[eerie music]
- He would point to the ocean,
and he said, "She's so beautiful,
but she's a killer."
♪ ♪
- Right after my family's disappearance
in the Bermuda Triangle,
everything in my world vanished.
♪ ♪
narrator: Tonight on "The Bermuda Triangle:
Into Cursed Waters"...
- We're going right into it.
narrator: It's the Triangle's top ten mysteries.
♪ ♪
- A giant ship over 500-feet long
disappears without a trace.
narrator: From killer waves...
- The Bermuda Triangle,
rogue waves could be part of it.
narrator: To subsea methane explosions...
- If a bubble burst underneath you,
then you would simply fall off the planet into the abyss.
narrator: To an entire lost squadron...
- And there was no evidence, no bodies, no debris.
narrator: Even real-life ghost ships...
- Why would a crew, an entire crew,
simply abandon a vessel that was still floating?
narrator: The team reveals what they now know
about each mystery...
- There is so much evidence now,
especially coming from military pilots.
narrator: And what they plan to do next
to uncover answers...
- The United States government
is investigating this pattern
of mysterious disappearances of ships.
- So the compass could have been affected?
- Absolutely.
- So now you can kind of see
where this could become more catastrophic.
narrator: Including lost footage
they've never shown before...
- Mother Ocean's very good at hiding her secrets.
narrator: And information they've kept
under lock and key.
- If we were able to keep that a secret,
how many other things do you think we could keep a secret?
♪
narrator: There is a place
that evokes fear and fascination.
Bounded by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico,
the Bermuda Triangle has swallowed countless ships,
planes, and people.
♪ ♪
Now an elite team is on the hunt...
- Dive, dive, dive.
narrator: And making big finds.
- We've discovered "Challenger."
narrator: Their secret weapon, a wreck map
decades in the making.
- These are dangerous dives.
- Whoa!
- Any sane person would not be doing this.
narrator: Their mission, solve the mystery
of the Bermuda Triangle one wreck at a time.
- Dude, are you seeing this?
- Mother Nature is gonna take these wrecks away.
The clock is ticking.
♪ ♪
- When you're blazing new paths,
you don't have notes from other people
because, obviously, you're the first one there.
♪ ♪
- What drives us, it's always going to be the next find
and the next target.
The unexplored.
♪ ♪
narrator: Another dive season is in the books,
but for Mike, Jimmy, and the Bermuda Triangle team,
the work continues.
- In between dive seasons,
it's kind of like being in the offseason
of any kind of professional sports team.
I mean, we want to learn the lessons from this year
and take them forward.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start researching now.
narrator: And that means compiling
their top ten mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.
It's part progress report and part to-do list.
Number ten is a rare phenomenon,
but when it happens, it grabs headlines--
ghost ships.
- The idea of ghost ships--
the ship seems perfectly intact,
but the crew is missing, gone, vanished.
And it is one of the most incredible mysteries
out of the Bermuda Triangle.
- The big question is, why would a crew,
an entire crew sometimes of hundreds of men,
just simply abandon a vessel that was still floating?
narrator: To answer this question,
the team is investigating several historical cases
of known ghost ships.
- One of the most famous ones, of course,
was the "Carroll Deering."
♪ ♪
narrator: January 1921.
The sailing frigate "Carroll Deering,"
coming from Brazil, enters the Bermuda Triangle.
All contact is lost.
Then on January 31st, she appears
off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
♪ ♪
- Strange thing about that one?
Nobody on board.
Zero crew.
An empty vessel that runs aground.
- "The Carroll Deering" is lost
just after World War I,
where you get a rash of unexplained losses of ships.
And so as a result, the United States government
launched an investigation to find out
what exactly was happening.
♪ ♪
narrator: The investigation was overseen
by future president Herbert Hoover.
The government's favored theory,
"Deering's" crew turned on their captain
and joined league with Communist pirates.
- The big worry at this time was, believe it or not,
Communist revolution.
And as a result, they were worried
that some of the ships' crews may have actually revolted.
narrator: But nothing could explain
why a perfectly seaworthy boat
was reportedly discovered all sails set but unmanned.
♪ ♪
Digging deeper, Dave and Wayne come across
a theory rooted in old sailors' tales
of madness at sea.
♪ ♪
- Hi, there. - You must be Nic.
