Original subtitles

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- There's all these shipwrecks out there

in the Bermuda Triangle

that there's no names to.

- This area is one of the most volatile and dangerous

places on Earth.

- You got to go into it fully prepared

for all potential scenarios.

If you get complacent,

that's when bad things will happen.

[thunder booming]

narrator: There is a body of water

that evokes fascination and dread.

♪ ♪

Bound by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico,

it is a 500,000-square-mile enigma

littered with thousands of ship and plane wrecks,

some in waters over 5 miles deep.

Countless people have gone missing

in this maritime black hole,

vanished without a trace.

The question is, why?

- There are so many different theories out there

about the Bermuda Triangle...

- Look at that thing, dude.

- Alien abduction, electronic fog, rogue waves,

vortexes, and methane gas.

People started to realize that these incidents were not

just in the 20th century,

that they had gone all the way back

to the days of Columbus.

- The Bermuda Triangle doesn't give up

her secrets very easily.

- The only way you're going to be able to solve this

is if you hit each one of them head on.

And that's what we're going to do.

♪ ♪

narrator: Now an elite investigation team

is taking on this mystery with a secret weapon,

a map of unidentified wrecks decades in the making.

- All right, guys, this is why we're here.

And this is intel from 30 years.

These numbers are the geographic position,

the latitude and longitude, of shipwrecks

lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

narrator: Historian David O'Keefe,

pilot and combat veteran Jason Harris,

investigator Wayne Abbott,

and wreck diver Mike Barnette...

- Back dive.

- Will attempt to solve the mystery of the Bermuda

Triangle one wreck at a time.

- This is the Bermuda Triangle at work.

It's about to get really bad out here.

- Mother Nature is going to take these wrecks away,

and these mysteries are never going to be solved.

The clock is ticking.

- So you're talking a catastrophic event.

- Yes.

- These are dangerous dives.

- Any sane person would not be doing this.

- The slightest deviation from what you've been trained to do

can be catastrophic.

- Whoa! Whoa. - Whoa.

- We have a great team.

There's no telling what we're going to find

out there in the Bermuda Triangle.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Morning. - Morning, good to see you.

- Since I've been moved down here in Florida

about 21 years ago,

I've been averaging about two to three

wreck identifications a year,

which is--it's a pretty good track record.

[beeps]

[engines revving]

narrator: Mike Barnette and his dive team

are grizzled veterans of the Bermuda Triangle.

They've discovered and identified

more than 50 shipwrecks.

One of his biggest finds was the SS "Cotopaxi,"

which vanished into the Triangle in 1925

with 32 men aboard.

The "Cotopaxi's" disappearance made it to the big screen,

abducted by aliens in Steven Spielberg's

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

In reality, Barnette determined

the ship most likely capsized

in a storm off Saint Augustine.

- It's the search for the unknown

and trying to answer questions.

To me, that's the be-all end-all

of what I'm doing this for.

You can tell the tale now.

You know the final chapter of where the ship was lost.

And I had the initial impression that

everything in Florida had been found;

everything been dived.

But what I found out was that

there was a wealth in shipwrecks

yet to be found and identified and dived on.

So I set out to start acquiring numbers,

trying to research these sites.

And so over these almost 25 years now,

I've acquired a fairly large database.

narrator: The end result is one-of-a-kind map

of unidentified wrecks.

His best intel comes from years talking face-to-face

with local fishermen.

- These guys know where the wrecks are.

They don't know what the wrecks are.

But they know there's something on the bottom.

narrator: Today, the team is diving

on two targets from Barnette's wreck map

near the Triangle that may be linked

to the area's most bizarre case.

- The story of Flight 19 is very compelling.

And everyone is aware of it.

But the lesser-known story is the Martin Mariner.

♪ ♪

narrator: December 5th, 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.

- About 30 minutes after launching,

the Martin Mariner disappeared from radar.

An explosion of fire was sighted by a passing vessel.

And that's all we know.

- It was the first incident that really fixated

the public's attention to what we would

now call the Bermuda Triangle.

You have five planes that get lost,

you get another one that goes out.

All of them disappear.

27 men are never seen again.

- I find that just really moving

that their job is to rescue others

and yet they need rescuing.

