Adeptus Ridiculous - BERMUDA TRIANGLE: SECRETS OF THE DEEP | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is an urban legend focused on a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The idea of the area as uniquely prone to disappearances arose in the mid-20th century, but most reputable sources dismiss the idea that there is any mystery.Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of Detective Ridiculous, where we go over the only thing more terrifying than Warhammer real life. Before we get started, if you'd like to support us, go ahead and head on over to patreon.com slash Adeptus Ridiculous. There are lots of awesome and amazing benefits that you can find down there. Also, don't forget to check out the merchandise site right now at Orchidate.com. It is in the description. It has all kinds of great new products, including a brand new poster, mat and shirt hoodie. It's all excellent. All right.

So, D.K., I hear you got a, you got a little bit of a chub going on. You got some girth to let me handle. Yeah, I feel like today we're going to do the reverse curse. Because I feel like today might be a little, might be a little bit of a chunky episode. I mean, we're going over like three-ish different events, but they're all kind of tied into the same sort of, true crime adjacent theme. So today on Detective Ridiculous, we're going to be talking about something that,

honestly, most people have probably heard about. You've probably heard about it. And at first, I thought I was going to pull like the veto card on this topic because, you know, it's so common and everybody's heard about it. But, well, we got some interesting things to talk about. So what we're discussing today is the mysterious bird. Bermuda Triangle. Oh, no.

Mm-hmm. The Bermuda Triangle. Like I said, I'm sure everyone has heard a story about ships or planes or people just mysteriously, poof. Vanishing into thin air in this seemingly haunted triangle between Florida, Puerto Rico, and of course, Bermuda. What are all those little areas, those little islands outside of Florida? I forget what those places are. Uh, I, you got me. I don't know geography to save my life.

Because I know Cuba is, I think, the big island and, uh, map of world. Google. It's just the Caribbean. It's just, that's just that little Caribbean area. Uh, but, you know, there's like this idea that if you wander into the Bermuda triangle, you'll never be heard from again. Like it was a death sentence or, or there's, There's something in there that just grabs you.

You're never heard from again. And before we get into the meat of potatoes of why we're really here, let's talk briefly about how the Bermuda Triangle became sort of the infamous landing spot for all manner of unknown disappearances. I realized I accidentally muted for a second, but I found out that it's the Bahamas. Ah, yes, Bahamas, yes, which makes a lot of sense, because Florida Bahamas kind of,

it all makes sense with that whole thing. But yeah, but yeah, but you're Bermuda, Bahama, oh, pretty mama. It makes sense now. Anyway, yeah. But I know the Bermuda Triangle has always been like one of those the kooky conspiracy theorist

and like a Michael Bay movie is always talking about the Illuminati and the Bermuda Triangle and all kinds of stuff. So I'm curious, I'm assuming we're not going to be going on that level. But, uh, No, probably not. To still figure things out. So like we said before, Bermuda Triangle is that little triangle

between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, and it encompasses roughly around 500,000 square miles. The moniker came from a 1960s article written by Vincent Gaddis for a pulp magazine called Argosy in this article, which is literally Literally titled, the deadly Bermuda Triangle, he essentially makes a list of a lot of these strange and unexplained disappearances that have happened in the area.

And in the article, he's like the first person to define the Bermuda triangle like this. Draw a line from Florida to Bermuda, another from Bermuda to Puerto Rico, and a third line back to Florida through the Bahamas, within this area, known as Leruda. the Bermuda Triangle, most of the total vanishments have occurred. So this includes technically the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic, because they're part of the triangle. Mm-hmm. It sure does. So it's not just a big area of flat out, just open sea. Mm-hmm. Mm, okay, okay.

And in the article, he tries to convince us that despite the fact that the Bermuda triangle is not an isolated area, and it is patrolled regularly by the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the Air Force, that all of these disappearances can't be mere chance coincidence. There's a mysterious thing within there that's causing these disappearances. Since nobody's been witnessed to them, nobody's found any evidence, there's no bodies, there's something else afoot here, something more mysterious and unknown. Some people believe that you're sucked into another demand, mentioned by a wormhole, or that

the Bermuda triangle is like an alien hotspot that they frequent for abductions to study humans, or perhaps there's a deadly sea monster roaming the waters waiting for its next victim or meal. I think there are some wild

theories about like the magnetic poles of Earth doing some weird time shifting in the triangle, and that's why all of your instruments go kooky crazy. The one I remember hearing about was there's like weird magnetic stuff, and we'll talk about magnetic stuff later,

and it made like older generation planes equipment go a little loco, and then pilots would get disoriented because clear blue sky looks kind of like a calm blue ocean, or it's pitch black night, they can't tell water from sky, and then boom, you crash into the unknown. What, um, wait, can't tell water from sky. Yeah, like if it's a perfectly clear day, I've heard of pilots having trouble because, like, without your instruments to tell you, like, where your bearings are, it just, you kind of lose your equilibrium and sky kind of looks like water because it's just completely tranquil. And so you get a little equilibrium screwy and then just, you don't feel gravity? I guess not. I've heard of that happening a bunch.

Really? I assume that you would feel like, huh, I feel upside down now. Maybe I shouldn't go this direction? Well, maybe I heard it from an unreliable source. Oh, that's a little. So, wait, a lot of, because I know Bermuda Triangle, like, say instruments and stuff

go all screwy, and especially for, like, older planes. So, when again did you say that this article was made, the Bermuda Triangle article? The article was made in the 1960s. This, okay, this felt like like Cold War 50s post-era

time frame, definitely. So I wasn't quite sure. And a lot of the stuff that he brings up is from before 1960. And that's when a lot of the disappearances happened too, is like it's this, it's the older stuff that are relying on like compasses and stuff like that. Okay, okay.

This makes more sense. And I mean, obviously, Florida area has been known for its rather difficult weather. Oh, yeah, which is another thing that we will indeed talk about. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, all righty. And I know that a lot of people want to believe, you know, you got that ex-foss. I want to believe that there's this mysterious dead zone out in the triangle.

