Original subtitles

Narrator: The bermuda triangle, an area off the florida coast

made famous for the mysterious disappearance

of ships and planes.

Ditty: Normally, you would find a life vest,

a life preserver or something, but not a trace.

Narrator: Here, engines and instruments go haywire.

Pilots and captains get lost,

and passengers and crew are never seen again.

Pepper: There must be some really powerful

and terrifying forces involved.

Narrator: Now investigators unravel the real

and terrifying forces at play.

Geez!

Look at that!

To solve this mystery, we dive deep into the bermuda triangle,

digitally deconstruct the strange disappearances

to reveal a hidden world...

...And an extraordinary landscape like no other,

and unravel the curse of the bermuda triangle.

♪

-- captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

off the eastern seaboard of the united states

is an area known as the bermuda triangle.

On average, 4 planes and 20 ships

are reported to go missing in this region every year.

Its victims vanish without a trace.

There's still things that are unanswered.

We still today conclusively and definitively don't know

what happened with a whole host of ships and aircrafts.

Narrator: The triangle covers 1/2 million square miles of ocean

stretching between bermuda, miami, and puerto rico.

It's a graveyard of lost wrecks.

Among its victims, the u.S.S. Cyclops,

a huge freighter that disappears under mysterious circumstances;

flight 19, five bombers that vanish into thin air;

and most recently el faro,

a cargo ship lost at sea with no survivors.

What makes this empty patch of ocean so deadly?

Flying in the bahamas on a weekly basis,

it sits in the back of my mind, flight 19 and other aircraft

and ships that have disappeared in there.

Narrator: Aviator charlie berichi is fascinated

by the mysteries of the bermuda triangle.

He investigates one of the triangle's most famous

incidents -- the disappearance of flight 19.

There's not a shred of evidence suggesting where they went down,

no shred of evidence as far as aircraft wreckage.

Narrator: Winter of 1945, flight 19,

a squadron of u.S. Air force tbm avengers,

fly out of fort lauderdale, florida.

Its five pilots and nine crewmen are on a routine

navigation-and-combat training mission.

Shortly after takeoff, things start to go wrong.

As the planes fly over the western corner

of the bermuda triangle...

...Their twin compasses suddenly stop working.

Disoriented and unable to navigate,

the crew now looks for landmarks to guide them home.

The flight leader spots a group of islands

that he identifies as the florida keys.

He changes course based on this landmark,

and his trainee pilots follow him.

All five planes vanish.

Searching for clues, charlie flies into the bermuda triangle.

This is where the trouble started.

Flying over open waters, you can see there's nothing outside

right now to use as a landmark,

and it would definitely be hazardous

if you had your compass go out.

Narrator: From his cockpit, charlie thinks flight 19's leader

makes a mistake in his identification

of the florida keys.

Berichi: These airmen were in the same

exact position we're in right now

with deteriorating weather conditions.

As these cumulus clouds begin to devour the horizon,

how do we know which side is up and which side is down?

Narrator: Charlie believes the flight leader is confused

and completely lost.

Berichi: It was impossible.

There's no way they ended up in key west.

Narrator: If the patrol isn't in the florida keys, where is it?

Charlie flies on searching for clues.

Forty minutes later and over 200 miles away,

he spots a chain of islands north of the bahamas

that bears a striking similarity to the keys.

The great abaco islands looks like key west.

I can understand how what we see ahead of us

kind of looks like key west as you start going southbound.

So at this point in time in our investigation,

I'm starting to see what they saw

and how this could become even more confusing.

Narrator: If charlie is right, flight 19 is in terrible trouble.

It's hopelessly lost in the atlantic

with their fuel running low.

♪

hey, donnie.

Narrator: Back safely on the ground,

charlie works with fellow pilot

donnie ditty to investigate his theory that

flight 19 mistakes its position

and flies in the wrong direction.

Donnie is a retired u.S. Army attack helicopter pilot

with over half a century of flying experience.

Ditty: The real question is, where is flight 19 right now?

Where did it go down?

Narrator: Plotting its flight path from the abaco islands

where it gets lost,

donnie and charlie piece together what could be

flight 19's final moments.

Ditty: They flew a course of 091.

We are talking about roughly 26 minutes.