♪ ♪

This is a mystery that I can actually

write the final chapter on it.

That story needs to be told.

And to tell the story, you need to find the wreck.

♪ ♪

narrator: Barnette's ultimate goal is to find

every plane lost that night.

Uncovering the Martin Mariner is the first crucial step.

- Mike has searched for the Martin Mariner

now for decades. I mean, it's his Holy Grail.

He has scoured that area.

- I'm stubborn.

It's the one wreck that has proved elusive.

And I just-- I can't accept that.

♪ ♪

- Today, Barnette's joined by Captain Chiung Tien

and his right-hand man for Bermuda Triangle

mystery wrecks, Jimmy Gadomski.

- There's so much around the Bermuda Triangle.

We have a huge target area of shipwrecks, plane wrecks.

- You just never know what you're going to find out here.

That's what I love about this.

What we've got here, we have a site

that was a potential target for the Martin Mariner.

- Oh, wow. - OK.

- Look at that.

Yeah, I'm starting to show some things on the bottom

finder here.

- OK.

- Oh, these are fish.

This right here is some sort of structure on the bottom.

narrator: It's a telltale sign

they're directly over target one

on Barnette's map.

- As you know, the structure holds fish,

that's a good sign.

- This is all just sand, sand, sand, and then, boom.

We start to see some structure and the fish

are holding to it, so...

- There you go.

Toss it.

♪ ♪

- Something's holding those fish there.

That means there's some kind of structure

down there, whether it be a wreck--

we don't know till we get in the water and dive it.

[blowing]

♪ ♪

- Testing, testing, testing.

- On our first dive on a new site,

it's totally alien to you.

- So you have to get the lay of the land

to figure out what you're working with.

♪ ♪

- Aircraft wrecks, usually they're very small.

And it's a highly corrosive environment.

And typically, aircraft do not hold up

very long and very well.

Some of these aircraft wrecks,

it's just scraps of metal on the bottom.

narrator: They locate an engine

and a debris field that suggests

this plane came apart violently.

- The only information we have about the disappearance

of Martin Mariner was a single transmission from a tanker

that was offshore of Cape Canaveral,

which reported seeing the explosion.

♪ ♪

narrator: Clues start to emerge.

♪ ♪

- It seemed like a engine

partially buried on the bottom.

And this was potentially consistent with what

the power plan of the Martin Mariner was.

And the length of those prop blades

matched the Martin Mariner.

- Barnette will need to bring the footage back to the rest

of the team for a closer look.

But it's a promising start.

♪ ♪

- Need a line in, Mike?

- That is a huge [bleep] chunk of wreck.

♪ ♪

Identifying a wreck sometimes comes easy,

and sometimes it's very difficult.

I've been fortunate enough to identify

wrecks on my very first dive.

And other times, it's taken decades.

We've got a lot of footage to work through with the team

to see if we can glean any information

of what we've been diving on.

[tense music]

narrator: Having discovered a plane engine

and propeller that may be linked

to a legendary Bermuda Triangle mystery,

the team heads to target two on Barnette's map,

reported to be a large, unidentified wreck.

It's off the coast of Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space

Center, dozens of miles from where the Martin

Mariner may have exploded.

But Barnette has a gut feeling about this one.

- What drew my attention to this,

it's directly over the flight path of the Martin Mariner.

So just to rule out this site, we wanted to dive it.

narrator: Jimmy Gadomski splashes in solo

for a quick look.

♪ ♪

- As I descend, I get about 20 feet off the bottom,

and it turns to 5 feet to inches of visibility.

♪ ♪

And I'm having to crawl on the bottom.

It took me about 5 to 10 minutes just

to find the structure.

♪ ♪

And by the time I found it, I knew it was some kind

of an aircraft material.

♪ ♪

It has all these weird tiles all over it.

♪ ♪

- He's been down a little while,

so for us, it's just more waiting.

- There he is right by the buoy.

- Oh, there he is right by the buoy, yeah.

- Yeah, he's going up; he's going down.

- Yeah, he's coming up he's moving.

- Gotcha.

♪ ♪

- It looks like the aluminum had disintegrated.

There's rivet lines all down the one side.

♪ ♪

- Can you estimate the size of the wing?

