in that war occasionally picked up strange radio messages between other pilots. They didn’t make much sense according to the current stratagem, and when prompted the pilots never responded.  It is alleged by more than one who heard them that they were inter plane chatter between pilots in the Korean War almost 20 years before they were being overheard during Vietnam! The only logical explanation for these allegations would be that the radio signals got “stuck” in the atmosphere somewhere and were later released and rebroadcast decades after they were sent.
   The atmosphere is certainly capable of  weird aberrations. On August 10, 1979, George Quig was trying to call his wife on their CB radio in the White Mountain area of New Hampshire when he picked up a desperate SOS from a vessel. By the clarity and reception he thought it was nearby. However, the voice on the other end said they were off the coast of Venezuela. A hoax might best explain this bit of interruption in a routine New Hampshire day. However, Quig contacted the Coast Guard and relayed the message. They in turn relayed it to the appropriate Coast Guard station; they in turn sent cutters and an airplane. Yes indeed, there was a boat in distress just like the voice had claimed. The Coast Guard rescued 5 people from a 42 foot trawler 3 hours later. It was, in fact, 2,000 miles away from New Hampshire off the coast of South America,  just where the man had claimed to be.
   This was attributed to an “atmospheric quirk.” What exactly is a quirk? When something is unknown it can only be judged by its effect. Whatever happened in the atmosphere that day, it allowed radio signals to be transmitted 2,000 miles away.
   But when this happens after a plane has vanished, what kind of quirk is this? It’s not only a radio signal that has been misplaced in time or space, but an entire object as well, something tangible with people. If a quirk can misplace a radio signal, can a greater “quirk” misplace an object?
   This page deals with this phenomenon. The Bermuda Triangle has more than its share of these “quirks.” On more than one occasion verified radio messages have been received from pilots who were long lost and out of fuel. The messages would imply they are still flying, some imply they are lost, or some even are sure they will land soon. . . .Yet they never do. They seem in another dimension, just out of reach with physical contact with ours.
   More than once planes have vanished, yet then have been seen to crash far from where they vanished, often like a mirage. True to mirages, they leave no trace. Some of these are recorded in reports, others have remained only in scuttlebutt. The incidents to follow here are all gleaned from NTSB Factual Aviation Reports.

  However, that was not all. At 8:53 a.m. American Flight 667 and Eastern Flight 924 (both about 300 miles from Bermuda)  heard an even more fantastic MAYDAY. Jensen now reported he was at 150 feet elevation and disoriented in clouds (clouds at 150 feet?). The messages were relayed to Miami’s RCC, which responded quickly. Continued hails over the radio brought no more responses from Jensen. He was presumed down. Searches around Miami found nothing. Moreover, the weather was quite clear; there were, of course, no clouds-- a frustrating end note to Coast Guard Miami.
   Was Jensen lost,  and that’s just all there is to it? He was young, a 15 year old Civil Air Patrol student (who was wearing his uniform when he boarded his plane). Was it inexperience that made him imagine clouds where

Jensen? A search at every location proved fruitless. Complicating the matter, no ELT signal was ever picked up to pinpoint any disaster. What, indeed, had happened to him?
   In subsequent investigations it was thoroughly confirmed that the airplane had 5 hours of fuel on board when it took off. Yet sixteen hours after takeoff a routine call from Jensen placed him near Caicos Island, 11 hours after it was even remotely possible for him to be flying. He did not have fuel to get near to Bermuda, yet all the aircraft who heard him were near Bermuda. In retrospect it seems every bit of the Triangle participated in this disappearance. Jensen took off from one corner; reported himself at another in weird atmospheric conditions, yet was overheard by Bermuda; and then he reported himself, in the end, at an island which is about dead center between 2 apexes. Strange indeed. A routine voice came out of the darkness on that strange night, only to confirm mystery but not to solve it.
   Mention should be made of other harrowing escapes local captains and pilots have made with strange concentrated “clouds,” vapors or mists far below the cloud level. The tug Good News, owned and operated out of Miami by salvor/diver Don Henry, was cruising on the Tongue of the Ocean in 1966 when a cloud or mist clutched the barge he was towing. During this entire episode the barge was obscured from sight and all electrical equipment on his vessel was going haywire-- the compass spinning and the engine sputtering, with the ship unable to make headway. After the haze disappeared, the barge was once again visible and all came back to normal, except a box load of batteries had all been drained and were useless.
   This perhaps is the “eggnog” some pilots have reported. Those who have survived strange encounters have a page devoted to their stories. Here it is only pertinent to mention Don Henry’s rather famous case in correlation with what Jensen mentioned.
   Concerning the tug-of-war his vessel had with unknown forces, several pilots have reported strange forces pulling on their aircraft, banking them suddenly or causing precipitous loss of altitude independent of any spontaneous LOW. Some aircraft have been noted to, inexplicably, fly right into the ground. Others have done some unexplainable maneuvers while in touch with towers, yet reported nothing unusual before they vanished. In one recent case, on May 12, 1999, an Aero Commander vanished while approaching Nassau for landing. The plane was observed to slowly descend until radar registered 000 feet level. Then the plane reappeared, rose to 100 feet, climbing steadily until at 1,300 feet elevation it  vanished! (The report to this is under jurisdiction Bahamas, and a report is being requested as of the date of this writing ((June 24, 1999)) to confirm this. The information above was obtained from the NTSB Brief.) In a similar vein to a tug-of-war, in this case with the airplane the loser, at Crooked Island, in the Bahamas, another strange aviation incident occurred without, however, fatal results. A Beechcraft with 4 persons on board attempted to takeoff from Colonel Hill Airport on December 30, 1998, but the aircraft would not climb, leaving the pilot no choice but to ditch in the ocean after clearing the runway. The aircraft was being operated at 300 pounds below maximum gross weight, and the center of gravity was near the aft limit. The gauges showed that the engines were producing takeoff power. It remains a mystery why the plane could not break free and climb. (Also under investigation Bahamas; Report requested). At Culebra, Puerto Rico, on February 15, 1994, a Cessna 172 while coming in for a landing was suddenly hit by two blasts of unexplained turbulence, then a third picked it up by 60 to 80 feet and cast it into a house nearby. The weather report had been for mere 10 knot easterly winds.
   Although Jensen’s case is an odd one, more strange delayed SOS signals were picked up over the Bahamas a year later in 1981 after another disappearance. The date was January 6. A man, identifying himself as Robert Spector, called Miami Flight Service Station, stated he was en route to Nassau, Bahamas, with 3 others on board, Armando Milenes, Marcelo Cookely and Sandra Williams.  They departed Bimini at 10:36 a.m. (where they had picked up Cookely and Williams), and Spector then called Nassau Radio.

