Original subtitles

narrator: over the centuries,

hundreds of ships and dozens of aircraft

have gone missing in a mysterious stretch of water.

one minute they are there, the next they vanish.

they have one thing in common.

they dared to enter the bermuda triangle.

there's portals, there's underground vortices,

advanced technologies, secret naval bases.

these are just some of the many explanations.

picknett: it's possible that the presence of the military

in the area of the bermuda triangle

is actually attracting ufos.

you've heard of ufos, but there are also usos --

unidentified submersible objects.

felix: of course there are aliens.

of course, there a ufos. there's something out there.

♪

♪

-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

captions paid for by discovery communications

narrator: the bermuda triangle has both struck fear

and captivated the imagination of people around the world.

yet no one can explain it.

commercial, private, and military craft

all have fallen victim to this most mysterious region.

picknett: the bermuda triangle literally is an area of water

in north atlantic defined in triangular shape

by puerto rico, bermuda, and miami.

it's believed over the course of many years

that over 75 planes

have disappeared mysteriously in that area

and hundreds of ships have just gone without any trace.

although we've only given the bermuda triangle a name

in the last 50 years,

it's been wreaking havoc on sailors

for hundreds of years before now.

walters: the kind of romantic story, the bermuda triangle,

that might be the part of the planet

where seriously strange things happen.

and once you go in there you can never get out.

and it's very dangerous because you may disappear forever down

some time warp into another dimension.

mcmahon: there's certainly been some very high-profile

and unusual disasters

and disappearances within the bermuda triangle.

whether or not it's disproportionately high --

a lot of people, for example,

the coast guard services say it's not true,

but there's a widespread belief that it is true.

♪

narrator: arguably, the most famous disappearance occurred in 1945

when five u.s. bombers and a rescue plane disappeared

while on a training flight in the bermuda triangle.

mcmahon: the most intriguing story involving the bermuda triangle

is the flight 19 mission five avenger torpedo bombers

that all fly out together

on what was a routine training mission.

and at some point,

they seemed to become totally disoriented.

their last messages back to base showed that they had no idea

where they were going, their instruments have gone haywire,

and they simply didn't know if they could get back.

they were also running out of fuel

because they'd been out far longer than they expected.

at some point, contact was lost.

all five planes, all 14 personnel,

wiped out disappeared.

felix: a search party was sent out to find the five planes

or at least look for the wreckage.

and a flying boat was sent out with 30 members of crew onboard.

that was never heard of again. it vanished.

nickell: we can imagine that there's some mysterious vortex,

some other dimension,

some phenomenon called an electronic fall.

but in fact, this was a training mission.

these were rookies out on there on their flight

with with a commander.

but he got disoriented and they flew

and flew in a wrong direction

until they ran out of gas and all of them went down.

we were more confident about the search plane that went out

and also vanished.

that make of plane was nicknamed the flying gas tank

and had a history of blowing up.

and it appears that this was an untimely accident

at that point.

mcmahon: the official explanation was human error, tragic human error,

that the fuel ran out and they simply ditched and were killed.

the unofficial explanation

is that something very strange happened to lead

to five aircraft disappearing simultaneously.

narrator: but can the disappearance of flight 19

really be attributed just to pilot error?

in 1995, civilian pilot cary gordon

had a truly terrifying experience while airborne

and close to the original flight path of the doomed mission.

her account echoes some of the strange anomalies

the pilots reported over their radios just minutes

before they vanished.

gordon-trantham: [ over radio ] it was actually a day just like today.

beautiful day. i was --

and i can actually see the everglades and the area

that i know exactly where it happened.

i know exactly where it happened.

getting a little nervous here. [ chuckles ]

it's little scary going over it again.

everything was going great. it wasn't a smooth flight.

it was a little bumpy.

i was flying along the everglades,

i could see miami lights coming on.

and then all of a sudden it was

like somebody threw a blanket over my airplane.

my instruments were going crazy

with my airplane indicator. i was showing me upside down

and i wasn't really sure if i was upside down,

right side up how far i had drifted east or west.

i was totally in the black.

and people said, "well, what do you see?"