We all want to believe that there's some mystical force beyond our imagination that makes anyone who dares set foot in its boundaries vanish in the thin air. Or we want to believe that there are aliens hovering around just beyond our sight, studying us and trying to figure out our planet. But I got to tell you, Bricky, the Bermuda Triangle is kind of like Santa Claus. We may want to believe in the magic and the mystique, but there is just no way, man. And that's kind of what this episode is going to be about. So it's going to be a little different. Oh, are we myth-busting now? We're kind of sort of myth-busting, because usually we kind of play skeptic, we play devil's advocate, we allow a little leeway from logic to really immerse ourselves in the tail.

But this one, man, if you try to look up information or research on the Bermuda Triangle, there are infinitely more articles on why it's not a mystical dead zone and why most of the Bermuda Triangle, and why most of the Bermuda Triangle, there are infinitely more articles on why it's not a mystical dead zone. and why most of the disappearances can actually be rationally explained. So we're going to look at some of the more popular disappearances and weird happenings in the Bermuda Triangle today, and we're probably going to be pulling back the curtain and talking about why the Murmuna Triangle stuff is kind of just kind of a bunch of baloney. I mean, remember when the Guardians of the Galaxy came out and we were all like, who? Who are these people? I feel like the Bermuda Triangle is like the D-List conspiracy celebrity. Yeah.

It's like it's a thing that you'll mention, but like you have to go like way deep to believe that. You start off with like flat earth, 9-11, all those kinds of stuff. And it's like when you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel, you have like Bermuda Triangle and hollow Earth theory and stuff like that. Yeah. Though this kind of lends itself so that the viewers. and even you, Bricky, can sort of, you can still play devil's advocate if you want,

and you can sort of challenge what I'm about to say about maybe it's not that real, and maybe you can keep the mystique alive, actually, you know? So, you know, I'll, I'll listen, but, you know, I'm a bit of a, how you say it? A skeptical douchebag. Ah, yes, I, yes, I know of these. I've been known to be one of those, too.

We will, we will see. Yep. So, some of the earliest reports of weird happenings in the Bermuda Triangle were actually by Christopher Columbus. Oh, no. Oh, no. It's nothing too bad. I'm not, don't worry about it. But when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, there were many odd happenings when he traversed through the Bermuda Triangle. He reported that it looked like a star fell out of the sky or like a fireball had fallen into the ocean. He also reportedly saw that there was like this light swaying up and down in mid-air in the distance,

like a candle that was just floating there. He also reported that his compass just wasn't working the way it should be, and it was giving him some really erratic readings. Columbus's ship, the Santa Maria, was entrenched and stopped for three days when a crop of mysterious weeds in the ocean entangled them in the Bermuda Triangle. His crew would also start to get really nervous because they were scared that these weeds they were stuck in would drag them to the bottom of the ocean. I genuinely thought you said weed. Well, I did say weed.

There's some crazy weed in the ocean. I'm like, damn. I said weeds, zuh, like the, you know, yeah. No wonder Columbus saw some crazy shit. He was high as hell. Well, actually... Oh, no. Anyway, which all of this sounds pretty mysterious.

You know, crazy lights. Stars or fireballs falling out of the sky, and their compass went absolutely bat-crazy, and then being gripped by mysterious weeds that just lock you into place until you can cut yourself free. Sounds like the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately, there's kind of...

an explanation for all of it. And we'll start with the most obvious one. The weeds that held them in place for three days. Weeds, plural. No, no, no, we're not talking about old St. Mary Jane. That stuff was that loud, huh? Held them in place, a vegged out on their couch for three whole days. I mean, it does have the same properties, right?

You know, I don't want to move, bro. I got to show you the Gilliman and the lion Puff Puff Puff Pass meme after we're done here. It's like Ultramar don't have nothing. This stuff ain't loud at all, wakes up 10,000 years later. Anyway, continue. So within the Bermuda Triangle, there's this big stretch of ocean that's called the Sargasso Sea. And it actually covers a huge chunk of the Bermuda Triangle. Like more than half of the triangle is within this sea.

And within the Sargasso Sea, there's a very specific type of kelp called Sargassum, which isn't all that different from a normal bed of kelp. Obviously, their fears are all justified because apparently, for nautical people, if you get caught in kelp, that means you're kind of in shallow-ish water, and that actually does mean you could very easily hit the bottom of the ocean and just sink. So their fears are justified. But apparently what makes sargassum a little bit worse. And this is according to to like a history channel documentary, you know the one with like Lawrence Fishburn and everything.

Oh yeah, yeah. But anyway, according to this documentary, when Sargassum is all clumped up and it starts to rot and decay, apparently it starts to produce hydrogen sulfide gas, which is some really nasty stuff that you don't

want to be breathing in for three days straight. Why did you say that? Why'd you say it like that? Hydrogen sulfide gas. Because it sounds gnarly and me hydrogen sulfide gas. It was me, Austin. It was me, Austin. I was the one who poisoned you.

It was me, Austin. I was the hydrogen sulfide gas. Maybe the hydrogen sulfide gas were the friends we made along the way. You don't want to make friends with hydrogen sulfide gas. Apparently I don't. Yeah, because it is awful. It will literally make you go stir crazy. So that's probably why they were more paranoid, more anxious,

and just a lot of general instability about what was going on. And, again, since this gas will make you go just a little loopy-dupy crazy, it could explain some of the wilder Bermuda Triangle stories and sightings because this gas probably got them seeing shit that wasn't actually there. So, shy posted a picture. It almost looks like, like,

kettles of corn in large bunches on the way up. Are those just the bubbles from the gas? Or is that the, is that the rodded kelp? Yeah. I think that's, okay, so that's the rotted kelp and as you sail over it,

it just produces a invisible gas. Yeah. Well, as it starts to like decay and rock, it will start producing this gas. But it's very easy to kind of get stuck in it. And the roots sort of wrap around your rudder. And the more you try and get out, the more it just...