  Projecting his estimation on the clock, his ETA at Nassau was for around 11:20 a.m.
   The weather was perfect, absolutely unlimited visibility, and the sea below was flat calm, dotted by an occasional power yacht or sailboat traveling the Bahamas.
   At 11:41 the flight was only technically 20 minutes overdue. At that moment a pilot’s voice came over the receiver at Nassau. Since witnesses names are not mentioned in this specific NTSB report, I’ll call his name Jim Rittenhouse.

  Having had no reply, frustrated he came back in to land.
   Within 30 minutes BASRA (Bahamanian Air Sea Rescue Assoc.) and the USCG were only beginning to nose around the many Exuma cays. Spector’s flight must not even have been suspected yet. Being only technically overdue at Nassau, it was impossible for Spector to have been near Great Exuma.
   According to Rittenhouse, the pilot in distress stated he was going down, without clarifying why. Then the dialogue was halted, either by a sudden power outage or impact with the sea. Or did it recede further away, out of reach?

Amando Milenes and he were to appear in a Bahamanian court that day to answer charges of being in possession of controlled substances and weapons. Did they intend to vanish with their girlfriends? Would  the rouse of crashing at sea, preceded by vague and receding SOSs be the perfect cover? Perhaps. But where were they when they sent them hours after fuel starvation?

three passengers, Anne LaTarte, Tammy Christie, and Glynis Bernhard. The purpose of the flight was to position it at Bimini for return passenger pick up.
   The aircraft was tracked on radar, with nothing unusual observed. Then, not even midway to its destination, its target slowed to an airspeed of a mere 90 knots. They were held like this for an estimated 4 minutes, but Chuck Sorren or Al Wharton, transmitted no distress. One can imagine the expression on the controllers’ face when they saw the plane plummet in a 5,400 foot per minute dive until is vanished from radar.
   The next clue into this incident comes from a lady on Bimini. She reported seeing a plane plunge into the sea about 1 mile or so off of the northeast corner of the island. Another witness said he too saw a huge splash in the ocean, but saw no plane. They pegged it between 8:30 and 9 a.m. Yet the aircraft had disappeared some 30 miles away and could not have been near the northeast coast of Bimini at that time. It never reappeared on radar, and there had been no SOS. The time discrepancy is not great, but the distance is.
   Further complicating the matter, these are shallow waters and there was no sign of the aircraft to be found, no fuselage below, no debris above. Could the aircraft have plunged into the Gulf Stream, but a mirage of it was reflected to a point off Bimini Island? If so what caused the plane to plunge to the sea in the first place and bend light so to create a ghostly mirage?  

  Among all the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, there is none so sudden or inexplicable as the disappearance of a charter Piper Navajo at St. Thomas on November 3, 1978.
   It was 6:39 P.M. when Irving C. Rivers took off in his Navajo at St. Croix, piloting it for Eastern Caribbean Airways. There were no passengers on this flight. He was only positioning the flight at St. Thomas to pick up passengers.
   The weather was a humid 87 degrees F. Broken showers had sped past the Virgin Islands. Visibility was now a good 7 miles.
   Minutes later, Rivers’ voice came over the receiver at Harry S. Truman Airport tower. It was exactly 6:41 p.m.

  William A. Kittinger, from whose eyewitness account NTSB investigators were able to put together the final chain of events, remembers at this point spotting the Navajo off the island. Its red and green lights were clearly visible, blinking.
   Kittinger cleared him for landing at runway 9, telling him that a Heron DH114 would be leaving the airfield just prior to his landing.
   “Uh, Roger,” responded Rivers casually.
   Meanwhile the Heron departed the field. Kittinger noted all things were normal. He spotted Rivers’ Navajo off the island again, then routinely glanced back at his controls. When he glanced back out the tower windows to guide and observe Rivers’ landing, he could no longer see the plane. Turning back to the scope confirmed he had been witness to an extraordinary event; it was blank except for the Heron climbing altitude. Each complete revolution of the radar monitor hand confirmed it.
   “Eastern Caribbean 912, St. Thomas; I’ve lost sight of you, say your position.”
   It was silent. Kittinger immediately declared an emergency. The alarms rang out at the Coast Guard station and at Roosevelt Roads Naval Base. Choppers were in the air at 7:05 p.m. and the cutters Point Whitehorn and Saltspray were at the scene. A Cessna 172 on approach immediately followed Rivers’ course and tried to spot any sign. All this was to no avail.  Nothing was ever found, even though the plane must have been a mile from landing.