i didn't see anything. it was black.

and i was, i was so, so scared

and and, you know, i didn't have engine problems.

i didn't have -- it was just like something.

and it's hard to explain.

so, when i finally did get control of the airplane,

i tried to get radio contact because i had lost radio contact

and nobody was responding.

finally, i saw the marathon lights

and i was able to make it to the airport.

when i landed, i actually had to pry my hands off the yoke

because i was just frozen.

i was still in a state of shock.

and i couldn't hardly walk

when i climbed out of the airplane.

very scary. like something like that.

you just don't get over.

this could well be, for all we know,

a portal to another dimension that these aircraft,

these huge ships -- it doesn't matter how big they are --

all of a sudden, for some reason,

disappear into another dimension.

are they still out there in that dimension?

will they come back one day?

i don't know.

our sciences are young, yet there's so much we don't know.

and, you know, quantum physics has opened up a few doors

and who knows?

a parallel universe?

you know?

a tunnel, you know, to a parallel universe.

these people went someplace. where?

you know, i'm just thankful to whomever that i'm still here.

narrator: hugh willoughby is a professor of meteorology

at florida international university.

he lectures on the dangers of extreme weather,

and he's certain that what happened to flight 19

and cary gordon can be attributed

to one simple reason -- atmospheric conditions.

interpretation of cary gordon's experience

could be cast in terms of meteorology over the everglades.

you have turbulence.

you get almost invisible precipitation

falling from the cloud. [ thunder rumbles ]

you get a strong electric field, you get clear air turbulence,

and all of those things combined to challenge

a pilot's perception of what's going on around him or her.

narrator: there could also be another,

more rare explanation for what cary experienced.

willoughby: st. elmo's fire is a possibility,

having some sort of mist which you can fly into

without knowing it's there.

st. elmo's fire happens when the airplane

accumulates an electric charge.

it can produce a hissing sound in the radios and can interfere

with electrical devices inside the airplane.

what happens is you can see the ground

because you're looking through a little bit of mist.

but when you look horizontally, you're looking through the layer

and you can't see the horizon.

st. elmo's fire is a glow, usually kind of yellowish.

it appears on leading edges of wings,

anything that sticks out from the airplane,

but it can spread over much of the fuselage.

narrator: so can the weather and pilot error really be responsible

for all the disappearances and strange occurrences?

or is there another explanation,

one that is connected to an underwater anomaly

that some believe is the mythical city of atlantis?

♪

narrator: within the bermuda triangle,

hundreds of souls have perished over the centuries.

although many theories have been put forward

to explain the mysterious vanishings,

we are still no closer to a definitive answer.

some of the more extreme melodramatic ideas

to explain the alleged disappearances

in the bermuda triangle include sages from atlantis

drawing them down to their doom, or portals to other worlds

is certainly one of the most enduring mysteries around.

but just how much truth is there in it?

narrator: in recent years,

one hypothesis has gained scientific approval,

and it has to do with gas.

gough: scientists have recently developed a technology

that is a radar examination of the ocean floor.

and what they find is that there's pockets of methane gas

which are exploding up through the ocean,

creating this change in density,

and these huge sort of bubbles that come up to the surface

that would have a detrimental impact on any ship

that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

mcmahon: and the affect that this has is at sea level

to make it very hard for vessels to float.

if the methane rises into the air

and there's a plane flying overhead,

it can react with the electrical devices on board,

effectively ignite.

of course, the result of that is you then have a plane exploding,

suddenly disappearing, crashing into the sea without trace.

narrator: convincing as the methane gas theory is,

it doesn't explain all of the strange anomalies

reported within the bermuda triangle.

in 1968, an archeological discovery in the bahamas

threatened to challenge not just our understanding of history,

but of science itself.

mcmahon: geologists say this is just a natural rock

formation under the sea,

but it has a very kind of angular look to it.

it looks like it could be the ruins

of some kind of ancient structure.

and that's exactly what some people believe it is.

gough: the bimini road is allegedly a manmade structure

in the bahamas on the floor of the ocean

that runs for about a third of the mile.

now, many believe this is proof of atlantis.