Okay, so it wraps around you. And then as you're, like, trying to sail out of it, it, it, like, waffes up into your area and you start smelling it. And you're like, as you're stuck there in the weeds, you know, you're stuck in the weeds, the weeds start to decay, the gas comes up, and you're just like, whoa, this is crazy.

is it some kind of like mercury poisoning where you go a little mad hattery like does it is like a psychologically affected gas or something it will make you go crazy so yeah a little bit it might make you go mad as a hatter huh all right well that that certainly that certainly adds a shockingly level of of credence to the bermuda triangle as a bunch of BS theory it sure does now how about all those lights that old Columbus saw which i mean there are plenty of of explanations for Columbus back in 1492, seeing what he thought was a fireball shooting out of the sky or a star just falling into the water. It could have been a meteorite, could have been a shooting star. Supposedly, he also reported lights coming up and out of the water, but most people just chalked that

up to literally just a ship that was on the horizon that was really far away, and it was just lights from that. Which also brings us to the light that he saw just kind of bobbing in midair like a candle. But there was another documentary. As you can imagine, there are a lot of documentaries on the Bermuda Triangle that actually staged

a bit of an experiment to try to recreate what Columbus may have actually seen. So when you start looking at the area around the Bermuda Triangle, you'll notice that there are a lot of little islands and a lot of sort of really high cliffs and hillsides that are overlooking the water. Back in 1492, some of these would have been home to the indigenous peoples of the area. And of course, at nighttime, they'd need to start a fire for warmth, for cooking, or whatever.

I was so worried that you were going to say there were lighthouses on here. And he was like, because I know Columbus wasn't the smartest person alive, but I was like, no, not that bad. It was just a lighthouse. Yeah. So this Discovery Channel documentary went to the area that Columbus sailed, and actually they went up to one of these hills, set up a small man-made fire with logs, brush, you know, and they wanted to see what sort of a local indigenous person's fire

would look like from Columbus's vantage point. And wouldn't you know it, with the swaying and the movement of the boat in the pitch black of night, the man-made fire looks just. just how Columbus described his phenomena, like a candle that was bobbing high in the air. How the hell can a man who's supposed to be like a shipmaster, like a captain, not, like an explorer, not to see what a fire on a ridgeline looks like from sea?

Well, it is 1492, and Columbus is probably thinking that he is the first person to venture this far out. so he's probably not thinking that anybody's around, so he's probably not assuming that there's going to be indigenous fires, I guess. Wasn't he supposed to be going to India, though? Weren't there supposed to be people there? Look, man. I don't know.

This guy is becoming a bigger moron by the day. Good God. Now, what about Columbus's compass having all kinds of wacky readings? And this is the explanation that I always, kind of heard of, right? That I said earlier where it's like your instruments go all screw,

you lose bearings, you lose equilibrium, uh, super clear day, sky looks like, ocean, and it's actually true that when you're near Bermuda,

your instruments, well, non-GPS ones, I suppose, will actually show variations of being like 10 degrees off, which is literally life and death when you're relying on those readings to get back home

and to get back to familiar territory. And the reason I've seen for compasses going a little wacky crazy is because the volcanic eruptions in the distant past that formed Bermuda were a little different. So usually volcanoes go down like, you know, 20, 40 miles into the earth for like the lava before erupting. The one that formed Bermuda, though, apparently that one went 400 miles into the earth

for like all of the lava and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And so that rendered a lot of magnetic iron, a lot of magnetite because the lava is so much closer to the earth's core than literally any other volcano ever. And so the estimate is that Bermuda is made up of literally 500 billion with a B tons of magnetite.

And magnetite is like the most magnetic substance on the earth. So, with 500 billion tons of the stuff, yeah, your compasses are going to go a little crazy. They're going to have a little bit of a rough time. And if you're Columbus in 1492 when you've already got antiquated technology, well, welcome to crazy readings on your compass.

is that is that replicated uh nowadays like when no fans fly over and stuff obviously they have different kinds of uh materials now you've got GPS and stuff which i don't i'm pretty sure isn't affected by magnets but yeah if you take like normal compasses like they have people that go scubaing in the area and they're just like yeah even today like we have to be really careful about this area because i'll have one compass that shows one thing and it'll be right next to a compass and it'll have to a compass and it'll have to a compass and it'll have completely different readings. So we still, even today, have to be really careful, depending on how close we are to Bermuda, with, you know, knowing exactly where we are. Right, right. Yep. And the magnet thing will probably pay off to remember

because a bucket load of these disappearances will have weird compass issues. And it's like, well, hey, here's the reason for it. Hmm. That's, uh, do we have similar issues like that in the areas like the Mariana Trench? that are really, really, really deep? Uh, no idea.

Well, fair enough. Man, this episode ain't on the Marianas Trench. You think I'm smart enough for that? The Marianas? Marianas? Yes, sir, you sir. I'm from the Sal. I'm not, but whatever.

No, it's all right. Go ahead. Moving on, we're going to be talking about probably one of the most popular disappearances to happen inside of the Bermuda Triangle. This is an event referred to as Flight 19. and it happened on December 5th, 1945. We're going to spend a little time on this one, so buckle up. Flight 19 was also one of the big ones that was mentioned in that article we talked about earlier,

where the Bermuda Triangle got its name. So the story of Flight 19 starts off fairly harmless. It's about a group of five Avenger-type torpedo bombers. They're set to go on a fairly routine practice bombers. bombing run that would take them from their naval air station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, out to about 56 or so nautical miles to the east, where they're going to do a practice drop of their payload and a rocky, kind of reefed area called the Hens and Chicken Shoals.

Oh, I love old-school naming sequences. Right? All very common, normal stuff for combat training exercise. So they go to the hens and chicken shawls, they drop off their payload, and they make the turn to come back home for Fort Lauderdale. But then something strange happened. Their compasses stopped working, and they aren't really sure where they are anymore. The flight leader was a Navy lieutenant named Charles Carroll Taylor, and he was a proper experienced pilot with well over two. thousand flying hours in this specific type of Avenger bomber.