Hi, Nic.
narrator: They meet Nic Compton, an expert
in a bizarre condition called calenture.
- Sailors, they are unable to resist the urge
to jump over the side into the sea.
♪ ♪
And that's what's fascinating about it
is that it does affect whole crews.
In the 1785 expedition of the Senegal River,
the crew of 30 sailors, they all ended up jumping
over the side to their death.
- All of them? - All 30?
- Yeah.
narrator: Such a scenario might explain
what happened to the crew of
the "Carroll Deering" and other ghost ships
of the Bermuda Triangle.
But the team will need to keep digging
to get to the bottom of the ghost ship phenomenon.
- I really don't know how you solve something
like the "Carroll Deering," unless we find out
that that crew was taken by pirates
and there's a trace of them.
I mean, this is beyond the needle in a haystack.
narrator: At number nine are meteorological phenomena
that figure into many stories of lost ships and planes,
freak storms.
♪ ♪
- We have crazy storms that kick up
within the Bermuda Triangle, like, instantly.
It could be completely flat, calm,
and then all hell is breaking loose.
♪
- I mean, we always think of hurricanes,
but we realize that there's much more
than just the simple hurricane
or the occasional storm.
narrator: The team wants to know, beyond hurricanes,
are there other kinds of storms
more bizarre in nature that are taking down
ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle?
They find clues to at least one uncanny weather pattern
during an investigation of an F2H Banshee,
a high-altitude 1950s-era spy plane
discovered in 290 feet of water.
- Topsides.
We are currently sitting on top of the aircraft.
- Does not appear that the pilot got out.
narrator: The mystery begins in February 1958.
A four-member Banshee squadron from the Royal Canadian Navy
are conducting joint training exercises
with the U.S. Navy along the Florida coast.
They suddenly face an intense fog bank
that materializes seemingly out of nowhere.
Three planes emerge, but the fourth disappears.
Was the fog hiding a freak weather event?
The team investigates one potential culprit.
It's called a microburst.
♪ ♪
These small, concentrated, and powerful storms
are usually less than 2 1/2 miles in diameter
but with winds up to 150 miles per hour.
Globally, they're responsible
for at least 20 major airline disasters,
totaling over 500 deaths.
♪ ♪
David O'Keefe joins storm chaser Jeff Gammons
to investigate how microbursts form
and the danger they might pose in the Triangle.
- Typical microbursts, you go from calm winds to 60-,
70-mile-an-hour winds, you know, in 5 minutes.
narrator: This is what seemed to happen the day
the Banshee disappeared, when the pilots
of the other planes said the skies were clear,
then suddenly they were surrounded by fog.
- Sort of a drop of a hat, everything changed.
- Yeah, because the thunderstorm goes up,
and then it almost collapses on itself.
narrator: So it's possible a microburst
took down the Banshee,
but it's not the only weird weather in the Triangle.
There are stories of monstrous white squalls,
deadly sea tornadoes called waterspouts,
even ship-sucking whirlpools.
And David O'Keefe thinks new advances
will help the team understand what role
these forces have played in the Triangle's
many vanishings.
- The one area that I think the team
really should delve into would be
the new satellite imaging.
They've been noticing a lot of strange cloud patterns,
and nobody really knows what to make out of it.
narrator: The Bermuda Triangle is arguably
the most notorious body of water on Earth,
and the team that knows it best
is taking us inside their list
of its top ten unsolved mysteries.
At number eight is one of the largest ships
lost to the Bermuda Triangle,
the "Marine Sulphur Queen."
- We were never able to truly figure out what happened
to the "Marine Sulphur Queen."
But perhaps even more important,
what was it that took her down?
[tense music]
narrator: February 2, 1963.
The "Marine Sulphur Queen," nicknamed the "MSQ,"
sets out with more than 15,000 tons
of molten sulfur on a course through the Bermuda Triangle.
♪ ♪
- It was on a routine trip between Texas and Virginia
when it suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again.
narrator: The unexplained loss of 39 souls
and a 500-foot tanker stuns the American public,
even as the exact final resting place
remained elusive.
- Pieces of equipment that had the ship's name
actually washed up near the Florida Keys.
♪ ♪
narrator: One theory is that the "MSQ"
was sunk by a freak weather event
called a waterspout, ocean-borne tornadoes
that are a known hazard to small vessels.