narrator: david childress is an author and self-confessed

rogue archeologist.

he has ventured into and dived

the bermuda triangle multiple times.

david believes that the mysterious

vanishings are connected to this ancient rock formation

known as the bimini road, which many believe

is the gateway to the mythical atlantis.

childress: right now, we're just off the coast of florida

in the bermuda triangle.

and this is where a lot of the mysteries

of the bermuda triangle occur, right in this area.

not far from here is the island of bimini.

and on the northwest coast of bimini

is what's called the bimini road.

and i have scuba dived this a number of times,

it's it's only in about 30 feet of water, actually.

but what you see at the bimini road

is very similar to the megaliths that we see in peru,

particularly at sacsayhuaman and fortress above cusco.

and what that is, is huge, pillowy blocks of stone

that are perfectly fitted together.

and it's a it's a megalithic formation

that appears to be manmade.

so the big question with the bimini road

is whether it is an artificial structure

or somehow just an unusual natural structure,

as some geologists believe.

but if it is an artificial structure

and it's under water, what is it doing there?

and that's where atlantis comes in.

and that is why many people think

that the lost city of atlantis

is somewhere in the bermuda triangle.

mcmahon: in the 1970s, it was very widely believed

that the bermuda triangle may indeed

have been the site of the legendary kingdom of atlantis,

which included a pyramid on top of which was a magnetic crystal

that powered that society, some kind of primitive,

maybe extraterrestrial form of electricity.

but unfortunately, this magnetic crystal

also seems to have drawn in cosmic forces

that led to the terrible destruction of atlantis.

the whole thing collapses and that magnetic crystal falls

to the bottom of the sea.

and it's believed by some it's still there.

it's still pulsating.

and it's these shockwaves from that magnetic crystal

that's responsible for downing planes and sinking ships.

childress: the story of atlantis comes to us

from the greek philosopher plato.

it was a city with concentric canals that went to it

that had a huge navy, but they also had electricity.

they had airships.

and many people think that these energy crystals

that were part of these pyramids

and perhaps obelisks that were part of atlantis

were a power source for these airships

and for the electrical power in atlantis.

now, you have to wonder if the american military

isn't interested in this, too. and it's very possible

that if there is evidence of atlantis in the bahamas

or elsewhere in the bermuda triangle,

that the american navy has actually discovered it

and that they know about these pyramids and perhaps

they are studying these pyramids here in the bermuda triangle.

narrator: is it possible that atlantis exists

in the waters of the bermuda triangle?

and if so, is there any evidence the u.s. navy

may be harnessing the same alternative power

used by the mythical civilization?

♪

narrator: the bermuda triangle is the stuff of legends.

with hundreds of ships and planes disappearing within it,

some speculate the lost city of atlantis is buried below

and still emitting strange forces.

perhaps the u.s. navy has discovered the ancient city

and harnessed its power.

with several naval bases located within the triangle.

one installation in particular stands out,

the top secret, autec.

autec is the atlantic undersea test and evaluation center.

and what that is, is a naval base

where underwater forms of warfare

are being tested by scientists.

and you know, that might involve submarines

and other secret technology.

but it's also believed that those scientists

may have been working with alien technology

and may even have made contact with extraterrestrials.

gough: autec is a laboratory, under the water,

that performs advanced warfare tests

with technology that is highly confidential.

it's unidentified flying objects,

but also unidentified submersive objects.

we really don't know what they do.

but we do know that they operate in the vicinity

of the so-called bermuda triangle.

and isn't that curious?

narrator: self-confessed rogue archeologist

david childress has his own theories about autec

and how this top-secret military installation

is connected to the mysterious vanishings.

childress: on the bahamian island of andros,

which is the largest of all the islands of the bahamas,

is a u.s. naval facility known as autec.

it's a top-secret submarine, and oceanography base.

what goes on there? we don't really know.

this is right in the heart of the bermuda triangle.

and you have to suspect that some of the things

that are happening in the bermuda triangle

might have to do with secret technology

that's being developed by the u.s. military.

one of the big stories about bermuda triangle is about

usos -- unidentified submersible objects.