Is it just one side of it or is it the whole wingspan?

- It's very hard to tell.

narrator: With two provocative targets,

Barnette heads to shore and convenes the full team.

[seagull squawks]

Military historian David O'Keefe,

investigator Wayne Abbott,

and Air Force veteran Jason Harris

will help him evaluate the evidence.

They begin with dive target one,

the lone engine and propeller.

- What's intriguing about this is there's

no other aircraft wreckage.

There's no fuselage, no wings, or anything.

It's just a Pratt Whitney Double Wasp engine.

- So the exact same engine that the Martin Mariner had.

- Yeah.

narrator: If Barnette is right,

this is a major clue.

The Martin Mariner had two Pratt and Whitney

R-2800 engines mounted high

for water takeoffs and landings.

The raised wings gave the crew an unobstructed view

of the ocean below, making this plane an ideal choice

for search and rescue.

This seaplane also had a unique feature.

Most Martin Mariners had a more powerful

four-bladed propeller.

But the plane lost going after Flight 19 used the older

three-bladed design, exactly like the one

discovered by divers.

- Three-bladed aluminum prop, heavily buried.

- Wow.

- Everything here is consistent with the Mariner.

♪ ♪

narrator: The team shifts focus

to the strange wing at dive target

number two.

♪ ♪

- This is the edge of some piece of structure.

It looks like it's aircraft grade material of some sort.

♪ ♪

It's got these weird panels or pads...

- Whoa. - All over the top of it.

- I don't recall anything from World War II like that.

♪ ♪

I've never seen any military aircraft

with that kind of composition and those colors before.

I mean, really, it's a fantastic

Bermuda Triangle mystery.

♪ ♪

- What's the plan now, Mike? We have two targets;

one that could be the Martin Mariner

and one that's just, like, this mystery piece.

- I think we should revisit both of them.

The engine would take precedent because it seems more in line

what we're looking for.

But I don't think we should rule this out

till we can dive it again and see it in better conditions.

♪ ♪

narrator: Barnette hopes to ID

both these wrecks on his next dive.

To help him do that,

Wayne and David will look for clues

buried in the historic record.

- As a researcher, as an investigator,

you track down all leads.

You test them, and you see what comes out in the wash.

That's what we're going to do.

- David's a military historian

and veteran infantry officer

who served in Canada's famed Black Watch regiment.

Partner Wayne is an investigator

who's been obsessed with the Bermuda Triangle

since childhood.

- I've looked into a lot of the mysteries and phenomena

of the Bermuda Triangle.

And there's still a lot of weird stuff

that's happening out there.

So I want to just get to the truth.

♪ ♪

narrator: Wayne and David think the key

to the Martin Mariner mystery

may lie in the circumstances surrounding the lost planes it

was sent to find, Flight 19.

♪ ♪

Around 5:00 p.m. on December 5, 1945,

Flight 19's leader begins sending

cryptic and increasingly panicked radio calls.

The five bombers were lost somewhere over open water.

- The flight leader, Charles Taylor,

is completely confused about his position.

He believes that they're somewhere south and west

of Florida over the Keys.

And he thinks that they drifted

out more towards the Gulf.

narrator: But Taylor is way off.

The Navy triangulate their position

and determines that Flight 19 is here,

heading into the Bermuda Triangle.

The Martin Mariner follows after in pursuit.

- He thought he might be over the Florida Keys

instead of over the Bahamas.

And so the next decisions that he made,

based on that faulty perception of where he was,

led them farther into the Atlantic Ocean.

[airplane engines roaring]

narrator: Could Lieutenant Charles Taylor,

a combat-tested pilot with thousands

of hours in the cockpit, have made

such an extraordinary error?

Or is there another explanation?

♪ ♪

- There are people that have claimed to have gone

through this mysterious phenomena called "the vortex"

and traveling in parts of the Triangle

and getting from A to B quicker than they're supposed to.

narrator: The vortex theory is one possible explanation

for why so many planes and ships

get hopelessly lost in and around the Bermuda Triangle.

The theory holds that an unexplained anomaly

acts as a tunnel, sucking ships and planes

miles off course.

Other survivors report a strange fog that wreaks havoc

on electronic equipment or inexplicable compass

malfunctions, as if something is

interfering with the Earth's magnetic field.

