What causes the strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle? Today, Ben shares a campfire story about why all those planes, boats, and people might go missing into the great unknown.
What causes the strange disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle? Today, Ben shares a campfire story about why all those planes, boats, and people might go missing into the great unknown.
* Share your camp adventures on social media using #AKCAsummer or write to us at listen@akidsco.com. We love, love, love hearing from you.
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com. While you’re there, be sure to check out Ben’s book, A Kids Book About Adventure.
Camp Adventure: A Kids Summer Camp Podcast
S2 E12 Lost At Sea
[INTRODUCTION]
[bugle plays a welcome]
Louis: Hello, campers! And welcome to Camp Adventure.
The camp in your bedroom or living room. The camp that's in the bus or in the car.
Camp Adventure is for everyone, no matter who you are.
My name is Counselor Louis and I'm so excited to be here at camp with you.
Today is our final episode of the season. Isn't that absolutely amazing, but also a little sad.
It has been super duper fantastic. As usual, spending time with you throughout this whole season. Well, you know what time it is? Campfire time. And campfire time means campfire stories from the amazing Camp Counselor Ben.
So Camp Counselor Ben, take it away.
[WELCOME]
Ben: Aw, thank you very much, Louis and campers. It is so good to be with you.
I gotta tell you it's a little bit, a little bit of a bummer, cuz we're coming to our last story time of this season at camp, but it sure has been a great camp and I'm glad to participate in it with each of you. I hope that you're doing well.
We're gonna talk about mysteries today, a mysterious part of the world where airplanes and boats and other kinds of vessels, uh, travel into this part of the world and then disappear. Never to be seen again.
Have you ever heard of the Bermuda triangle? It's this place in the world where there's a history of different kinds of people, like I say, riding in airplanes or boats, and when they travel through this part, all kinds of problems seem to happen. Radios go bonkers. There's lots of stories about the Bermuda Triangle.
So, that's what we're gonna talk about today. The, or the story we're gonna read is called “Lost At Sea”.
Grab your blankets, settle in, get around your crackling campfires if you have one and, uh, we will do this last story time for camp adventure. Oh, I love it. I love it. Okay. Here we go.
[STORYTIME]
Ben: Our book we're reading from is titled Strange, But True, written by Katheryn Hulick, illustrated by Gordy Wright. And the story is called “Lost At Sea”.
Clouds gather in a moonless night sky as jet engines roar to life on a runway below. "Cleared for takeoff", radios the air traffic control tower. The airplane soars from the island country of Malaysia out over the South China Sea on its way to Beijing. Air traffic control instructs the plane to contact the next tower in Vietnam. Then, at 1:19 AM on March 8th, 2014, the pilot signs off with his flight's name and number saying, "Good night Malaysian three seven zero". That is the last message the plane transmits. It never contacts the next tower and it doesn't land in Beijing at its scheduled time of 6:30 AM. No one hears from the 12 crew members and the 227 passengers on board ever again. The mystery deepens when experts review radar and satellite data. These show that the plane, called MH370, did not simply crash, it veered off course and then flew for another seven hours after losing radio contact. Where did it end up?
Expert's best guess is that the plane eventually crashed and sank into the Indian Ocean about 1,500 miles west of the coastal city of Perth, Australia. But why? Was it a deliberate act of terror? Or was it an accident like an electrical failure or a fire? Anguished families of the lost crew and passengers have waited for answers, yet they have none. Despite a series of massive searches, no one has found MH370. How could an entire airplane full of people vanish?
Matthew: Oooh! I know this one!
The Bermuda Triangle is some geological phenomenon that messes with airplane and boat navigation equipment, right? The famed pilot Amelia Earhart went missing on her final flight and was never seen again and, at least when I was growing up, lots of people said it was because her plane flew into the zone of the Bermuda Triangle.
Her plane might have crashed after running out of fuel or something, but I’d bet the Bermuda Triangle had something to do with it, right?
Eeep! Sorry, Ben! Please continue!
Ben: Airplanes and ships have disappeared before. On the exact opposite side of the globe from Perth, Australia sits the island of Bermuda. This small island marks the tip of a region known as the Bermuda Triangle. In most accounts, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico are the other points of a triangle that covers approximately 500,000 square miles. According to legend, this area is especially dangerous for ships and aircraft. And no one knows why. Some who have passed through safely report experiencing strange things, such as unusual weather or malfunctioning compasses and other equipment.