♪ ♪
But evidence of that is thin, and the team
is more interested in another theory.
- I believe it was the ship itself.
This was a T2 tanker that was converted
to carry molten sulfur.
narrator: World War II era T2 tankers
like the "Marine Sulphur Queen"
had a hidden problem.
In the early 20th century, ship hulls
were held together with rivets,
but as America geared up for war
in the 1940s, manufacturers switched
to faster, cheaper welds.
Unfortunately, the steel wasn't up to the task.
♪ ♪
Dave and Wayne travel to a shipyard
in Norfolk, Virginia, to learn why.
- The steels that they were using to build
riveted ships were not suitable to welding.
They had too much impurities in them.
narrator: That dirty steel in use
at the beginning of World War II
was prone to cracking, leading to structural failure.
- They didn't learn how the welding affected the steel
until you had some of those--
- Incidents that happened at sea.
- Right.
narrator: It's a flaw that sank several T2 tankers
throughout the 1940s and '50s.
Did it doom the "Marine Sulphur Queen"?
♪ ♪
- It's kind of shocking.
This has to be the most compromised vessel
that we've ever come across.
- It was a death trap.
It shouldn't have been at sea, period.
narrator: To confirm this theory, the team
is investigating unexplored shipwrecks
near the "Marine Sulphur Queen's"
last known position. - Dive, dive, dive.
narrator: They even found a ship sunk
by a U-boat during World War II,
the "Joseph M. Cudahy," lost with 37 aboard.
But the "MSQ" is still out there,
and this mystery will stay near the top
of the team's list.
- We came up empty.
It just means that we have to expand our search.
narrator: Number seven on the team's list
is an anomaly
that may bring death from below
and is this high on the list
because of some significant recent discoveries--
subsea methane hydrate deposits.
♪ ♪
- One of the questions that's been asked
over the years is whether methane hydrates
may have played a role in bringing down ships
in the Bermuda Triangle.
narrator: Like other fossil fuels, methane hydrates
are formed when microbes break down
buried organic matter.
There's been recent speculation
that when subsea methane deposits explode,
they can create a massive bubble
with the potential to displace water
and sink ships.
Dave and Wayne meet NOAA researcher
Mali'o Kodis, who's helping find new ways
to detect potentially hazardous methane deposits.
♪ ♪
- Is it possible, though, to get an enormous amount
of methane going to the surface which could indeed
be a hazard to shipping?
- I think with different types of deposits,
that could be possible.
♪ ♪
narrator: Such an eruption happened off Norway in 1985.
The nearly 300-foot-long oil platform
West Vanguard was disabled by a sudden burst of methane gas.
♪ ♪
- What kind of signatures would we be looking for
at the bottom?
- I'd think some sort of a crater from,
you know, the hydrate escaping the ocean floor.
- So it'd leave a crater as if, for instance, a bomb went off.
narrator: A bomb so big, it scars the ocean floor.
A 2010 expedition to map a stretch
of the Bermuda Triangle revealed craters,
some larger across than three football fields.
Dan Taylor was part of that expedition.
- A 600-meter gas hydrate bubble
would create a bubble on the surface
of the ocean that's miles, miles wide.
If you were a vessel
and a bubble burst underneath you,
then you would simply fall off the planet into the abyss
and the water would swallow you.
♪ ♪
narrator: These craters suggest potentially
hazardous subsea explosions.
And new research has revealed these deposits are
surprisingly common in the Bermuda Triangle,
for reasons that aren't totally understood.
But to David, more evidence is needed
to prove they can sink ships.
- When it comes to the possibility of them being
strong enough to be able to pull down a ship,
there's been no data found whatsoever
that supports that particular type of theory.
narrator: Number six on the team's list
may connect to an important case--
wormholes.
♪ ♪
- The Bermuda Triangle's always been full
of rumors of teleportation, wormholes,
and strange time warps.
narrator: Some believe the wormhole anomaly
was a factor in the Bermuda Triangle's
most famous mystery, the loss of six navy planes
in a single night on December 5, 1945.
The incident became known as the Mystery of Flight 19
and the Martin Mariner.
- December 5, 1945, that's a weird day
off the coast of Florida.
I mean, it is, of course, the tragic loss
of Flight 19 and Martin Mariner.
