Original subtitles

[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.