The story of the mysterious triangle began on December 5th, 1945. At 2:10 that afternoon, the TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida on a routine training mission labeled Flight 19. They planned to fly east out over the Atlantic, drop practice bombs, then turn north and fly over part of The Bahamas Islands. And finally head southwest back to the base. It was a clear sunny day and all of the planes were in fine working order. The mission should have lasted two hours, but Flight 19 never returned.
Almost all of the 14 pilots and crew members aboard the five planes were students. Their instructor, and the leader of the mission veteran pilot, Lieutenant Charles C Taylor, sent a series of alarming radio messages beginning around 3:40 PM. He said, "I don't know where we are. We must have got lost after that last turn". Later he radioed. "Both of my compasses are out." By the time ground stations figured out Flight 19’s position, it was too late. They could not reach Taylor with instructions that evening two search planes loaded with rescue gear took off to try to find the missing bombers. One of the search planes failed to return. A massive search followed, but they never found any wreckage.
What happened to Flight 19 and the search plane? Could something menacing lurk in the waters, off the coast of Florida. And could that same something, explain other mysterious disappearances, perhaps even that of MH370?
Louis: Hello again. It is Counselor Louis.
Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll hear the rest of this story.
[BREAK]
Louis: And we're back. Hello there!
Are you ready for the rest of this story!
Counselor Ben, it's back to you.
[STORYTIME CONTINUED]
Ben: In 1964, a fiction story titled “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” ran an Argosy magazine. The story named the triangle for the first time, described many incidents of lost planes and ships and said, "this relatively limited area is the scene of disappearances that total far beyond the laws of chance". Ten years later, Charles Burlitz published the Bermuda triangle, a hugely popular book that brought the mystery to life in the minds of the general public.
Supposedly mysterious disappearances in or near the Bermuda Triangle can be traced back far into the past. In the 19th and early 20th century, a number of ships vanished on trips through or near the Bermuda Triangle. The HMS Atlanta disappeared on a training voyage. The ship arrived in Bermuda in January in 1880, but never made it back to England. Despite a massive search, no trace of the ship was ever found. Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around the world, was 65 when he left on a trip that took him through the Bermuda Triangle in 1909. He also never returned.
Many airplanes have vanished in the region, too. The airliner Star Tiger was lost near Bermuda on January 30th, 1948. And a DC-3 passenger plane went down near Miami, Florida later that same year after experiencing electrical problems. A final report investigating what may have happened to the Star Tiger concluded that “some external cause may overwhelm both man and machine. What happened in this case will never be known…” In December of 1970, pilot Bruce Gurnon says that he was flying over The Bahamas when he went through a swirling tunnel in a cloud, he found himself in a gray mist that seemed to prevent the plane's electronic and magnetic instruments from functioning. He made it out of the mist, but later he realized that a flight that should have taken well over an hour had only lasted forty-seven minutes.
Supposedly a single mysterious force or phenomenon links, all of these events and many more. Gernon says that it's electronic fog and he believes it forms within thunderstorms. Supposedly this fog can disable navigation equipment and even trigger time warps or travel through alternate dimensions. Others believe that crystal pyramids once powered the lost city of Atlantis and lurk beneath the sea, sending out occasional bursts of energy that takes down planes and ships.
An astrophysicist checked Gernon's story and determined that a strong tailwind could explain for the shortened flight. Worm holes that might lead to another time or dimension are theoretically possible, but have never been found.
It would almost likely be,
It would most likely be impossible for a human to travel through one super.
It would most likely be impossible for a human to travel through one and no one has found any evidence that Atlantis ever existed, let alone crystal pyramids.
If these theories seem too wild, plenty of practical ones exist. For example, giant bubbles of gas sometimes rise up from the seafloor, and scientists have shown that if a ship happens to be above such a bubble, when it reaches the surface, the ship might get sucked down and sink. Rogue waves, massive walls of water. More than twice the size of surrounding waves are also real and may occur in the Bermuda Triangle region. Scientists are still working to understand this phenomenon. Or perhaps an unusual weather event called a microburst is to blame. This produces a brief blast of strong winds. Some argue that there is not one Bermuda Triangle, but several dotting the world's oceans with danger zones, perhaps MH370 went down in one of these regions.