so these are essentially mystery submarines

that people are seeing here in the bermuda triangle.

and this may have been going on for hundreds of years.

we don't really know. but what is interesting

is that some of these unidentified submersible objects

are suddenly seen emerging from the water,

then come out of the water and they fly.

and they're now ufos.

narrator: incredible as david childress' assertions are about usos,

there is one man who can corroborate

his extraordinary claims.

david malcolm is an ex-employee of all autec.

and he believes beyond a shadow of a doubt

that the top-secret naval base is connected

to the strange anomalies within the bermuda triangle.

in the early '70s, i worked as a defense contractor at a base

on andros island called autec.

it was the atlantic undersea testing and evaluation center.

some people consider it to be the navy's area 51.

and a lot of testing of naval warfare and equipment,

it takes place there.

andros, is the largest bahama island,

but it's also the least inhabited.

so it's a pretty remote location.

and the tongue of the ocean is an area

where it's a deep trench.

it's actually a thousand fathoms deep.

and it's a perfect place for acoustical testing

and a place for the military to operate

without endangering commercial shipping

because no one else is in there.

this is a very beautiful location,

but it's also a very secure location,

it's guarded, fenced, and patrolled.

and no one gets in or out

without having a need to be there.

the job required a top secret security clearance

because of the nature of what was going on there

with nuclear submarines

and other classified warfare systems.

my job title was a weapons technician,

and we'd go out during the testing operations

and we'd chase down missiles or torpedoes,

whatever had been fired. recover them,

bring them back into the shop to be analyzed for telemetry

and any other items they might be interested in.

mcmahon: you've heard of ufos, but there are also usos --

unidentified submersible objects.

and these uso shows have been reported have been seen

in the bermuda triangle by, for example, fishing fleets.

and there is a strong belief among many

that there's a link between these objects and whatever

autec is up to, and possibly proof

that autec has indeed developed alien technology.

we were on a recovery operation,

one winter day, and i was in

the back of the boat, and you can see here,

recovering a torpedo that more than likely had been fired

from that sub in the background.

and i noticed something rising up out of the depths

and i wasn't quite sure what it was.

as it slowly rose, it looked like a pipeline.

and i remember thinking,

"what is a pipeline doing in the middle of the ocean?"

and as it continued to rise, silently,

i noticed i couldn't see either end.

and as quickly as it rose, it again faded into the depths

and it was gone.

at the time, i was used to seeing odd things in the water

because of the nature of the work we were doing.

it never occurred to me to say anything,

mainly because we didn't discuss things we saw on the test range.

it was classified information not to be discussed.

and years later, i came to wonder,

specially when news of usos became more widespread.

i started thinking, perhaps that's what i might have seen.

and it's interesting now, because i've read accounts

since then of cigar-shaped objects

that people tend to find flying around in the sky.

i could pretty much relate to that.

and, you know, you could consider this pipe

a cigar-shaped object as well.

picknett: it's possible that the presence of autec

in the area of the bermuda triangle

is actually attracting ufos, just like in area 51,

where the military seem to be attracting ufos.

we don't know how it happens, which comes first,

but certainly the two do go together.

narrator: if autec tech is connected to the mysterious usos,

then what about their more famous

flying counterparts, ufos?

is it possible that recent sightings of ufos

in the bermuda triangle

could be linked to highly classified military craft?

♪

narrator: over the centuries,

navigators through the bermuda triangle

have reported strange anomalies --

from bizarre lights and spinning compasses,

to giant unidentified submersible objects.

with a strong presence in the area,

could the u.s. military have discovered something mysterious

and otherworldly?

picknett: historically, traditionally,

the intelligence behind the ufo phenomenon,

it seems, are attracted to the military.

maybe out of curiosity,

maybe they get some some kind of power out of it.

maybe they're just keeping an eye.

a curious event occurred in 2015 that might change how we think

about what's been occurring in the bermuda triangle.

there was an unidentified flying object

that was observed by about a dozen air force personnel.

no one knows what it was,

but it gives credence to the fact

that there are unexplained events

occurring in the area of the bermuda triangle

that might be causing these disappearances.