♪ ♪

Then there are the freak meteorological events that

seem to appear out of nowhere.

♪ ♪

Were any behind the disappearance of Flight 19

and the Martin Mariner?

♪ ♪

Wayne and David meet John Bloom,

director of the Fort Lauderdale Naval Museum,

one of the largest archives of the Flight 19 mystery.

- We are so excited about what you're going to show us.

narrator: Bloom has startling evidence

that it wasn't just Flight 19

and the Martin Mariner that had unexplained problems

that night; so did at least three other flights.

narrator: The team has discovered wreckage

that points to the Bermuda Triangle's

biggest mystery, the loss of Flight

19 and the Martin Mariner.

They're with John Bloom of the Fort Lauderdale Naval Museum,

examining evidence that mysterious phenomena

were at play the night six planes went missing.

- So I was going through our archives at our museum.

And I came across a few interesting things

that happened the day Flight 19 disappeared.

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 were much closer than we should have been.

"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.

But I guess the question is, if that tailwind

would have increased their speed

that much to get back that soon.

- Yeah, that's quite a clip.

- Now, is this your only account

or do you have anything else? - No, I have some others.

Now, this is an interview

transcribed from a Lieutenant Commander Wirshing.

He was at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale

on the day Flight 19 disappeared,

flew out of the Bahamas, went north and then

came back to Fort Lauderdale.

And as they came back to land,

thinking they're landing at Fort Lauderdale,

they landed at West Palm Beach,

which was Morrison Air Force Base.

- They thought it was Fort Lauderdale.

- They thought it was Fort Lauderdale.

- They attributed that to problems with their compasses.

They had no clue where they were.

- We're starting to see some dots connected, right?

- And there's one more.

- Now, that night when Flight 19 was missing,

Banana River sent out two search planes.

- Along with the missing Martin Mariner,

a second rescue plane went after Flight 19.

That plane also encountered an unexplainable

navigational anomaly.

- And 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 out?

- Yeah, yeah. - That's crazy.

Let me see that. - 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.

- "We discovered our mistake when it began to break day

on the wrong side of the cockpit."

This is even more bizarre.

- So we have three separate incidents

all wrapped around the same story on the same day.

All these planes are experiencing

similar difficulties with navigation, orientation,

and understanding where they are.

- Is it a coincidence?

Or was there something mysterious happening?

♪ ♪

- Now we have others that are starting to form a pattern,

but we don't know what it means.

narrator: Answers might be on the sea floor.

Wreck divers Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are heading back to dive target number one,

a little north of the Bermuda Triangle.

They're on the trail of the Martin Mariner seaplane

which vanished in 1945.

- You guys ready to get out there?

- Yeah, let's pull the beanbags up.

narrator: Target number one is only 150 feet down,

routine compared to other Bermuda Triangle dive targets

they'll hit on Barnette's map of unidentified wrecks.

- For me, the chase and trying to identify

unidentified shipwrecks, mystery shipwrecks,

that's the entire game for me.

Curiosity just drives me.

narrator: Some wrecks lie as deep as five miles here

in the Puerto Rican trench, the Bermuda

Triangle's deepest point.

Many of Barnette's targets lie under the Gulf Stream,

a shipping superhighway that can sweep a diver

miles out to sea while they're descending to a wreck.

Still others lie in areas with strange geological anomalies,

like mid-ocean sinkholes and methane gas hydrates

that can allegedly release massive bubbles

that make the water beneath a ship disappear.

Each dive comes with its own risks but a common purpose.

- You're seeing something that nobody else has seen.

- To be able to connect with it physically,

it gives you tingles a little bit to know

that you're touching history.

narrator: After the first dive,

the team identified a lone

Pratt and Whitney Double Wasp engine,

the very engine used by the missing

PBM Martin Mariner rescue plane.

But that engine was used on many plane models,

from fighters to bombers.

To determine if this engine came from the Martin Mariner,

the team will take a new approach

using specialized gear.

♪ ♪

- So we're not just using air

like most recreational divers do.

We're using closed-circuit rebreathers.

We're actually recycling the gas.

And it's much more efficient.

narrator: Rebreathers work by absorbing carbon dioxide

and recycling exhaled breath.