And he had also seen combat deployment. So he's not some greenhorn that is prone to making just dumb mistakes. There was, they had like, I don't think you can look it up on YouTube, but they have the legit audio of the pilots asking where they were. Does anyone have any compass readings? Do you guys have compass readings? What's going on? And they all kind of agree that they must have gotten lost after turning back from the shoals. And they aren't really sure what to do.

Nobody's got compass readings, you know? And there's this lieutenant back at the base in Fort Lauderdale says his name is Robert F. Cox. He is quite literally preparing students of his own for the exact same practice run that Flight 19 is on when he overhears the trouble that Taylor's crew is having over just like the radio. When the two make contact, Taylor lets Cox know that, man, both my compasses are out. I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale. I'm over some broken land, and I'm pretty sure it's the Florida Keys, but man, I don't know how far down I am. I don't know.

I'm pretty sure it's the Florida Keys. He thinks it's the Florida Keys, which is a problem, he is just so confused. He doesn't know if that's the Florida Keys. He doesn't know if that's the Bahamas. He doesn't know where the... He is. I just like you auto-configuring into some kind of Southern pilot accent.

It's automatic, man. I don't know how that got started. Fort Lauderdale? I don't know where I am, Cap'n. So, he's given a pretty standard course of action when a pilot is lost like this. he's told to put the sun to his port wing and fly north up the coast until he finds Fort Lauderdale

which is pretty smart since the Florida Keys are in the very south of Florida so if you're looking to get back home then getting your bearings via the sun and flying north up the coast that's kind of the way to go Taylor was also asked to turn on his IFF signal the identify friend or foe thing so that the base could triangulate where exactly they were. But Taylor never acknowledged that message,

and so Fort Lauderdale can't really triangulate his location because Taylor didn't turn the damn thing on. Fort Lauderdale also asked him to switch his radio frequency to the search and rescue frequency. But Taylor refused to switch frequencies because he said, I can't switch frequencies. I must keep my planes intact.

Which someone with more aviation knowledge needs to explain that to me. Yeah, I don't understand that at all. Yeah, I couldn't understand it. And a bunch of articles I looked up were like, yeah, nobody's really sure why Taylor or any of the other pilots didn't switch to the search and rescue frequency. Like, how is not switching frequencies going to help keep the planes intact? Like, shouldn't it actually increase the odds of being found and directed home? That also, like, keep his planes intact. I assume maybe he meant, like, oh, I need to make sure that we're all the same frequencies,

so we're all, like, still in formation and things are fine. But he can just swap the radio. Yeah, you can just swap him back and forth. I don't know why he was. so dead set on not switching frequencies, but he is, and he doesn't switch. None of them ever switch to the search and rescue frequency. He is the Illuminati. I knew it. Yeah, you, man, you figured it out. And despite several more attempts by Fort Lauderdale to get Taylor to turn on his IFF, the messages are never acknowledged. In fact, I'm not sure that he ever took their advice.

and headed north. If I'm not mistaken, he actually heads south for a little while longer to make sure he wasn't in, like, the Gulf of Mexico or something. Then he makes a course correction and starts taking the planes further to the east, which was a super bizarre move, and it was so bizarre that one of the other pilots angrily said over the comms, damn it, if we could just fly west, we would get home.

Head west, damn it? and you might be thinking, well, if they really thought that, well, why don't they just break formation and head west without him? Because this is obviously getting them nowhere. And as far as I can tell, it's just that military discipline. You don't abandon or break ranks on your superior officer no matter what. I mean, I guess cool on one hand, like well-trained. You know, we know if you break ranks, you get a bull.

gut in the back of the head. In 40K, yeah, you know. But, but what? Yeah, that's the only reason anybody can come up with for like why the people that knew that it's like east. No, we need to go west.

The only reason people can come up with as to why they didn't just break off me, like, nah, screw you, dude, you're sending us to our doom. I'm heading this other way. It's just because military discipline and you don't do that to your superior officer. That's it. That's it. That's all anybody can think.

I mean, fair enough, they were under the guise of aliens. That too, of course, of course. Anyway, so the weather's getting bad now, too, because again, in this area, off that coast of Florida, weather can turn on you real quick. And they're actually starting to lose daylight. I think it's around 6 p.m. at this point, and the training mission started at like around 3 p.m. as it turns out though Taylor did at some point turn on his IFF signal

and after all this flying the signal was picked up north of the Bahamas so they are way off course if you look at the little map that Shai posted I think at this point they are at number four

so they are number four is where they are now number one is Fort Lauderdale. So they are way, way off course. So Taylor's finally like, you know what, maybe we should head west. Maybe that's not such a bad idea after all. So he decides to start heading west at a bearing of 270 until they make landfall or they run out

of gas. But Taylor changes his mind again. And over the comms, he's like, you know, I don't think we flew far. enough east and we should probably just turn around and head east again and so the weather is getting even worse and the sun has pretty much fully set they are in complete darkness and life has become just the worst for our wayward pilots and the last message that taylor relays is this all planes close up right will have to ditch unless landfall when the first plane drops below 10 gallons, we all go down together.

Okay. So, the planes would eventually run out of fuel and ditch somewhere over the Atlantic. The wreckage of the bombers and the bodies of the 14 people, 14 service people, were never found. And knowing that something had clearly happened to this flight, there were two PBM mariner planes that were rerouted from a training mission they were staging in order to go figure out what happened to Flight 19. Try and see if you can find them or survivors anything. But one of these mariner planes would also go missing

while searching for Flight 19. But that isn't actually like a super mystery because apparently these mariner planes are really accident-prone, which is ironic since they're supposed to be search and rescue planes. I must, I must admit, the map Shai posted also is like, I, f, yeah, they are, the thing is, like, Taylor was so confused about where he was. Yeah, I would be, too, if I was given this shit.

When, when, I think it was like, they determined that when he thought he was in the Florida Keys, which is, like, I think on Shai's map, that would be further southwest of the coast a little bit. when he thought he was there, he was actually in, like, the Bahamas, which is kind of over by a little south of two, I think. So he, he was totally just oblivious to where exactly he was. But these search and rescue planes, these mariner planes, like I said, really, really accident-prone. They even had the nickname of being flying gas tanks because, it was just all too common that these things would just catch fire

and and that is basically confirmed as what happened when a passing tanker had reported seeing a 100 foot tall explosion and a fire burning for 10 minutes.