picknett: having seen the video taken by the pilots,

it does actually fit precisely with other descriptions of ufos

over decades, and leaves us really no closer

to putting our finger on what they are.

it's not enough to say,

"oh, there's some form of alien craft."

ufos don't necessarily imply alien anyway,

but they are something outside our comprehension

because they shape shift.

one minute you're looking at them

and they look like a hard nuts and bolts craft

and suddenly they seem to be amorphous and made of light

and they just turn like that and zip around.

and one that i saw, many years ago,

started as i thought it was a plane crossing a night sky

and suddenly it split into five different lights,

danced around the sky, went back together and zoom.

so personally, i think it's all part of the same phenomenon,

whatever that might be.

narrator: it's not just military air force pilots

in rare circumstances

who have reported seeing ufos in the bermuda triangle.

yaniel garriga is a commercial pilot

whose job requires him to regularly fly

into the bermuda triangle.

he encountered two ufos while flying

near the bahamian island of andros,

home of a top secret naval base autec.

of all witnesses to ufos,

surely the most reliable must be members of the military,

or professional pilots. they are trained observers.

and they are trained not to be fanciful.

there's so many theories about the bermuda triangle.

but when you hear a firsthand observation

by air force personnel.

there's something about hearing about these unusual observations

from someone who is so well trained to discern the ordinary

from the extraordinary that it just makes you believe

there's a lot more that we don't understand.

why are these ufos attracted to this triangle?

it's obviously because of energy in the same way

as we possibly believe that stonehenge

and various other sites also for some reason

attracted ufos or still attract uf--

it's all back to earth energy.

narrator: and what about bermuda itself?

the island that spawned the legend of the triangle?

is there anything in its history

which could explain the mysteries

of the bermuda triangle once and for all?

♪

narrator: the bermuda triangle instills both wonder and fear.

the very name itself is a catchphrase

for all that is dark, strange and mysterious.

but is there anything in the island's history

that could help explain the enigma?

gough: although the bermuda triangle is a label

that we've created in the last half a century.

the area around the bermuda triangle

has been a source of mystery and fear

and confusion for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

narrator: philippe rouja is an anthropologist,

historian, and bermuda native

who believes that the answer to the bermuda triangle

may lie in its dangerous past.

rouja: it's entirely logical that this would be the place

where in the 20th century, when they started talking about

or inventing the myth of the bermuda triangle.

it makes sense that that it's not just a triangle,

it's the bermuda triangle.

bermuda can literally handle that sort of tagline

because bermuda has this true history of disaster

and tragedy surrounding it.

you know, literally surrounding it,

in terms of the number of shipwrecks we have.

so we speculate that there's over

300 shipwrecks around, bermuda.

and my job is a custodian of historic wrecks

is to essentially try and locate those shipwrecks.

narrator: because in bermuda,

shipwrecks were something the locals hoped for.

rouja: every ship that sank off of bermuda,

especially those early days, was like a store.

you know, all the things that you couldn't

possibly produce here. iron, rope, cloth.

imagine all those things suddenly arriving

all in one basket.

and so bermudians became very adept

at actually what they call wrecking.

they would actually encourage shipwrecks

so that they could create this kind of like, you know,

almost like a delivery,

if you want, of the goods and products that they needed.

they couldn't get any other way.

and so that reputation then of bermuda just being dangerous

from an environmental point of view

is enhanced by the bermudians themselves

who are then actively encouraging shipwrecks.

and so that's why bermuda was, early on, from the earliest days

called the isle of devils.

in the early charts, bermuda is actually painted upside down.

and that doesn't make sense because these guys knew

how to draw charts.

and so we imagine that it's done on purpose

as a warning to mariners to say, look, this place is dangerous.

you know, when you put flag upside down,

it's a sign that you're in distress.

narrator: there are also naturally-occurring dangers

surrounding the island.

mcmahon: this is an area that's extremely volatile.

it's where three weather systems meet

and you get phenomena like obviously hurricanes

which are growing in frequency and in strength.

but you also get a phenomenon like rogue waves

which can capsize a ship, even ships of huge size.