Narrator: Because the flight leader believes

the squadron is in the florida keys,

they fly northeast to get back to fort lauderdale.

Ditty: Somewhere around 2 hours of flight,

he established a northeast heading.

Narrator: But if they're actually over the abaco islands,

they're flying further out to sea.

If he had 3 more hours of fuel,

he would have gone roughly 400 miles into the north atlantic.

Narrator: Donnie believes flight 19 runs out of fuel

and ditches in the ocean.

Probably in a few hours,

they were all unconscious.

Narrator: If donnie and charlie are right, the location the planes go down

and sink explains why no wreckage

has ever been recovered.

Ditty: Just a few miles off of abaco island,

there's a sheer cliff that drops down to 15,000 feet.

Narrator: The planes are now lost in the abyss of the atlantic.

We've got possible compass failure, losing track of time.

We've got poor airmanship.

I'm pretty confident that it is, it did just ditch

and run out of fuel in the northeast side

of the abaco islands in 15,000 feet of water.

Narrator: But there's another unsolved mystery.

Following flight 19's disappearance,

a pbm mariner seaplane is dispatched

on a search-and-rescue mission.

It, along with its 13 crew, also disappears without a trace.

The mariner is perfect for long searches.

It has five fuel tanks

that give it a massive 3,000-mile range,

but some tanks are leaky,

allowing fuel vapors to spread through the plane,

turning it into a flying bomb.

On that fateful night,

the mariner takes off from florida.

It plans to fly a search pattern across the bahamas,

but just 20 minutes after takeoff,

a passing ship sees an explosion

with flames leaping 100 feet into the air

right where the mariner goes missing.

It was such a horrific explosion.

They still to this day haven't found any part of it.

Narrator: The lack of wreckage is a common feature

of many bermuda triangle mysteries,

but at its north corner hidden beneath the waves of bermuda,

the evidence of wrecks is very real.

Could unearthing the island of bermuda itself

reveal more clues to the triangle's hidden secrets?

Narrator: The bermuda triangle, a section of the atlantic ocean

that stretches between florida, bermuda, and puerto rico,

it cannot be found on any official map...

...But it's a place where ships, planes,

and people simply vanish.

At the triangle's northern apex in the blue waters of bermuda,

more than 300 wrecks form a ring around the islands.

Many of their hulls have been torn apart,

floundering on the huge coral reefs that surround the atoll.

These reefs are formed by coral skeletons,

which are essentially just little animals that want

to grow as close to the surface of the water as possible.

Narrator: But these reefs are clearly indicated on maps.

So what lures the ships to their doom here?

Bermuda is an idyllic island group.

The sea's smooth surface conceals an alien landscape

shaped by volcanic forces.

Surrounding the islands

are a hidden barrier of jagged coral reefs

made from razor-sharp limestone capable of tearing a ship apart,

and deeper down hidden inside an underwater mountain

is a mysterious iron-rich substance called magnetite.

Could this explain why the bermuda triangle

is so dangerous?

When you form iron oxides, or essentially nature's rust,

and you subject that to high temperatures,

you form magnetite,

and these high-temperature iron-oxide conditions

exist here,

potentially forming billions of tons of this stuff offshore.

Narrator: Geoscientist dr. Martin pepper believes magnetite

may be responsible for bermuda's wrecks.

Magnetite is the most magnetic

naturally occurring substance in the world,

but how is a rock buried beneath an island

luring ships to their doom?

If we take a handful of magnetite

and we put our compass on top of that like our ship

would be trying to navigate over a giant deposit,

you can actually see that the compass needle

just swings round and round.

If you desperately need to know where you're going

and you don't have a specific bearing, that means trouble.

Narrator: Martin wants to know if the magnetite beneath bermuda

has an affect on compass readings.

Using a magnetometer, he tests the strength

of a sample of magnetite.

Here we go.

With about a pound of magnetite, I'm getting about 12.4 gauss.

That's about 40 times more powerful

than the average magnetic field of the earth.

Narrator: Martin does the math.

Most of bermuda's wrecks lie on a 65-foot volcanic plateau

around the island.

Magnetic fields are essentially a cubic function,

so for every 2 feet you go away from it,

it decreases its strength eight times,

so you have to be pretty close to this stuff for it

to mess with your compass.