They would scan the area and it was just rife with gasoline and oil and obviously no survive. difference. Well, I mean, you know, this was what, the 40s? Yeah, yeah, this would be after World War II, I think. Okay, so like late 40s, early 50s, yeah. That makes sense. Like, they, that, well, they

didn't find anyone in the middle of the ocean. Because it's, it's the middle of the ocean. Yeah, well, and the other problem is, and I'll probably mention this again, is they have no idea where they ditched. So they could be anywhere. So you might be asking yourself, what about this sounds like a curse of the Bermuda Triangle or just some crazy

illuminati nonsense? Because nothing about it kind of sounds unexplainable, right? And I would agree. Nothing about it sounds like a mystery, a mystery, boy, I can't talk today, except for the fact that they never found the wreckage and they never found the bodies. When reading this, it just sounds more like a stubborn, seemingly unfit-for-duty lieutenant

that kind of screwed up this flight from the get-go. I mean, we've already covered why the compasses was malfunctioned, but even without the compasses, there were several ways that this flight 19 disaster could have been averted. If Taylor had listened to the instructions from Fort Lauderdale, then, you know, he probably would have actually, they would have found his IFF signal sooner, they would have been able to triangulate his position better, you know.

It should also be noted that Taylor actually showed up to the mission several minutes late for takeoff. And according to History.com, he even asked not to lead the mission. And when asked why, he was just like, I just don't want to take this one out. just I don't think I should take this one out, which led many to believe that something had compromised Taylor,

be it drugs or alcohol, or something that impaired his judgment and just made him unfit for duty. I must admit, I just don't think that the lieutenant was all there. I think he was just not a very, he just seemed like he did a bad shot. Yeah, it's just, well, again, this is why a lot of people are like, you know, maybe he was under the influence. Maybe there was, there was something in his system, maybe, because again, it's not like he was a no-nothing pilot.

It's not like he, you know, was prone to just getting completely confused and blowing missions. Over 2,000 hours, and he served in combat, so he knew what he was doing. But it just seemed like this was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad day. for Taylor. And initially, the Navy actually deemed the Flight 19 disaster, the fault of Taylor. But at the

behest of Taylor's mother, and there being no planes, no bodies, the fact that the instruments stopped working, and because the PBM exploded, the rescue plane exploded by no

fault of Taylor's, and again, since there was literally no evidence, the record would be changed to show it as a general sort of cause unknown instead of being solely blamed on Taylor. Oh, so was the logistical writing of the incident as opposed to a more specific, ah, that they're, okay. It also didn't help that in the popular movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, they sort of hinted at this idea that the Flight 19 pilots were somehow abducted by aliens

and then the aliens abandoned their planes in Mexico. So, that's also why a lot of people like to be like, oh, look at the Bermuda Triangle, look at, oh my God, it's aliens. And if you're wondering why the bodies or wreckage were never found, it's because it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Like we said, no one is sure where they ditched. I've seen some people say they probably ditched in the actual area of the Bermuda Triangle. Some say it's much closer to the coast of Florida outside of the triangle. I've seen documentaries suggest that the planes actually could have made it to land and crash landed in some swampy, uncharted areas of Florida. Plus, at the time, the waters would have been absolutely monstrous because of the storm, and the waters around the Bermuda Triangle, they get really, really deep. The water there is super deep, and the currents are crazy there.

So not only do you not know where to look, who knows how deep the wreckage is, and who knows where the wreckage is or where to even start looking, so you have this scenario where you might not find this wreckage ever. Like, and also there's so much wreckage in the sea from other stuff. Like, legitimately, they found a completely different Avenger from the same time period, from a completely different mission, from a completely different time, like in the last five years they found it. So...

Try does make a good point, though. Yeah, like, can't blame the mom we didn't want her son to be remembered as a fuck up who got 13 people killed for no reason. Oh, God, yeah. I don't necessarily blame the mom for trying to protect the son's legacy, but at the same time,

every account I've seen in this story just sounds like it's human error. Yeah. Taylor just, he was kind of stubborn. He refused to fly west. He flew east for, way too long and by the time they could do anything about it

it was just too late and he was just kind of screwed and so were his crew. I must say that at the same time also this is very bizarre because my real name is Taylor and so talking about all it's like damn Taylor really screwed

up and I'm just kind of here like subconsciously like man man man like picture picture of the horse picture of the horse at home picture of the horse up at the beach looking into the water, man. Man. But yeah, again, this is one of those things where, like,

it's one of the most popular sort of plane issues to go missing in the Bermuda Triangle, and it's super explainable. Like, it's super explainable through the weather, the geography of Bermuda screwing with your compass, and a lieutenant that just kind of effed up really bad. It doesn't appear. to be a crazy alien abduction, or like they vanished into thin air, into another dimension.

And even though this episode could go on for days about all of the disappearances, I want to talk about one more popular disappearance that happened in the Bermuda Triangle. This is the disappearance of the USS Cyclops. So the Cyclops was a Proteus-class ship that would normally ship coal. But when the First World War got underway in April 1917, the Cyclops would be taking control of by the Navy and turned into sort of a support ship for the war efforts. It would still ship coal,

but it would also start to ship some really useful supplies like manganese ore, which was super important for making steel. Problem was, manganese ore is also a lot. more dense than coal. So it's heavy. Oh, it's heavy.

I'm assuming it's also like somewhat flammable, perhaps? Um, I don't know about that. That never comes up. If it is, it's not an issue. Okay. So when the Cyclops is loaded up with this manganese ore on a particular trip out of Rio de Janeiro, It was loaded up with, oh, somewhere in the ballpark of 11,000 tons of manganese ore.