narrator: and history can prove this has been happening

for hundreds of years.

this is the wreck of the lartington.

she sunk in 1879.

and what's interesting about this shipwreck

in terms of the myth of the bermuda triangle

is it actually does speak to one particular element

that has some veracity to it. you know, this ship

supposedly encountered a 100-foot wave.

that's literally just a mass of hard, heavy water.

the ship was literally bowled over by a 100-foot wave.

you can see it's a big iron ship.

this notion of rogue waves in the atlantic,

these sort of random appearances of massive waves

and the damage that it caused to the ship,

they couldn't keep up with the water coming in.

meant that then they gave up on their journey

from savannah, georgia, to russia and ran for bermuda.

and so they purposely crashed on bermuda.

so it's as much as a shipwreck as it is a crash.

this was done with intention.

the thing about the area around the bermuda triangle

is that the weather conditions are really extreme.

not only is this literally hurricane alley,

but there's also this phenomena of a rogue wave

or conflicting weather fronts.

and weather events literally create a perfect storm,

a perfect wave.

they can have all sorts of detrimental effect

for any ship or boat that comes in its path.

narrator: professor of oceanography

from the university of south hampton, simon boxall,

believes what caused the lartington's demise

can happen just as easily today

because, while rogue waves may be rare.

they are firmly rooted in science.

so the scenario we have in the bermuda triangle

is that we have storms coming across the atlantic,

along the tropics, the classic hurricanes that come across.

and we've got bermuda over here.

we've got florida keys and florida down here.

and these storms are creating the classic sort of textbook

tall textbook pictures of waves.

most waves are maybe as much as 10 meters high.

up here, maybe we've got another storm system from grand banks.

and that's creating waves coming along at about

10 meters high as well.

where these two come together, the two waves can combine.

and we're going to find that if you've got your two waves

like this, that are slightly out of phase,

sometimes they'll let up, sometimes they'll cancel out.

so the real waves that you'll see in the real ocean

look like this.

that means that when these two storms come together,

we've got a perfect storm.

and we then end up with a 20-meter wave.

and that can be fatal for a ship.

we see that every time we get down to the coast.

know you'll stand on the shore side

and you'll see those waves lapping it.

and every so often your feet get wet

as an extra big wave comes in or

for standing there on a stormy day,

the wave crashes over the harbor, off the pier.

and that's exactly what's happening

in the bermuda triangle area.

and if a ship gets caught on these super waves,

one of these rogue waves, then it's in trouble.

narrator: with its dangerous history of shipwrecks,

looting, and furious storms, it's easy to see how the islands

spawned the legend of the bermuda triangle.

but there's one more secret left to reveal.

and it traces back to the beginning of the cold war.

♪

narrator: the dark history of the shipwrecks

off the mainland of bermuda

certainly contributed to the legend of the infamous triangle.

but, there is still one more secret the island has to reveal.

mcmahon: the bermuda triangle is an area

with three points -- bermuda, miami, puerto rico.

and it's believed that within that area,

there are a disproportionate number of accidents,

of tragedies, of fatalities.

way more than other areas of sea around the world.

theories about the bermuda triangle include things

such as ufos, underground vortexes,

entrances to the hollow earth,

weather conditions that are extreme and unique to this area.

really, it's all over the map.

narrator: but the bermuda triangle

still has one more secret to reveal.

rouja: the u.s. military came here post-world war ii.

and established quite a significant military base,

essentially to keep a watch on the atlantic

during the cold war. and they set up

some very advanced listening sort of systems

to listen to what was going on the atlantic,

what what was the traffic

of the russian submarine fleet and all the rest of it.

and so bermuda was a central part,

if not the central sort of hub for figuring out

what was going on in the atlantic, in the cold war.

narrator: just along the coast,

is the now decommissioned top-secret naval

underwater system center at tudor hill,

where american intelligence used advanced technology

to listen for russian submarines

we're heading up to the old naval,

one part of the naval base called tudor hill,

which was the landing point for the underwater array

that went out into the atlantic and around reading

and listening for russian submarines.

and this is essentially the sort of seaward edge

of that naval annex.

