In the afternoon of Dec. 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy planes took off from a base in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a training mission. They were never heard from again.
The squadron flew off, with an itinerary taking them several dozen miles east, then north. Two hours after takeoff, the Navy got word that the squadron leader was having technical issues with his compass and his backup compass. The same happened for the other planes.
After two more hours, something more came through the radio: a garbled message from the leader, telling the other pilots to evacuate their planes. Land radar stations found the flight somewhere between the Bahamas and Florida. A Mariner aircraft with a search and rescue crew took off to find the pilots. For unexplained reasons, the plane turned around three minutes later and then also disappeared. A tanker reported an explosion off the coast of Florida not much later.
Despite a massive manhunt the pilots and the Mariner’s passengers were nowhere to be found. Their planes disappeared entirely, too. The incident revitalized the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. Another famous incident was the disappearance of the USS Cyclops, then the Navy’s largest ship, which vanished on a trip in the Caribbean. Overall, over 100 ships and planes have disappeared in the area between the southern tip of Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico.
For more on the 1945 incident, check out this article from the U.S. Navy.