But the ship, the USS Cyclops, its maximum carrying capacity was supposed to be in the ballpark of, oh, you know, 8,000 tons. But port inspection crews had checked the cargo and they looked at the ship and they were like, yeah, this is secure enough. It's a cyclops. It's good to go. The commanding officer, a lieutenant commander, George W. Worley, also indicated that they had a cracked cylinder in their starboard engine. Starboard, Starboard. And even though this was confirmed by the survey board, they were like, well, yeah, it's cracked,

but the ship's got to return to America to get fixed. So you're heading for Baltimore with all that manganese. so off you go, you should be fine. We should probably also talk a little bit more about old commander George W. Worley, because apparently he was a real piece-ish... One of his former officers who had gotten off at Rio de Janeiro would later recount, according to the U.S. Naval Institute, that Worley was a gruff, eccentric salt of the old...

school given to carrying a cane but possessing few other cultural attainments. He was a very indifferent sea man and a poor, overly cautious navigator. Unfriendly and taciturn, he was generally disliked by both his officers and men. Which immediately makes me think at that one sailor from the Simpsons that's like completely inept and he's always sinking ships. Just generally less cheery and fun. Another fun little tidbit, there was really only one officer on board the Cyclops that had any experience with storing manganese ore. And that one officer, he had been confined to his quarters over what was called a trivial disagreement with the captain.

Trivial. A trivial disagreement. I don't know. Nobody said what the disagreement was about, but apparently it was very true. And probably not something you should confine the one person who knows how to store your precious cargo to their quarters for. No, I would assume not, but which I'm assuming it might not necessarily have been trivial. Well, either it wasn't trivial and it's just said it was trivial or the captain is a real dumbass. But, and to be fair, I think the latter might be the case.

To be fair, we've already had one of those today. So, actually, we've had two of those today. We have kind of another one, yeah? We have Columbus. Thus, the cargo was actually misstored by people who had never had any experience with the stuff. And we'll get to how it was misstored in a second. But the Cyclops leaves port, and it starts its journey back to Baltimore. Now, this was supposed to be a one-way trip with no stops along the way.

But the USS Cyclops makes an unscheduled stop in Baltimore. Barbados on March 4th, 1918. Seen a couple reasons for this stop, but the prevailing opinion is that Commander Warley was actually really worried about the cargo of manganese. Even though it had passed inspection in Rio de Janeiro, all of that 11,000 tons of manganese was stored smack dab right in the middle of the ship, which is a really super bad idea. It wasn't evenly distributed because it's really heavy, right?

It's real heavy. You're already overloaded. There's 3,000 more tons than your ship is supposed to be able to carry, and it's all right in the middle. I'm having it. I'm laughing at my own joke. Shai. Have you, shy, have you, you know the, the, the, the, the,

the bike eating soy jack what shy you know please please please tell me you know the bike eating soy jack it's this one as anyone see my bike I swear it's like conspicuously bike shaped throat jack

nope no bike suit this is what I'm imagining like as anyone seen my magnanimies is in the center of the boat and it's like, nope, no idea. Nope, no manganese are here. That's what happened. The guy was, the trivial thing was he was eating the mangany.

Yeah, totally. And he had a manganese-shaped throat, right? I'm so sorry, keep going. I'm so sorry. It's okay. Well, you add to that, these ships have a marker on the outside of the hall that's called a plimsoil line. It's basically this water line that kind of shows you the legal limit.

that a ship can be loaded, because if the water is over this line on the outside of the hole, then you are way too damn heavy and your ship is way too far down in the water. The water line was well over the plimsoll line on the USS

Cyclops, which probably added to any paranoia that Worley might have had, but I guess none of these factors still were enough to halt the trip. Or, you know, move the manganese from being loaded, right in the middle of the ship or any new safety measures.

So, the USS Cyclops would leave on March 5th and continue its journey towards Baltimore after sending out a message of weather fare, all well. And the USS Cyclops and all 309 souls aboard would never be seen again. There was no distress call, there was no wreckage, none of the bodies were found. it was simply like it vanished into thin air. So, to recap, the USS Cyclops is overloaded with manganese orb by some 3,000 tons. Its engines are stressed even more than usual because of a broken cylinder. The captain is an absolute toolbag, and we're in waters that are known to get really brutal, really quickly, and have some really awful weather.

And a crewman ate some of the... Oh, absolutely. But sure, clearly this is a case of aliens or sea monsters gobbling up a ship, right? That could be the only explanation. And while that might sound crazy to you, there was quite literally a magazine at the time called Literary Digest that suggested a monstrous octopus, like the Kraken summoned from Davy Jones or something,

wrapped its tentacles around the USS Cyclops, and dragged it to the depths of the ocean never to be found. There was also a theory that a German U-boat targeted and destroyed the USS Cyclops because a cargo ship like that would absolutely be a prime target for them to just torpedo the hell out of in this World War I era. There were also some rather serious rumors that Commander Warley was actually a secret German sympathize. and he'd been working with the Germans to give them the precious cargo of manganese ore.

And even though Worley was, you know, basically inept, there were never any records of the USS Cyclops being captured by the Germans or Worley's double agent status found after the United States had won World War I and had access

to all of Germany's war record. So there's no record of them trying to get the cyclone, There's no record of Worley being a double agent, nothing like that. They also determined that at the time of the USS Cyclops disappearance, or in that ballpark area of its disappearance, there were no German U-boats. So it wasn't sunk by the Germans, probably.

So it was definitely by the Loch Ness monster. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Of course. The Loch Ness has, well, you know, has a family in the ocean. No, the crackin was released on this thing, my guy, obviously. I mean, the one of Liam Neeson? Yes, sure. Hell yeah.

Speaking of the inept captain, many thought it was very possible that the crew decided to mutiny. Warley was apparently a horrible drunk and liked to sort of pace the deck of the ship, wearing just his hat and his long underwear. There were also some reports about letters sent from the consul on Barbados that said, while they didn't have any definitive grounds or proof, they worried that the Cyclops had, quote, suffered a fate worse than sinking because of how apparent it was that the crew really disliked the captain. There were also some speculations of a failed mutiny, and the captain, and the captain, and literally executing one of the mutineers

and imprisoning another. Oh, he shot one? That's what it was reported. It was not confirmed that he actually executed someone, but there were stories that, yes, he actually executed one of his mutineers. Good God. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Yeah, but people referred to him as the damned Dutchman because I think it was like they were trying to say damn Deutschmen, but people heard it as Dutchmen, so they got it kind of confused. Well, you know, the sea also, you know, the Dutchmen. Yeah, sure, sure, the flying Dutchman.

