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In 1959 the Cuban Revolution triumphed. Soon thereafter all air traffic heading to and from North America and the Caribbean had to be rerouted over the Bahamas. The outback archipelago was no longer just a vacation destination. Its 700 islands now lay under a crowded skyway. Aircraft disappearances spiked, averaging 4 light aircraft per year, plus sometimes a military jet or even a cargoliner. This average was maintained with peaks and valleys through the 1990s.
National Transportation Safety Board Reports go back to as far as 1978. Briefs, a one/two-page chit, go back to 1962. Prior to that it is very difficult to determine the number let alone the details of disappearances. But through various avenues of research over the last 3 decades I have been able to come up with enough information for the 1950s to uncover the increase in mysterious losses and its advent after the Cuban Revolution.
Camilio Cienfuegos with Fidel Castro at the triumph of Havana. The popular Cienfuegos (left) would soon disappear, apparently in the Triangle, in a Cessna 310, in October 1959.
Aircraft disappearances were not as quantitative in the 1950s because air traffic was far less, limited to those who wanted or needed to travel to the Bahamas. After the rerouting of traffic, the increase of air accidents is an expected mathematical probability. But what is the expected mathematical probability for disappearance? There is none. Yet disappearances over the Bahamas were out of proportion to other areas of similarly congested air traffic, such as off New England or the Mediterranean.
In addition to the increase in missing aircraft over the Bahamas, some pilots flying these routes began to undergo surreal experiences and encounter odd circumstances that weren’t a routine part of nature— strange fogs, glowing green auras grasping planes, compasses spinning, radio dead spots, etc. It stands to reason that if there is something unique in the Bahamas, mathematic probability also pertains to an increase in encounters with it. More planes, more chance of encountering whatever force was responsible for what seem electromagnetic abberations. But was it the same force responsible for disappearances? —that open question that can’t be figured into mathematic probability.
Pre-Cuban revolution (red lines), skyways took maximum advantage of overflying land to and from the Caribbean, using Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico as hubs. Afterward, air traffic was routed around Cuba through various stops in the Bahamas (blue lines)— Nassau, Georgetown, South Caicos, Grand Turk, Great Inagua.
In this same year of 1959 an American Sci-Fi Fantasy/Horror show came out entitled The Twilight Zone. It grew in popularity in the 1960s and the term entered world vernacular as a place where the strange, horrific, ironic, and surreal occur. Around this time pilots started to refer to the Bahamas as The Twilight Zone because of the frequent disappearances or uncanny and odd occurrences that some encountered. Reporters soon heard of it and eventually the term entered the newspapers.
As a name, the Bermuda Triangle was established by 1964, but in south Florida newspapers the colloquial “Bahamas Twilight Zone” was reported as a separate and distinct entity within “the triangle.” The phenomenal popularity of the Bermuda Triangle concept in the 1970s effectively wiped out references to the “Bahamas Twilight Zone.” That is unfortunate. The unique place of the Bahamas in the mystery of this sea should not have been erased, for it is a mystery of more than disappearance but of survivors with the surreal. And this a clue as much as is a tangible disappearance.
Let’s take a look at some of the reportage and establish how it came about.
The first inference is actually not the first recorded. Chuck Wakeley was one of the youngest pilots to received his license and one of the youngest certified helicopter pilots. Both parents were pilots, and while still in high school he secured both his licenses. By the time he was 25 he was an air traffic controller with a government security clearance and a lot of flying behind him, including extensive flights over South America. In 1974, he recounted a bizarre flight to Charles Berlitz. It occurred in 1964. At 19 years of age he was already a pilot for Sunline Aviation. In short, on a nighttime flight from Nassau to Miami his compass started to spin and his electronic equipment went haywire. Soon his plane began to glow green as if seized by St.  Elmo’s Fire. Eventually, after a harrowing span of time, the phenomenon ebbed and he was able to regain course and land uneventfully at Miami.
Chuck Wakeley, 1962. Not the best pic, but I hope to get a better one.
The full details can be gleaned from Berlitz’s book The Bermuda Triangle. What is important to note here is that Berlitz makes a point of clarifying that “it is interesting to note that he had not heard of the Bermuda Triangle as such . . .” (italics mine). In fact by 1964, the last year of The Twilight Zone’s prime time airing, pilots were already referring to the Bahamas under that moniker. Vincent Gaddis’ Argosy article “The Deadly Bermuda Triangle” had come out early that year. It established the term “Bermuda Triangle,” but south Floridians used it sparingly.
Before continuing, I should digress for a moment. Most every lead that came to Charles Berlitz came through Dr. J. Manson Valentine, the local go-to scientist on the subject. He had kept records since 1945 and was known to be keenly interested in the disappearances and odd encounters in the Triangle. As an oceanographer, biologist, and avid diver, he had all the contacts. It is through him that Berlitz was put in contact with Wakeley.