Narrator: It leads martin to an astonishing conclusion.

If the magnetite lies beneath the volcanic plateau,

there must be an enormous amount of the rock beneath bermuda.

It might be as much as 10 billion tons.

In the shallows, this could totally explain

those hundreds of shipwrecks.

Narrator: As a ship sails toward bermuda,

it passes over the ancient volcano that formed the islands.

The magnetite in the rocks

beneath could pull the ship's compass off true north.

♪

so the captain may think that bermuda's reefs are miles away

when actually he is heading right for them.

It's a mistake that sailors make through the ages,

turning the waters around bermuda into a ship's graveyard.

Imagine being out to sea with no land in sight.

In calm waters is when the danger begins.

Narrator: Bermuda's treacherous reefs

and its compass-bending magnetite

are a lethal combination for unsuspecting sailors.

Lose your compass, and you could easily hit one of these.

Narrator: But bermuda only forms one tip of the vast triangle.

What strange forces explain other ships sunk

beneath the waves of these deadly waters?

Narrator: The bermuda triangle, a stretch of sea off america's east coast

where people, planes, and ships

are said to mysteriously disappear.

In March 1918, the u.S.S. Cyclops,

a massive coal freighter,

steams out of barbados headed for baltimore.

The ship, along with its passengers and crew,

vanish, never to be seen again.

Cyclops' route takes it across the southern edge

of the bermuda triangle.

Hidden beneath the ocean here

is a gigantic trench 5 miles deep,

60 miles wide, and 1,000 miles long.

It's the deepest point in the atlantic ocean,

and cyclops is not its only victim.

In 1941, her two sister ships also go missing here.

It's a remarkable coincidence, but how could a trench,

however deep, possibly sink a ship?

Oceanographers like to say we know the bottom of the ocean

less well than we know the surface of the moon.

Narrator: Marine scientist brian haus is investigating

how the cyclops may have ended up at the bottom of the trench.

He heads up the sustain lab

at the university of miami's rosenstiel school of marine

and atmospheric science.

It's a unique facility that can create freak weather conditions.

At the time cyclops sets sail,

there are no reports of stormy weather,

but brian suspects the ship is hit by a rare phenomenon

that until recently is considered a myth --

rogue waves.

Haus: They are a reality on the surface,

and they do occur a lot more frequently than we think.

Narrator: Rogue waves are normally formed

when swells travel across the ocean at different speeds.

When these swells pass over each other,

their crests and troughs can coincide and intensify,

creating walls of water that can reach 100 feet.

Haus: When two of these waves come together, they add up.

That creates a very large wave at that location.

Narrator: Is the cyclops struck by a rogue wave?

Brian suspects rogue waves may occur naturally above

the puerto rico trench, where the cyclops is heading.

That's because the trench has a unique underwater landscape

that turns ordinary waves into killers.

Strangely, it's not the trench's immense depth

that creates the killer rogue waves,

it's the trench's shallow areas.

Haus: It's got to be shallow enough that the waves

will actually feel the bottom

and then having this sharp topography.

Narrator: Brian's study of rogue waves reveals they occur

in shallow waters where the length of the wave

closely matches the water's depth.

He searches the puerto rico trench for these danger zones.

Haus: This area of the mona trough,

this area up over here by the navidad bank,

and then again over off the virgin islands

in these trenches over here,

the waves are interacting as they come up

onto the really shallow waters on the sides of the banks.

Narrator: Brian identifies several areas in the trench

that could create monster rogue waves,

but could the cyclops survive the impact with such a wave?

Brian and his team use a model of the ship to find out.

Haus: So right now my team is in the tank,

and they're getting the boat ready to have it

get hit by the waves.

Narrator: The team first simulates a standard wave pattern.

The ship easily rides the waves.

Haus: You see that the boat is just bobbing up and down

without having any issue in that wave field.

Narrator: Next, the team simulates a rogue wave.

Haus: Okay, so now we see we've started this group of waves

that are going to come together.

The shortest waves are coming first.

The boat is handling that okay.

We see the larger wave coming up,

and then, wow, it just broke,

and that ship just went right down.

Narrator: The model ship is overwhelmed.

Haus: You scale it would be equivalent to about a 90-foot-high wave,

which breaking is just a tremendous amount of energy.