But when Dave and I started digging in
and researching even more,
there was some bizarre happenings.
narrator: The navy organized one of the largest
search and rescue missions in U.S. history
to go after the lost planes.
Dave and Wayne met with John Blum
of the Fort Lauderdale Naval Museum
to examine evidence of other unexplained incidents
on that night.
- This first letter was sent to us in 1995...
- OK.
- By a pilot instructor who was out on a training flight.
And they had gone out on an eight-hour training flight,
east over the Bahamas and back, and that's the same time
Flight 19 was getting lost.
♪ ♪
- It says here, "We were on our way back to Miami,
"but we were back 45 minutes or so early.
"There were a lot of clouds, and we were in and out
of them as we circled."
narrator: That put the pilot over 100 miles
from where he thought he was.
- The only explanation that he could come up with
was that he had some sort of massive tailwind.
- Was this your only account, or do you have anything else?
- No, I have some others.
Now, that night when Flight 19 was missing,
Banana River sent out two search planes.
They were flying back to what they thought was Banana River,
but when they crossed the coast,
they were in Georgia, which is very far away.
- Georgia? - That far up?
- Yeah, yeah. - That's crazy.
Let me see this. - Wow.
They floated all the way up the coast
until they were in Georgia, and they
didn't realize it until they were on their way home.
No explanation as to why.
So we have all these planes experiencing
similar difficulties with navigation, orientation,
and understanding where they are.
- Is it a coincidence, or was there something
mysterious happening?
♪ ♪
narrator: Some researchers believe the planes
entered a kind of wormhole or portal
that transported them vast distances
almost instantaneously.
Physicists have observed this kind of teleportation
on the atomic level.
Many believe it's possible on a larger scale.
But despite harrowing stories from pilots,
there's no corroborating evidence
that this is happening in the Bermuda Triangle.
- Is it possible that the air crew, the pilots,
got disoriented?
Possibly they hit some weather.
We have no solid evidence that allows me
to speculate beyond just the basic levels of speculation.
narrator: The Bermuda Triangle has claimed
over 50 ships and at least 20 aircraft,
all lost without a trace.
But why?
On the team's list of the Triangle's biggest mysteries
is one that could offer a reason
for many of these vanishings.
At number five, compass malfunctions.
- Most of the anecdotal evidence that we came across
is usually stories along the same line.
The compasses are not playing properly.
They're spinning around or they're just
giving readings that are false,
and it's unexplained as to why.
- When you're talking about flying over water,
your ability to navigate is limited to a compass or GPS.
And so now you can be a degree or two off, and that changes
potentially by hundreds of miles
from where you're supposed to be at.
And so now you can kind of see
where this could become catastrophic, potentially,
if not handled correctly.
narrator: Jason sees some conventional explanations
for this anomalous compass behavior.
- A compass is designed to work well when it's balanced.
Well, you add, like, a thunderstorm,
it starts rocking the airplane, your compass no longer
is as reliable as it once was.
narrator: But there may be other reasons
for the strange compass behavior
in the Bermuda Triangle.
[tense music]
The team meets Tamitha Skov, a scientist
who specializes in solar activity
and its effects on the Earth.
- If you think of the sun's surface
as like an ocean, it'll fire off solar flares,
solar storms, and the solar radiation storms
sometimes all at the same time.
♪
- What is it like when it arrives on Earth
and how does it impact directly ships at sea?
- Slams into the Earth's big magnetic shield,
and that causes it to rock and roll,
which then causes compasses to kind of wiggle
and do all sorts of strange things.
It causes issues for satellites and for airlines.
narrator: In 2008, a solar storm was the leading suspect
in an onboard computer malfunction
that suddenly sent a Qantas A330 Airbus
into an uncontrolled nosedive,
injuring passengers and requiring the pilot
to make an emergency landing.
- This is the dark side of the moon,
just in case. - Wow.
narrator: Looking deeper, the team found a clear link
between periods of increased solar activity
and notorious Bermuda Triangle losses.
- So possibly the compass could have been
affected by this solar storm.
- It is absolutely likely.
- There could be much more of a connection
than we ever expected.
Something bizarre happened at this particular time
when there was a solar eruption or a solar flare
that was going on.
The problem is,
correlation does not prove causality.
But what it does do is give us the impetus
to do further research.
narrator: Solar weather is increasingly
being recognized as a hazard to ships and planes.