But as the theory would go, after getting sick and tired of his antics and his horrible punishments, the crew would successfully seize control of the ship from him and sail off into the sunset. though mutiny doesn't really explain anything because eventually they'd have to take the ship somewhere. I mean, they have a massive load of manganese that's expected in Baltimore on the 14th. So even if they do go rogue, they'd eventually have to pour it up or pop up somewhere,

and I think somebody would notice this massive cargo ship just listing in the water overloaded. So, I mean, maybe there was a mutiny, but that's... That's probably not why the USS Cyclops disappeared. The most likely scenario is that the USS Cyclops just ran into a terrible storm, which like we've said many times already, it's super common in this area for a storm to pop up out of nowhere, a really, really bad storm to pop up out of nowhere. So, the USS Cyclops runs into a particularly nasty storm.

the waves in the area start to pick up. And as the theory goes, either a singular wave comes out of nowhere and just comes under the cyclops and picks it up into the air and it's just the cyclops is up there. The two sides have nothing to support it and it just cracks right down the middle.

See, there's like no, it's like not even a particularly large wave, I imagine, with that insane over. overloading amount of weight in the center of the boat. Mm-hmm. Just a little bit of a rock like, whoop, flip. Yep. The other theory is that there were two big waves that picked up the USS Cyclops from both sides,

like from both sides. And then so the middle, which is overloaded with manganese, has no support and just, it just snaps like a twig right down the center. The theory also goes that whichever combination of waves it was that caused the down the middle, that this happened so fast and it came so much out of nowhere, which is common with rogue waves, that lifeboats couldn't be deployed and they didn't have any chance to send out a distress signal of any kind. Yeah, that doesn't quite surprise me, especially if the boat is, oh, I don't know.

experiencing mitosis. Or if maybe the mutiny had already happened. So of course they don't want to send out distress signals and get rescued by, you know, America and the Navy and, oh, what's that? You mutineered and killed your captain?

So. Now, again, you're probably thinking, okay, Storm crushes the hell out of cyclops. Why isn't there any wreckage or debris? Because it is more than likely that the wreckage of the... the Cyclops is probably sitting somewhere at the bottom

of the Puerto Rico Trench which is oh, 27,000 feet deep. So any wreckage would be like nigh irretrievable. I think, I forget what video I was watching

but they were like, yeah, the Puerto Rico Trench is about as deep as Mount Everest is tall. And it's like, okay. So you need one of those like, you need one of those like little egg-shaped submersibles that are meant to handle the ludicrous level of pressure to get down there. Though with modern technology though, more and more wrecks are actually being found in the Puerto Rico trench. I think they're using like radio waves to try and like ping anything that's down there.

And then it's like if anything, if anything sort of like pings off of it. They're like, oh, hey, there's something down there. We can start a mission. But again, it's super needle in a haystack scenario because no one is exactly sure where the cyclops sunk. So it's really hard to search every bit of the bottom of the ocean in that area. But again, like, and there's so much wreckage on the bottom of the sea. I don't think people appreciate just how deep the water is in this area. and just in the ocean in general, there is wreckage everywhere.

So again, it's really, really difficult to find this stuff. It's not just like, oh, well, we know approximately where it was. I'm sure it's still there. Man, no. This is some like Rise of Skywalker crap where they use like the little wayfinder thing to the Death Star wreckage. The Sith dagger, yeah. Oh, I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. C3Pio can't read it because it's in Sith, and it's like, oh, the one time we need you to talk. Anyway, it should also be noted that the USS Cyclops had a few sister ships that were basically built to the exact specs as the Cyclops. The first sister ship was the USS Jupiter, which was converted into an aircraft carrier in the 1920s and renamed the USS Langley. This ship would unfortunately be sunk in World War II after getting absolutely hammered by Japanese bomber planes. The other two sister ships, though, the USS Proteus and the USS Nerus

were both lost somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. The Proteus was lost sometime after November 1941, and the nearest was lost sometime after, after December 1941. Both, just like the Cyclops, were carrying heavy ore during their voyage.

Difference being that the proteus and the nearest, they were carrying bauxite ore for making aluminum instead of manganese for making metal. So some think that the entire family of ships were cursed by the

Bermuda Triangle. But realistically, it was actually probably more just a design fault just a design flaw or weakness that crippled the ship because a big, big, big, big,

speculation is that there was a significant flaw in the design of the support beams. Well, not necessarily a flaw, but like, I guess from carrying coal for so long because coal is actually

highly acidic, that carrying that coal for so long and for as long as they did, it actually weakened the support beams. And since the support beams are weak, the ships are overloaded, you're going into crazy treacherous waters, it's not really aliens, it's not really a mystery, it's not really a massive disappearance, it's just bad design, weakened support beams, human error, overloading.

It's just, you know, like Shai said, overloaded boat with a broken engine, an incompetent captain, mutinous crew, sailing into a storm during war, somehow sinks, must be aliens, right? Must be aliens. I feel like human error is just one of those things that we don't chalk enough up to.

Oh, absolutely. People, like, it's always so easy in hindsight to say why didn't they do X or Y, but when you're in the moment, especially in a dangerous situation, it is just, like, everything will go wrong if your mentality is not there. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And while there are numerous more events I could talk to you about, you'll find that a lot of them pan out exactly like these popular ones, where it's not some completely unexplainable event. It's just, it's an area that can get really dodgy and can get really hard to.

to navigate with the weather. I mean, that area in the Bermuda Triangle off of the coast of Florida is basically Hurricane Alley, where again, some nasty storm just come out of nowhere. And like, especially back in World War I and World War II days where technology just isn't where it is today, it'll really screw you up.