It's ideal for the Navy SEALs and other covert ops

as it reduces bubbles produced by conventional scuba gear.

This tech also increases dive times

and opens the door to a new kind of

visual analysis of this wreck site:

photogrammetry.

- We used a photogrammetry tool,

which basically requires us to take thousands of pictures

that can be digitally stitched together

and make a three-dimensional model of the site.

And this would allow us to take this model

and look at it in minute detail,

look at every screw and rivet hole,

to line up with potential fingerprints

of what this aircraft is.

Now we have this model that we can share with the team.

And we need to find out more information

of how significant it is.

[tense music]

narrator: Is this the wreckage of the lost

Martin Mariner rescue plane?

♪ ♪

The investigation team is now hoping

to finally solve one of the greatest

Bermuda Triangle mysteries.

- Now we got some footage from the return dive to the site

we thought was a suspect site.

narrator: The team has brought in aircraft expert

Roy Stafford to help ID this wreck.

- Now, was this the only engine you found?

- Yeah, it's just a solitary engine on the seabed.

It's really weird.

- No debris? - No debris.

♪ ♪

- Is that a prop blade there?

- Yep.

Yeah, and see the hub right there?

both: Yeah.

♪ ♪

- So could this have been from a PBM Martin Mariner?

♪ ♪

- With all of the growth in the degradation over the years,

it would be almost impossible to give

you an emphatic answer.

narrator: While the propeller is a provocative clue,

Roy cannot make a call based on this evidence alone.

But Barnette's photogrammetry model may aid the analysis.

- Wow. - And this is the model.

- Stunning.

- That's amazing.

- Not only can you zoom in, you can rotate it, look above.

- That's amazing.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

- What do you see, Roy?

- See the angle on this?

♪ ♪

- Oh, right here? - Yeah.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

- The angle there, it gives me the suspicion

this is an F4U Corsair.

narrator: The F4U Corsair, a World War II fighter plane

built with the exact same Pratt and Whitney prop

engine as the Martin Mariner.

The Corsair was one of the most reliable workhorses

of the U.S. Navy,

becoming one of the first planes equipped with radar

and carrying high-velocity rockets.

To accommodate such a massive engine and propeller,

the Corsair had a distinct inverted wing.

- It's the only plane I know that the spar coming

off the fuselage descended.

And the reason for that is they had a big propeller blade.

♪ ♪

narrator: The bend of that wing tells Roy that this

is not the Martin Mariner.

- Is your professional opinion that this

is indeed a Corsair and not the PBM Martin Mariner?

- 99%.

- OK.

- Wow.

- When Roy Stafford told us that this

was not the Martin Mariner, it was a bit deflating.

I mean, we were so close, but yet so far away.

- Scratch this off the list. And we move on.

♪ ♪

narrator: The search for the Martin Mariner will continue.

And the team will add the Corsair to its running

list of wrecks to ID.

But first, Barnette can't shake a nagging curiosity

about that strange wing Jimmy found at target number two

off Cape Canaveral.

- I think it's hard to rationalize it

being associated with the Martin Mariner,

but it's still odd.

It's very interesting.

And I'm just curious.

We had to go back to that mystery wing

because, with the poor visibility,

we couldn't really tell what we were working with.

We knew it seems aircraft-ish.

But yet, we have some questions

of what that material was, those panels.

So just to rule out this site and not

have that nagging question in the back of our mind,

we wanted to dive it.

♪ ♪

I'd really love to put another set of eyeballs

on it, see if the conditions are better

today to see what it is.

- Let's try it.

Can you guys get ready? Let's dive.

♪ ♪

- When I jump in, I realize the visibility

is 100 times better than the last time that I was there.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Jumping in, I knew I was looking

for some kind of an aircraft.

But we've done a lot of aircraft,

and it looked different.

- I was able to use the scooter to move

a lot of the sand out of the way

so we could get under it,

get alongside of it.

♪ ♪

- Man, they've been down there for a while.

Whatever it is they found is pretty damn interesting.

♪ ♪

- But we could tell that it was a very modern aircraft,

but it looked bigger--

significant-- - Substantially, yeah.

- Substantially bigger than anything

that we've been diving thus far.