Matthew: YES!! I knew it!
Give me ALL of the ocean mysteries! Give me creatures of the deep! Give me mysterious bodies of water! Give me planes and ships and whole islands gone missing!
I. Am. Here for it!
Do we have to solve this one, Ben? I mean, I love the mystery of this one! There’s no scary snow beasts causing entire hiking teams to disappear. There’s no coming back from the dead. No ghosts. Just… unknown!
Yeah, but I suppose a little bit of fact-ing won’t be too bad.
Sorry for interrupting you, Ben.
Ben: All of these explanations, even the practical ones, miss one very important thing. Before looking for a solution to a mystery, you need to make sure that a mystery exists. Remember the null hypothesis? The disappearance is blamed on the Bermuda Triangle may not be connected to each other. The National Ocean Service says there's no evidence of an unusually large number of incidents in this area. It seems that ships and planes are just as likely to vanish in any large well traveled part of the ocean. Many accidents have happened in the Bermuda triangle simply because many planes and ships have traveled there. However, the vast majority of people who fly or sail through the Bermuda triangle arrive safely at their destinations, commercial airlines and shipping companies take no special precautions in the region. If you have flown to, or from Miami, Florida, you likely passed through the Bermuda Triangle.
In most cases, a practical explanation exists for the disappearances. Tragic human error seems to explain the disappearance of Flight 19. The planes had planned to fly over The Bahamas, a chain of islands to the east of Florida. But Taylor had recently transferred from flying missions out over the Florida Keys and he seems to have confused one set of islands for the other. One of. In one of his radio transmissions he said, "I'm sure I'm in the Keys. I don't know how to get to Fort Lauderdale." The Florida Keys extend southwest from the tip of Florida, so Taylor planned to head north thinking that would take him back to land. However, he was not where he thought he was. Intercepted messages between some of the student pilots revealed that they realized the problem. "If we would just fly west, we would get home", one said. By the time ground stations finally located Flight 19 north of the Bahamas, they could not reach the planes with instructions to turn west. The pleasant afternoon had transformed into a dark and stormy night. What about the search plane that disappeared that same evening? A nearby ship witnessed an explosion. The plane likely went down when fumes from its huge gas tanks caught fire.
Bad decisions, foul weather and equipment failures, explain almost all of the disappearances associated with the Bermuda Triangle. No evidence exists to connect them to each other. In some cases, investigators have not been able to figure out exactly what went wrong, but this doesn't make theories about electronic fog or crystal pyramids any more likely. The truth is perhaps more straightforward. They are all tragic incidents.
Ben: The oceans have swallowed up the secrets of many disasters over the years. Someday, hopefully, the records of these ships and planes will come to light, revealing evidence that leads to the solution to an unsolved mystery.
The End.
Louis: What a way to end the season!
An amazing story about Counselor Ben, as always.
And it has been super duper fantastic spending time with you at camp over the last couple weeks. Thank you for listening and tuning in. I want to wish you the best. I hope you have a great school year. And know we counselors are all rooting for you.
See you again at Camp Adventure next summer.
Before we go camp counselor, Matthew has a few things to tell you.
[CLOSING CREDITS]
Matthew: Thank you, Louis! And thank you Ben for sharing that story with us. As the campfire’s dying down, I’ve just got a few reminders and bits of information to share.
A reminder to all campers to share your camp adventures on social media using #AKCAsummer or write to us at listen@akidsco.com. We love, love, love hearing from you.
Camp Adventure is written by Ben Tertin with help from the A Kids Podcast About team.
Permission to use excerpts from Strange But True, written by Kathryn Hulick and illustrated by Gordy Wright, was granted by the publisher Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, an imprint of The Quarto Group.
The show is edited and produced by Matthew Winner.
Audio production is by Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory. And this show was brought to you by A Kids Podcast About.
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever podcasts are found and check out other podcasts made for kids just like you by visiting akidsco.com. While you’re there, be sure to check out Ben’s book, A Kids Book About Adventure.