Narrator: The changing depth of the seafloor

can trigger a rogue wave

on the surface towering up to 90 feet tall.

Traveling at 75 miles an hour,

it strikes cyclops without warning,

leaving no time for an s.O.S., and the trench here is so deep

that the wreck sinks to oblivion,

never to be seen again.

23 years later,

her two sister ships sail in the same waters

and may suffer the same fate.

Brian believes a rogue wave is a solution

to a 100-year-old mystery.

Haus: The u.S.S. Cyclops could've been hit by a rogue wave.

It's in an area where these are likely to occur,

and it's very consistent

with the available evidence in this case.

Narrator: Today, the cyclops lies somewhere on the seabed.

Now researchers are investigating

a strange alien-like substance

that lies beneath the ocean bedrock,

one that may be responsible for other unexplained disappearances

in the bermuda triangle.

Narrator: The bermuda triangle -- a deadly patch of ocean

that claims the lives of thousands.

In a lot of these cases, there's no distress calls,

no sign of wreckage, nothing.

Narrator: Now scientists are investigating

a strange alien-like substance on the ocean floor

that some believe can swallow entire ships without warning.

The waters of the bermuda triangle

hide an explosive danger.

Buried just below the seafloor lie

immense ice domes of methane hydrate,

methane gas trapped in water frozen solid

by crushing pressure and icy temperatures.

But the ice crystals are unstable,

so if they're disturbed,

they can collapse and release the gas in a huge eruption.

Could these monster bubbles have the power to sink a ship?

When you look at the methane molecule,

it is one of the weirdest solids you've ever seen

because it literally takes ice, merges it with methane,

and you can store up to 80 times the volume of methane gas

locked into this ice.

Narrator: Geoscientist dr. Martin pepper suspects

that methane-hydrate ice

may explain the disappearance of dozens of ships

in the bermuda triangle.

Methane ice forms in very deep or very cold water

where microbes in the clay sediment produce methane gas,

but the real problem is when the methane

is trapped beneath the seabed,

and the gas builds over thousands of years.

As the methane deep below it tries to boil out,

that pressure is held in until finally that clay can't take it

and then...

Narrator: But can a methane-ice blowout

in the bermuda triangle sink a ship?

Pepper: The problem is, as scientists,

we don't know how much is down there,

but the bermuda triangle here is not immune,

and we know there's a lot.

Narrator: Martin conducts an experiment to investigate.

He fills a 70-ounce bottle

with 15 ounces of dry carbon-dioxide ice.

Pepper: We're using dry ice, which is essentially

just the solid form of carbon dioxide,

and we're using that for safety purposes

because we want to build pressure to explode the bottle,

but we don't want the flammability

that we have in methane.

These bottles typically rupture at about 200 to 300 psi.

That is a huge amount of pressure,

which also gives us a large volume of air

coming to the surface.

Narrator: Martin plans to release a large bubble

beneath a model ship to simulate a methane-ice explosion

in the bermuda triangle.

To really tease out what happens,

I've put these little action cameras all over everything,

so after the experiment,

we can break it down just like a crime scene.

Narrator: Martin adds a little water to speed up the reaction...

...And then seals the bottle.

Really cinch it on.

He positions it beneath the model ship

and waits for the pressure to build.

Pepper: We're starting to see some bubbles,

and that's because the bottle is expanding

and forcing it out of the foam underneath.

That's always a sign it's about to go off.

♪

geez!

Look at that!

That was insane!

Narrator: The explosion releases a huge bubble

that sinks the model in an instant.

Martin reviews high-speed footage of the experiment.

This is impressive because you can actually see

the shock wave kicks the boat up.

Then the boat falls back down.

You can literally see the weight of the cargo in the air,

but then the bubble rises

and throws the boat way up in the air,

and then it literally just falls

right through the hole created in the water.

It is less than a second this whole thing transpires.

Narrator: Just 15 ounces of dry ice is enough to sink a 3-foot model.

But how much methane ice does it take to sink a large ship

sailing through the bermuda triangle?

If we were to scale this up,

you'd only need about as much methane

as the size of a container to do the same thing

on a full-size cargo vessel.

Narrator: The bermuda triangle may conceal a minefield of methane ice.

It's not a big deal for this amount of methane

to be in one spot.