♪ ♪

[tense music]

- I would say they probably spent a total of an hour

down there so far.

There's some crazy stuff out here.

Every time I drop down, I don't know what I'm going to see.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

narrator: The team has returned for a second dive

on a mysterious wing fragment.

That mystery is only deepening.

- It was very unique, very uncommon type of features.

♪ ♪

- We found more of these rubber panels all over the exterior.

And then, as we uncovered more sand,

we actually found, on top of these panels, this white--

it looks like just stark white, not even stained,

very unique material.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Is that a diver up, or-- - Way down there.

Yeah, off the bow.

- OK, yeah, let's go.

♪ ♪

- There's actually tiles in place.

And it's big. I mean, it's--

we tried to [indistinct] cover another 6 foot,

but it under the sand and keeps going.

It's a big part of the wing probably.

♪ ♪

- The structure is huge.

It's definitely an aircraft, but I've never seen

an aircraft like that before.

- Definitely, it's modern.

I mean, we are right in the shadow

of the Kennedy Space Center, so maybe it's NASA-related.

♪ ♪

- Wow.

- That was not the dive I was expecting.

♪ ♪

narrator: With new footage to review, the full team

reconvenes onshore.

- So, guys, we had several things to check out.

We're disappointed that last one

was not the Martin Mariner. It's a Corsair.

But there's that one site that we still had just

a nagging curiosity about.

I had to know what it was. - Our mystery target, right?

- Yeah, that mystery target.

And we went out, had much better conditions.

♪ ♪

This is those orange panels we thought we saw

on the first dive. - Looks like a tile floor.

♪ ♪

- It doesn't look aviation. - No.

- I think we all have our doubts of

what this may or may not be.

But I've actually called a friend

that is an expert on this and can shed light on

what this could be.

♪ ♪

How are you doing? - Hey, good to see ya.

- Yeah. How you doing, Roy?

narrator: The team has invited two-time shuttle astronaut

Bruce Melnick to review the footage.

- So we got something to show you.

- Yeah, I can't wait.

- So we were trying to find the PBM Martin Mariner.

Can you make heads or tails of what we're looking at here?

- What you're seeing there is-- the darker stuff,

the orange stuff, that's the RTV,

which is room-temperature vinyl.

And then some of the white stuff you see there

is foam silica tiles.

- What do you think that is?

- Well...

that's part of the "Challenger" wing.

- No way.

- There, you can see that-- - Wow.

- Whoa. That's amazing.

- Yeah, that's part of the "Challenger" wing.

- You're speechless.

It's the "Challenger."

♪ ♪

narrator: The explosion of the "Challenger" space shuttle

was one of the most tragic incidents in the history

of the American space program.

- Normal throttle for most of the flight, 104%.

- The space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.

- "Challenger," go with throttle up.

[electronic beep]

- Roger, go with throttle up.

♪ ♪

[loud explosion]

- Flight controllers here looking very carefully

at the situation.

narrator: On January 28, 1986--

- Obviously a major malfunction.

- the shuttle's explosion rained down debris

across 486 square miles of ocean.

Over the following months, the U.S. Navy

undertook the largest salvage operation

ever conducted to recover over 120 tons of wreckage.

But nothing new has been discovered

for years, until now.

- Yeah, when you said this is the "Challenger,"

I mean, that gave me chills.

- I didn't know if it was folklore or legend,

but I know that there is stuff left out there because there

was no need to recover a lot of it when they got to the point

where they found what they needed.

♪ ♪

narrator: It's a big find for the team and hits

home for Air Force pilot and combat veteran Jason Harris.

- As an aviator, we realize in what we do every single day

that it's possible that things can go wrong.

When you come face-to-face with the wreckage

of the "Challenger," when you come face-to-face

with the gravesite of these heroic people,

it's very sobering.

This is a part of history, that Bruce has just identified

to us that we have found.

This is something that impacted an entire nation.

♪ ♪

narrator: For a discovery of this magnitude,

the team needs to be absolutely certain.

They are taking their find directly to NASA.

♪ ♪

But space shuttle debris is considered highly sensitive.

The team is in uncharted waters.

- There it is, man. Check it out.

