24:57But to many, the Bermuda Triangle
01:25:00is more legend than truth, more myth than reality.
01:25:12There is no real evidence available for the Bermuda Triangle.
01:25:15There are just a lot of stories that may or may not
01:25:19be connected with one another.
01:25:21I think that people who are predisposed
01:25:25to accept a lot of mythological explanations for things,
01:25:29or supernatural explanations for things,
01:25:32have no trouble connecting them.
01:25:38I believe the Bermuda Triangle is a myth.
01:25:40I believe it's three imaginary lines in the water.
01:25:43These waters are no different than any other water
01:25:46up and down the seacoast.
01:25:51There's a part of me that would love
01:25:53to see an alien come down.
01:25:55I mean, I'd like to meet somebody from another planet,
01:25:58but I really don't believe that that is causing
01:26:02any of these losses.
01:26:03I think the Bermuda Triangle story is a lot of nonsense.
01:26:15Airplanes and ships disappear all over the world all the time.
01:26:18It has nothing to do with a particular location or area.
01:26:22If you look at the history of all these disappearances,
01:26:24you'll find that they're not confined only
01:26:26to the so-called Bermuda Triangle.
01:26:34With only a few exceptions, incidents that remain unsolved
01:26:39were incidents that I could find nothing for, which
01:26:42makes me suspicious of where did the mystery come from,
01:26:46if no information can be found to verify
01:26:48that this ever happened.
01:26:55The less a person knows about a subject when they're writing
01:26:59a mystery, the better mystery they can write.
01:27:01The less a person knows about the mystery they can write.
01:27:31From the remains of the delictives that is intact,
01:27:34the left.
01:27:37Let's begin.
01:27:38I don't want to notice any potential.
01:27:40I don't know what I mean.
01:27:42Instead, it's not necessary.
01:27:44I just !
01:27:46Thirdly, however, you can finally identify
01:27:47how big of them develop
01:27:50the букetomus to avoid médium intern.
01:27:53And I think they'll be able to enjoy
01:27:55what they do into placeks.
01:27:56This will be the most solid
01:27:57in the desenhoof or the day of Milwaukee