no one really understood or knew

what the americans were doing here.

it was like a weather station out at sea.

and these cables purportedly communicated

with that weather station.

and that was the sort of cover story

for the actually incredibly technologically-advanced

activities that were going on here.

they were testing really the first arrays of sort of

underwater long-distance sonar.

and they were detecting things,

literally, hundreds of kilometers away.

and they did tests that encompassed the entire atlantic

trying to figure out just how this machine worked

and just what it could detect.

and so over time, they got super refined at figuring this out

to the point where they could detect and identify

each individual russian submarine

and know where it was going, where it was on its route.

you know, by its sound, by its movements, et cetera.

so it was a really important part of the cold war.

♪

imagine this is the 1960s, 1970s.

you know, you see this level of heightened security in this,

you know, we don't even see this in airports,

these kind of turnstiles.

so this speaks to the what it represented for them

in terms of the secrecy and the, you know, the power of it

and the cold war to kind of help them deal with, you know,

all of the big global issues that they were trying to handle.

it's kind of difficult to see how this ties into

this whole of the myth of the bermuda triangle.

and all the rest of it.

but having people imagining that there was

some myth or some other-worldly story

that explained a lot of the things

they might be seeing that might be military in,

you know, might be connected to military activities.

that probably was very convenient for the military.

so it doesn't surprise me at all that this might actually

have some part to play in the bermuda triangle myth story.

narrator: author david childress is convinced

that the military presence in the bermuda triangle region

connected to the top secret installations

like autec and tudor hill,

are the real explanation for the more recent disappearances.

childress: i genuinely feel that there is real mysteries

to the bermuda triangle

and that they go back for centuries.

there's no doubt that high-tech experiments

and high-tech submarines are being launched from autec.

the united states navy has all kinds of unusual technology.

it's quite possible that they are also creating

anti-gravity type ufo craft.

the idea of making submarines that can also fly.

these are all things that the u.s. navy

is for sure looking into and studying.

and it's quite possible that for decades

they've even had this technology and have kept it a secret.

gough: personally, i don't believe there is anything other worldly

going on in the bermuda triangle.

there have been some some fantastic examples

of lost planes and ships that are really quite curious.

but the world is a big place.

the oceans are two thirds of that world.

and we don't understand half of what we think we do.

narrator: the bermuda triangle is one of the most

enduring and iconic enigmas around the world.

it's impossible to deny that genuine mystery

surrounds the region.

the disappearance of flight 19

continues to cast a long shadow.

and today, people are still vanishing without a trace.

walters: i think what's also seductive about the bermuda triangle

is that it appeals to our frustration

when we don't get the sense of an ending.

and that's why disappearance, i think,

is scary on a very, very deep level.

this idea of people neither being dead nor alive,

and we don't know them to be that,

it is very compelling and very scary.

it's this idea of people being on the threshold.

liminality is what it's called.

and so therefore, that is endlessly fascinating

so that there might be a part of the world

in which you end up being neither dead nor alive.

i can see why that is always going to be seductive.

narrator: it is true that the bermuda triangle

does have a unique meteorology and dangerous weather patterns

could certainly explain some of the disappearances.

there may well be something going on, energies,

different sorts of earth energies

that happen to be there that we haven't proved yet.

narrator: but storms and rogue waves

do not explain the uso and ufo activity

that has been reported by highly credible witnesses,

including civilian and military pilots.

it is plausible that top-secret bases, like autec,

have been working on advanced warfare technology for decades.

and historically, there is a correlation

between heightened ufo activity and the military.

but how far has the u.s. navy taken their top secret projects?

and is it possible they may have found

and be using alternative power

from the mythical lost city of atlantis?

picknett: it is strange because the area does seem

to have some kind of relationship with weirdness,

and some areas do.

the saying is if that the veil is thin

and that that there are portals to another world

or another dimension or another dimension of being.

but it's the whole idea that there's this this place

that is weird and anything that's weird can happen there.

narrator: perhaps we will never know.

humankind has always been drawn to and pondered

the unexplained.

there is something primal which drives us

to try and understand the unknowable.