That fits the pattern for a Bermuda Triangle mystery
that is number four on the team's list, killer waves.
♪ ♪
Mariners have long told tales of rogue waves...
♪ ♪
70-foot walls of water that rise from nowhere
to swallow ships whole.
Wayne and David are investigating
just how frequent and dangerous
rogue waves are in the Triangle.
- The Bermuda Triangle, we don't know exactly
why there are so many shipwrecks there.
Rogue waves could be part of it.
narrator: They join Laura Azevedo,
a Florida-based oceanographer.
- We consider a rogue wave a wave
that's at least twice the size of the other waves
in the ocean.
Now, it could be twice or it could be much more.
We sometimes see three times the size.
narrator: But can rogue waves get big enough to sink a ship?
The team sets out to find evidence on the seafloor.
- Have had a shallow wreck called the "Peconic"
that we identified about 20 years ago
which was a victim of a rogue wave,
which is a phenomenon associated
with the Bermuda Triangle.
Came out of the darkness and just swallowed up the ship.
narrator: August 28, 1905,
the steamship "Peconic" sets sail,
traveling along the Florida coast,
when a rogue wave estimated at 70 feet
appears out of the darkness.
Only two sailors managed to escape in a lifeboat
as the "Peconic" is swallowed by the sea.
- So I think we go down and dive the wreck
and try to see if there's something
that exhibits some kind of damage
from the rogue wave sinking.
- Dive, dive, dive.
narrator: To find traces of a rogue wave hit,
the team deploys a technique called photogrammetry.
The process requires hundreds of photos
that are then stitched together
by a computer algorithm to create
a detailed 3D model of the wreck.
♪ ♪
- Wow. - Look what we got for you.
- Oh, look at that.
- Whatever happened happened very quickly.
- Unbelievable. - Yeah.
Something that just grabbed it, rolled it,
and put it on the bottom like that.
narrator: A ship resting on its side on the seafloor
is highly unusual.
This is clear evidence of a strike by a rogue wave
and reinforces the threat posed
by massive killer waves in the Bermuda Triangle.
- These waves are big.
If you don't handle the ship correctly,
you could roll to one side and you could get toppled over.
♪ ♪
narrator: The Bermuda Triangle team is regrouping
and making plans to tackle
the biggest mysteries of the Triangle.
Number three has made it this high on the list
because it's a phenomenon that Hollywood
has long associated with the Bermuda Triangle,
unidentified flying objects.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- The top of the list,
when it comes to Bermuda Triangle mysteries,
of course, is the concept of the UFO
or what we now call UAPs.
♪ ♪
So one of the big mysteries
is whether they are actually playing a role
in the loss of aircraft and ships.
narrator: Recent evidence released
by the U.S. government
includes footage captured by navy pilots
just north of the Bermuda Triangle
off Florida.
♪ ♪
- There is so much evidence now,
especially coming from military pilots
and airline pilots.
- Have I ever seen anything that I can't identify?
I'd have to say yes.
♪ ♪
Sometimes you just kind of chalk it up to,
it was likely something that was meant to be there.
I just haven't been trained or exposed to that.
That's how I've rationalized it.
♪ ♪
narrator: To determine if UAP activity
contributes to the loss of ships and planes,
Dave and Wayne speak with UFO expert
Kathleen Marden, who reveals the details
of an incident at the edge of the Triangle
that's been kept secret for decades.
- On this particular night,
there were fast movers that came from the north
down the East Coast.
I've spoken to military officers
who were in the radar tower.
♪ ♪
narrator: March 31, 1967.
Military radar operators track a cluster
of targets moving at speeds well beyond
any known aircraft.
The targets head straight to Homestead Air Force Base.
♪ ♪
A radar operator at Homestead locks onto the targets,
and then...
- Four seconds later...
♪ ♪
It knocked out the radar.
He said that the gauges moved backwards.
♪ ♪
narrator: Later that same month,
Marden says the American military
intercepted radio traffic from two Cuban MiGs
in the middle of a close encounter.
- The Cuban MiGs were in pursuit
of an unidentified flying object.
One of them simply disintegrated.
- What could have brought down a Cuban MiG
traveling at high speed and have it
just simply disintegrate into thin air?