These methane clathrates

could literally be ticking time bombs of bubbles

just bursting out from under the oceans.

Narrator: But it's not just shipping that's under threat.

Could deadly methane ice also explain the dozens of aircraft

that go missing in the bermuda triangle?

Just 8 gallons of methane ice

can release over 1,000 gallons of gas into the ocean.

When the gas erupts at the surface

and mixes with the air, it causes dangerous turbulence.

And when methane floods a plane's engines,

it can snuff out combustion, causing a deadly stall,

or even worse, a spark from the engine could ignite the methane.

♪

what happens to ships could actually happen to airplanes

if they're flying low enough to the sea surface.

Narrator: Methane-ice explosions may explain

why some vessels in the triangle can vanish without a trace.

This is the perfect scenario

because we don't ever have signs of any s.O.S. Distress calls,

and this points that it would be literally gone.

Narrator: But methane-hydrate ice

only exists in pockets of the atlantic ocean.

It can't explain every strange disappearance.

Today scientists continue to investigate nature's

most violent and destructive phenomena

and freak atmospheric events that may be responsible

for numerous disappearances in the triangle.

Narrator: The bermuda triangle...

It's said to have claimed over 1,000 victims

since the mid-19th century...

...But is the triangle still a threat?

September 2015, the s.S. El faro,

a 790-foot cargo ship with 33 crew,

sails from jacksonville, florida, bound for puerto rico.

As the vessel steams south,

hurricane joaquin gathers strength in the atlantic.

The el faro's captain charts a course to avoid the storm...

...But less than 48 hours into the voyage,

things suddenly go wrong.

The ship takes on water and lists to one side.

In its engine room,

its 30,000-horsepower steam turbines are failing.

♪

with no power to its propeller...

...The el faro is left adrift in the bermuda triangle...

...As the hurricane becomes even more powerful.

All communications from el faro are lost.

The vessel vanishes from the radar.

What goes wrong?

Oceanographer milan curcic works at miami's hurricane lab.

A category 4 hurricane now rages.

Milan wants to know what creates a killer hurricane.

That's still an unresolved problem.

When you have a hurricane, you have these processes

that are rarely observed.

They're hard to measure, and they're typically out of reach.

Narrator: At this state-of-the-art facility,

milan can create a hurricane in a box with the flip of a switch.

It allows him to investigate hurricanes close up

and study the transfer of energy between winds and waves.

Over water, the hurricane wind whips up a rough sea,

but ironically, it's also the friction from the rough sea

that weakens the hurricane.

The only breaking mechanism is really just mechanical friction,

and that is how rough the ocean becomes as winds pick up.

Narrator: Hurricane experts thought this friction

constantly increases as hurricane winds gain speed.

Basically, what we used to believe is the drag simply,

you know, keeps on increasing with increasing wind speed.

Narrator: With this model, a hurricane eventually weakens

due to the friction its wind generates on the sea surface,

but there's a problem because some hurricanes

actually strengthen despite the increased friction.

♪

now milan has solved the puzzle.

Data from his experiments reveal the model

of how hurricanes intensify is completely wrong.

These data from the lab show us that actually the roughness

doesn't keep increasing with wind speed

but tapers off at this critical point.

Narrator: What causes this critical loss of friction?

Could the answer help explain the disappearance of el faro

and other ships in the triangle?

Milan analyzes high-speed footage of his own hurricane

and unearths a clue.

Curcic: Spray in the air and bubbles in the water

makes the transition from water to air smoother.

Narrator: Milan believes small bubbles and tiny droplets of water

can help smooth out the ocean surface.

Kind of like a smooth blanket

of mixed water bubbles and spray,

and that causes a decrease in the roughness.

Narrator: With less friction, a hurricane rapidly gains in power.

As el faro flounders...

The hurricane becomes a killer.

Current research suggests that el faro has likely been

caught in category 3 hurricane winds going up to category 4.

Narrator: 30 days after el faro's disappearance,

a salvage ship discovers the vessel 15,000 feet

down at the bottom of the ocean.

The search team retrieves the el faro's data recorder.

It reveals further vital clues to the ship's tragic end.

It all starts with a hatch the crew forgets to close,

so now water can seep into the cargo hold.