So to me... Holy crap, wait, hold on, Sean. Yeah, look at that. Is that actually a map of cyclones? Like, of the... world. Yes. It is that area. It's in one spot. Yeah, that area is Hurricane Alley. It's not Hurricane Alley. It's Hurricane Primary Residence. Well, that too. But you've heard of how often Hurricane Strike Florida, it's coming through that same area, right? It's that same area of just

storms are always coming through here. And so nobody really chalks it up to the storm, the human or anything like that. It's, to me, really, it's just all of this sensationalism by the media and by the public. Like I said, we want to believe that the magic is real. We want to believe that the ball under the cup

really did disappear, and it's not just slight of hand. I mean, there are legitimately some instances where a ship will go missing in the Bermuda Triangle, and even though the ship eventually returns to port, part, that part gets left out in articles, and it's considered a missing vessel succumbed to the Bermuda Triangle.

There's also just the simple fact of, like, when people cross the Atlantic in general, like go from Europe to L.A.S. or something. Like, that in its own right is a significant level of time, like space. It is a significant area to be crossing. So when things go missing in there, they're like, well, yeah, it's a giant journey. And of course we're never going to find it because it's the Atlantic. It's the Atlantic, yeah. But like, people will leave from Florida, and like that's the direction they go. Yep. Is they go through the triangle first wherever they're heading.

So it kind of like, it's like it's all combined into one. Yep. Like, looking into these events, it kind of felt like being told Santa wasn't real for me because I wanted there to be some irrational thing that you couldn't explain. that you could just, I could just grab onto and be like, yes, there is a mystery here. But every single one is like, yeah, that just sounds like a combination of human error, really poor weather conditions, and just some poor pilot or sailor's life being a living hell. Also, fun fact, our good friend Sinvicta, whose band does the Adric intro, is actually from Bermuda.

And he spoke about this on the Chiluminati podcast, but as a child, he didn't even know the Bermuda Triangle existed. It's not like they had this notion that they were in a cursed land and were in a cursed triangle. Legit, he didn't even know about the myth until he visited America and people kept asking, oh my God, how do you live in the Bermuda Triangle when they found out he was from there? I mean, living in the Bermuda Triangle, is this him living in like, in Bermuda? Yeah, in Bermuda. Yeah.

So, really, God, that's such an America moment. Good God. Yeah, it is literally this myth completely perpetuated by the West that even people in Bermuda are like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? How do we survive there? I'm just home. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so embarrassed.

And when you look even further into the Bermuda Triangle, you would assume that because of all these stories and crazy myths, this area must have. have the single most disappearances in the world, right? It only makes sense that this must be like an absolute hub of disappearances that have ever happened. In reality, though, the Bermuda Triangle doesn't even have more differences on disappearances on average than any other place in the world. You are literally not at any more risk in the Bermuda Triangle than if you sailed or flew in any other part of the world. Even in areas that are absolutely just known for storms and hurricanes that are always raging, it still hits about the average for disappearances as any other place that gets hammered by storms.

The other thing... This is a significant drop in all kinds of legitimacy. Mm-hmm. The other thing that's brought up by documentaries and other podcasts and other just resources, is that if the Bermuda Triangle was some sort of dead zone where anyone that entered was doomed, don't you think insurance companies would charge you up the wazoo for even considering taking a ship or a plane through that area? And I mean, going through Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico is a pretty common trade route.

like you said, anybody leaving from Florida that's heading west, I guess, or heading the other way, they have to go through that Bermuda triangle. And guess what? Insurance companies do not care. Well, I mean, they care, but it's not like they charge you some super premium because you're going through the dead zone. It'd be kind of funny too, because you could totally imagine them just buying into it and actually charging you a premium for it and like just making the, good bit of cash from it. Yeah, because it's an insurance company.

They don't care if it's legitimate. They just want to make more money. Yeah, like, they might as well just do it and be like, well, you know, you heard the stories. We just got to be careful. We're just, you know, conserving our investment. I'm pretty sure even the Coast Guard, Air Force, and the Navy have been like, yeah, there's no mystery here, guys.

It's just human error and really nasty weather. We got nothing to report to you. Yep, that sounds about right. So I'm sorry. to the believers, but, you know, ships and planes routinely go through the Bermuda Triangle in this day and age, and nothing happens to them. The area can get really choppy, because as we keep saying, it is a just hub of storms and cyclones and all that, but Cthulhu is not hiding in the depths, and ailings are not hovering in the clouds in their UFOs waiting to abduct you. The Bermuda Triangle is,

unfortunately just sensationalism. Well, this is the least surprising, in fact, I've heard today. But I was a little bit curious about where the Bermuda Triangle stuff kind of originated from. It kind of is, you know, obviously I didn't expect anything from the Bermuda Triangle specifically. But I guess just, I was a little bit surprised with how little the disappearances mattered. Yeah. You know, because it was like a missing boat and a missing squadron of planes, so to speak. Well, those are the popular ones, right?

There are a ton more. And on a bunch of like podcasts and other documentaries, it's like, you know, at this point, pretty much anything, any, anything that goes missing in the Atlantic Ocean, they will try to attribute to the Bermuda Triangle. Like, they'll, they'll stretch out where it actually is and they'll, they'll raise the height on the triangle. be like, oh yeah, it disappeared in the triangle. We've made the triangle now encompass Florida to like freaking Africa or something. And just anything in the Atlantic is getting pinned up to this thing. I will say our prior episode hit a little bit harder because I was like, this is where the Green Martian men come from.

And now this one is just like, oh, that's it. The Remuda Triangle, it's just one big, it's basically just one big scam to sell like magazine articles, Pulp Fiction stuff. It's, it's just a big scam. I was hoping to find something, anything, just a small

little bit to hang on to. And I was just like, man, this whole thing is just a big scam. This is just the biggest this is just the biggest stupid scam ever and I hate it. Well, too bad. Yeah.

It is what it is. It is what it is. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. Mm-hmm. All right. Do you want to take us home? No, you take me home. Country roads.

Take me home. I belong. West Virginia. Mountain Mama. Country roads. Take me.