♪ ♪
narrator: The team did find one potential explanation
for some of the sightings--
government weapons testing,
specifically the SR-71 Blackbird.
They speak with Bob Hanyok,
a former U.S. intelligence operator.
- The SR-71 flew over the United States,
and people would see this terribly fast object
in the sky.
This would have been 1965, 1966 period.
Three SR-71s were deployed to an airbase in Florida
to test conditions that were similar to Asia--
the humidity and so on.
narrator: It means the Blackbirds were being tested
in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle.
- That airplane still looks extraterrestrial
in present day.
So we were able to keep that a secret.
How many other things do you think we could keep a secret?
While it might be a mystery to us,
there's someone that it's not a mystery to.
narrator: For his part, Mike Barnette does not put
too much stock in the idea that UFOs
are taking ships and planes.
♪ ♪
- You know, I'm not dissing it, but I want an answer.
An answer is gonna be rational.
There's a lot of rational explanations
for the disappearances of these aircraft and ships.
narrator: While the team may disagree,
there's no denying the link between the Bermuda Triangle
and strange lights in the sky,
so UAPs will remain a focus of ongoing investigation.
♪ ♪
narrator: The team is closing in
on their top unsolved mysteries
of the Bermuda Triangle.
Number two on the team's list
is the single deadliest incident
in the Bermuda Triangle.
- Right at the top of the list
is the disappearance of the USS "Cyclops" in 1918.
I mean, this is a giant ship, over 500 feet long,
suddenly just disappears without a trace.
- And there was no evidence, no bodies, no debris.
The largest peacetime loss of naval personnel.
That resonates to this day.
[eerie music]
narrator: On March 4, 1918, at the height of World War I,
the "Cyclops," a navy ship nearly as long
as two city blocks, sails from Barbados
to Baltimore with 309 men aboard.
Bristling with heavy cranes and thousands of tons of cargo
in her hold, she travels north towards Puerto Rico,
crosses into the Bermuda Triangle,
and suddenly vanishes.
No SOS. No lifeboats.
- So many questions.
I mean, this ship just vanished.
- Yeah.
- Not a piece of wreckage was found.
- To really explain what happened to the "Cyclops,"
the wreck needs to be found first.
♪ ♪
narrator: The team took two shots at "Cyclops."
♪ ♪
The first was a large target off Florida
that lined up with the theory that the "Cyclops"
took the inside route, hugging the U.S. coast.
The wreck was called Cal's wreck.
- This is a site that's resting in 385 feet of water.
We're on the western edge of the Gulf Stream.
narrator: Mike and Jimmy became the first
to put human eyes on Cal's wreck
and determined it was most likely
a large turn-of-the-century cargo steamship
called the "General Whitney."
♪ ♪
The team's next shot at "Cyclops"
was another reportedly massive wreck
off the coast of Virginia,
this time following a theory that "Cyclops"
made it much closer to her final destination in Baltimore
before she went down.
♪ ♪
- Dive, dive, dive.
♪ ♪
narrator: The team identified a massive 500-foot shipwreck.
♪ ♪
But it turned out to be a Great Lakes bulk carrier.
♪ ♪
- Well, we know where the "Cyclops" isn't now,
so we're able to cross those out.
The "Cyclops" has to be somewhere
en route from Barbados to Baltimore.
♪ ♪
narrator: Back on land, the team explores several theories
for what happened to "Cyclops."
- Still can't find it.
narrator: Cyclops expert Marvin Barrash
thinks that rogue waves were the likeliest suspect.
- Rogue waves, they can come out of nowhere.
I suspect at night, it would have probably easily succumbed
to such, you know, a disaster.
♪ ♪
narrator: The ship was reportedly
overloaded with a cargo of manganese,
a heavy ore that "Cyclops" was not designed to carry.
- Now, this has weight to it. - Oh, boy.
narrator: The dense cargo may have destabilized "Cyclops,"
leaving her vulnerable to heavy seas, storms,
and even rogue waves.
♪ ♪
- Additional weight.
She was built for coal and oil, not for manganese.
- So you're talking a catastrophic event.
- Yes.
♪ ♪
- Compromised engineering and a rogue wave.
- And all under the umbrella of the Bermuda Triangle.
narrator: The fate of this 500-foot ship
carrying more than 300 sailors
will remain a focus of the team's ongoing investigation.