♪ ♪

narrator: The team is confident their mystery

wing is part of a tragic moment in U.S. history.

They're now coming to NASA with a big find.

But they don't know what they're walking into.

- What we're getting ready to do today

is such a huge deal, because how many people actually get

the invite to come and sit down with some

of the top folks at NASA to discuss a find from a dive?

- A little apprehensive because I just don't know how they're

going to feel about this.

I mean, we're-- in a way, we're dredging up history

of a really tragic event.

So are they going to be upset at us?

Or are they going to be thankful?

I just-- I don't know where we stand with them.

♪ ♪

- Hello. - Hey.

- You must be Mike and Jason.

- Yes, sir. - Nice meet you.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- Good to see you this morning. - Thank you, sir.

Welcome to Kennedy Space Center.

Well, I must say, your phone call

certainly piqued my curiosity.

- Yeah, so we have some footage from our dive here.

narrator: The team is meeting with Mike Ciannilli,

a program director at NASA overseeing the legacy

of the "Challenger" space shuttle.

- So, Mike, when I look at the coordinates,

it certainly lies outside of the area that's commonly

known as the Bermuda Triangle.

- Definitely, based on where the site is,

it's within the debris trail of "Challenger."

- I have to say, you have certainly

got my full and undivided attention.

And I'm always a little cautious because, as you know,

we've launched rockets for over 70 years.

So there's a lot of objects out there.

After looking at the object in greater detail...

[exhales]

♪ ♪

You've discovered "Challenger."

♪ ♪

- Space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.

[indistinct radio chatter]

- When was the last time anything significant

of "Challenger" was recovered? - It's been a long time, right?

So "Challenger" happened over 35 years ago.

The last time we had a piece come forward was back in 1996.

So it's been well over 20 years since a piece came

and washed up on the shore.

So this would be a very significant find.

♪ ♪

It's a mix of emotions, right?

It's much like when you watch the folks dive on "Titanic."

You're seeing something from over 100 years ago.

And you're not connected to it in some ways,

but then, when you go down there and see the imagery,

you're onboard the ship.

You're transported back in time.

And this feels similar to me.

This is a major part of history.

- How do you think it's going to impact people

when this is now shared with the world,

this discovery here?

- There's certain events in your life

that you don't forget.

There are certain events that you just remember;

you'll never forget the images.

This is one of those.

I think it's going to be a moment of reflection.

From someone who has the honor to work in the space program,

we're in the business of discovery and exploration.

So I think it's going to connect a lot of people

back to the purpose of why

we fly rockets like this and over my shoulder.

So perhaps that's an amazing legacy of "Challenger,"

not just a past event that now is resting

on the bottom of the sea,

but it's changed the future for the better.

But I certainly can't thank you enough for showing me this.

It's powerful.

♪ ♪

narrator: For the team, it's been a roller coaster

of an investigation.

♪ ♪

- We've had a lot of discoveries

that we thought were our airplane.

We found engines that were similar propellers

that looked like they could have

belonged to that aircraft.

- We were able to mark off a wreck site

that we've been wanting to see what was there.

And just as a coincidence, it turned out to be

something significant.

Sometimes happens. We go out looking for one thing

and we stumble across something else.

♪ ♪

narrator: And the team's mission is only just beginning

with dozens of mystery wrecks from Barnette's map

still to investigate.

♪ ♪

- Not only do we want to solve some wreck mysteries,

but we want to dig deeper into the whole mystery

of the Bermuda Triangle

and why it's so dangerous and ominous

to be in this part of the ocean.

♪ ♪

- Right now, we have a chance, more than any other time

in history, to solve this mystery.

- The destiny has not been written yet.

The final chapter is just waiting to be told.

There's just no telling what we're going to find.

And that's the thrill of it.

♪ ♪

narrator: This season on

"The Bermuda Triangle: Into Cursed Waters"...

- Let's go identify a wreck.

Any sane person would not be doing this.

- No one's been to the bottom of this sinkhole.

- Whoa, whoa! - Whoa.

- What happened to this massive ship?

We're the first eyes to see this wreck.

- You never know when a storm could pop up.

- 64 knots, that's hurricane strength.

- Could this potentially be the Cyclops?

- It's an amazing story and an amazing find.

♪ ♪