Here, cars break free on wet decks

and smash through a water pipe, flooding the hold.

As the ship leans over,

its water-filled belly pushes the vessel into an extreme list.

And in the machine room, oil drains away from the engine,

which comes to a grinding halt.

With no power, el faro is left adrift

just as the storm it sets course

to avoid intensifies into a killer hurricane...

♪

...But one mystery remains unsolved.

Why does hurricane joaquin suddenly change course?

It makes a beeline for el faro as

if it has a personal vendetta against the ship.

Joaquin provided a number of surprises for the forecasters

both in terms of the track and in terms of the intensity.

Narrator: Hurricane specialist james franklin is a consultant

to the official investigation into the sinking of the el faro.

He wants to understand why joaquin dramatically changes

its forecast path to head straight for the ship.

The initial forecast for joaquin had it moving off to the west

and then to the northwest.

It didn't do that at all, though.

Narrator: James believes joaquin's path is so unusual

because of the multiple weather systems

that surround the hurricane.

Franklin: With joaquin, the winds at the bottom

are blowing very differently than the winds at the top,

and so a forecaster then has to figure out,

well, which of those winds is going to prevail.

Narrator: El faro's captain believes he's charted a course

south of the hurricane.

Instead, he steams straight towards it.

Joaquin was moving further south than forecast,

basically cutting off that particular path.

Narrator: Joaquin overwhelms and sinks the ship.

The captain and his entire crew of 32 men drown.

The bermuda triangle is the hurricane capital of the world.

Rapidly intensifying hurricanes

veering off their predicted path,

could account for the disappearance

of scores of ships.

And now there's evidence

of an even stranger weather phenomenon.

Narrator: The bermuda triangle, an area of the atlantic ocean

where numerous planes and ships mysteriously vanish...

...Now there's evidence of a rare atmospheric event

which can send planes plummeting to their doom.

Berichi: It is extremely hazardous to aircraft.

It's not an easy thing to get out of.

Narrator: Pilot charlie berichi investigates the strangest

weather phenomenon of them all.

It's so unusual that, until recently,

scientists deny it even exists.

It's called a microburst.

Microbursts form when dry air mixes with rain

from a thundercloud.

This creates a column of cold air,

which sinks and plummets to the ground

at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour,

but can a microburst down an aircraft

in the bermuda triangle?

It's a very moist environment.

It's a very hot environment, a lot of hot air rising,

a lot of thunderstorm activity, so it's possible that aircraft

may have entered a microburst in that region.

Narrator: At southcoast simulation pilot academy,

charlie uses a flight simulator to investigate

if a microburst can crash a plane.

A microburst is programmed into the simulation.

Charlie is flying at 1,500 feet when it hits.

Oh, and there's the wind shear.

Autopilot is coming off.

Positive rate, gear up.

Planes hit by microbursts first fly into a strong headwind,

then a downdraft, followed by a strong tailwind.

Now we're getting a downdraft.

This is not a wussy maneuver.

The plane is robbed of lift.

It can stall and nosedive.

Charlie has to take immediate action

to avert disaster.

Flaps are going to go to 10 speed.

Brakes are stowed, and there we are.

That was our maximum-performance climb,

and now we're out of it.

Charlie's quick thinking and practiced response

means he can outfly the microburst.

But if it hits without warning,

the outcome could be very different.

Berichi: We were expecting it,

so we didn't have that human factor today

where we had 5-to-10-second delay of a panic

or a uncertainty of what to do,

so what we did today might not work out in the real world.

Narrator: According to charlie, microbursts may be responsible

for downing numerous planes in the bermuda triangle.

Berichi: It's an extreme hazard, and it's a killer of aircraft.

Microbursts have occurred in the bermuda triangle,

and aircrafts have disappeared in there,

and that might be the cause for why they were never discovered.

Narrator: It's impossible to know for sure how many planes have been hit

by a microburst in the bermuda triangle.

The evidence lies at the bottom of the atlantic ocean.

♪

the bermuda triangle has mystified both experts

and the public for decades, but massive killer rogue waves,

extreme methane-hydrate blowouts,

and violent microbursts have proved to be all too real.

Advances in our understanding of mother nature's extreme

and terrifying forces may one day reveal

all of the bermuda triangle's secrets.

♪

♪

♪

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