♪ ♪
- Mother Ocean is very good at hiding her secrets,
and this is a case in point.
♪ ♪
narrator: The Bermuda Triangle team is confronting
the biggest mysteries they've tackled
in two seasons of exploration and investigation.
Number one is the disappearance
that started it all.
- Without a doubt, the number one mystery
is the loss of Flight 19 and the Martin Mariner.
narrator: December 5, 1945.
A squadron of five navy bombers takes off
from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station
on a training mission codenamed Flight 19.
Around 5:00 p.m., the planes radio in that they're lost,
their compasses out.
Then they vanish somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.
Hours later, a Martin Mariner seaplane
is sent out to rescue the five planes
from Flight 19.
It, too, vanishes without a trace.
[dramatic music]
- What really elevates that mystery is the Martin Mariner.
Why did we lose the search airplane?
narrator: While Flight 19 is thought to be lost
in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle,
the Martin Mariner is believed to have gone down
much closer to shore.
- Martin Mariner, this is supposed to be
in shallower water, something that we
could dive and explore.
narrator: The key clue to the Martin Mariner's whereabouts
is an eyewitness account from a passing freighter.
- Everything came down to a ship
called the "Gaines Mill" that was just
sailing through that area.
And all reports at around 7:50 that night,
they saw a fireball 100-feet high
off the ocean floor that burned for 10 minutes.
♪ ♪
narrator: Many believe that fireball
was the Martin Mariner.
♪ ♪
But after decades of searching,
Mike is starting to question everything,
including the official record.
♪ ♪
- We've dived all the charts inshore.
There's nothing that fits.
But what does fit is that she was farther offshore,
and we were working our way out to that area,
and I think one day, one of these targets
is gonna be the Martin Mariner.
Just a matter of time, dedication, and stubbornness.
narrator: While Mike Barnette believes
Flight 19's wreckage lies in deep water,
David and Wayne have been investigating a theory
that at least one of its planes
made it back to shore.
The theory is based on intercepted radio
communications that suggest the five planes split up
and two of them headed west toward Florida.
- Damn it, we need to fly west.
- We know that there was conflict
and arguments going on between the different pilots.
I think there's a good possibility
that the planes did separate and one or two
did make it back.
narrator: Wayne and David have found tantalizing evidence
that backs up this theory...
- That's a 50-cal.
That is a .50-caliber.
- Yes, this is M2 aircraft .50-caliber.
- Wow.
- I believe it would have been mounted
in the wing of the aircraft.
narrator: Including potential wreck sites
throughout Central Florida swamps.
So far, though, they've turned up
no conclusive evidence.
But the hunt is far from over.
- We are not gonna rest until this particular mystery
of the Bermuda Triangle is solved.
narrator: It was while looking for Flight 19
that the team made a surprise discovery,
an F-8 Crusader that crashed in 1966.
It didn't figure into any known
Bermuda Triangle mysteries,
but for the family of the fallen airman,
Lieutenant Bill Lawton, it was a powerful discovery.
In a moment seen for the first time,
Mike and Jimmy are invited to meet them.
- Hi. - Hi.
- How you doing? Hey, I'm Mike.
- Hi, Mike. It is such a pleasure.
- Nice to meet you. - Thank you so much for coming.
- Jimmy. - April.
- April, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, ma'am.
- Nice to meet you.
narrator: Among them is April Kerr-Miller,
the fiancée the 20-year-old airman didn't get to marry.
♪ ♪
- As soon as I saw it, I was on my feet.
I scared everybody in the house.
That's-- that's Bill's plane.
There's no doubt in my mind that that's Bill's plane.
- It must be unusual for you to come into all this
and realize that you all have such an impact.
- Just to have someone remembering
that there's a really human element to this,
and it was very moving for the whole family.
♪ ♪
narrator: These opportunities to meet next of kin
connect the team to the larger meaning
of their search.
- Whenever you're diving a shipwreck,
in more cases, an aircraft wreck,
you're just looking for the facts--
what type of aircraft, when did it go down.
And then when you actually learn
about the person involved, the losses,
and then potentially reaching out to their family,
it's hard to really describe,
but it's very moving and deeply gratifying.
♪ ♪
narrator: For the team, the bigger mission
continues, with new dive targets
to explore and new theories
to investigate.
The mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle
are slowly being unraveled.