I must assume it is through this same network that Wakeley’s untimely death was rumored to be murder. As to who came up with the idea to associate it with the Bermuda Triangle, I cannot say. But it would seem through Berlitz to the Sunn Schick Classic movie producers of the documentary based on both of his books, The Bermuda Triangle (1974) and Without a Trace (1977).
In this “docudrama” a middle aged actor playing Chuck Wakeley reenacts the frightening flight. Then this same middle-aged Wakeley is sitting at his home office desk perusing dossiers.
Brad Crandall narrates in voice over: “From that moment forward Charles Wakeley was determined to explore the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle.”
The actor punches a tape recorder button. His recorded voice fills the quiet room:
“Bermuda Triangle case history 31, Alice Johnson; subject
was flying Bermuda to Miami. Halfway to destination
subject had an encounter with an unknown force.
A woman pilot’s voice recounts her ordeal.
“Yes, I admit the glowing wings, the eerie light, the
same feeling of horror just like the other pilots who
don’t want to talk about it.”
Brad Crandall (VO): “Wakeley’s research ended tragically that night in 1974. The killer and the motive are still a mystery.”
A gun sticks through the Venetian blind in the dark window and a gloved hand pulls the trigger. The actor portraying Wakeley then drops dead over his desk. The woman’s voice is still pining over the tape recorder. “I’m frightened. I want to forget this thing. I want to go on living.”
Shortly after being interviewed by Berlitz in 1974, Charles G. Wakeley IV did die on July 13. Publicly, it was from an accident. I really never probed into it, but I can guess from knowing the grapevine that existed back then. Tongues started to wag it was murder, some form of revenge made to look like an accident. It began to circulate Wakeley’s South American flights were not entirely commercial and his security clearance covered more than necessary for being an air traffic controller. Berlitz loved to accentuate little mysteries, and he probably told the Sunn Schick producers his death could have been murder from Wakeley’s mounting interest in the Bermuda Triangle.
By the time Wakeley died at the young age of 29, he had an extensive and often restricted pilot history. He had flown South American jungle routes many times and had spent 4 years in California as a Los Angeles (Lancaster) area air traffic controller. With his high security clearance and piloting skills it is easy to consider he was involved in drug interdiction and even intelligence. This was the era of Blow in which cocaine was being shipped to the US in many dangerous and haphazard ways. Piracy in the Triangle was also at its peak and even rated news articles and segments. Warnings went up to yachters not to take aboard crew they didn’t know. If Chuck Wakeley was murdered and it was made to look like an accident (albeit a suspicious one) then I would venture it surrounded revenge from drug trafficking circles and not from some government clique out to stop him from learning the secret of the Bermuda Triangle.
But let us continue with the The Zone, as it was also called.
A significant use of the term came with the disappearance of Carolyn Cascio in June 1969. The Miami News June 11, 1969: “The missing Miamians disappeared over an area known as the Bahama Twilight Zone.”
Bill Verity’s temporary disappearance in 1969 was also cause for much comment. The Miami News September 5, 1969— Ian Glass reports: “Somewhere out in that mysterious area known as the Twilight Zone is Bill Verity, the 43-year-old Fort Lauderdale man sailing his 20-foot wooden boat from Ireland to Florida.” And “The Twilight Zone is an area contained within the Miami-Bermuda-San Juan triangle.” In addition, “Veteran aviators say there is a ‘dead spot’ in the Twilight Zone where radio communication is virtually impossible. Verity may possibly be caught in that spot.”
Two months later Ian Glass expanded in an article entitled “6 more people disappear in Bahamas ‘Twilight Zone’” wherein he summarizes a few major disappearances and touched on the most recent— the yacht Jillie Bean on which was Ed Rouillard and his wife Billie Jean, between Miami and Andros Island; a Piper Comanche, with George Griffin, Mike Williams and Ray Dickerson, en route to Jamaica from West Palm Beach.
Covering the Verity case, The Tallahassee Democrat (September 7) article’s tagline asks whether “Twilight Zone claims another?” “Unless Verity miraculously reappears the prime suspect may be the ‘Twilight Zone’— a mysterious patch of ocean in the triangle between San Juan, Miami, and Bermuda.”
Orlando Evening Star (September 6): “Verity’s 20-foot craft may have fallen victim to a treacherous stretch of sea called the Twilight Zone. . . . THE ZONE, a mysterious patch of ocean in the triangle between San Juan, Miami and Bermuda, has been suspected for almost 100 years of gobbling up sailors and even pilots.”
Without mentioning “Twilight Zone” yet, the most detailed overview of this special section in the Triangle was made by Bill Moake for the Fort Lauderdale News Sun (December 26, 1965. He writes: “The sometimes peaceful, often tumultuous waters between Florida and the Bahamas have a bloodthirsty history written at the expense of human life.” He continues:
Over the past 20 years alone, scores of persons on business or pleasure trips were swallowed in this corner of the Atlantic Ocean— at least 37 Broward [county] residents among them.
All vanished without a trace in the azure seas famous for resort islands and deep-sea fishing.
Moake recounts Flight 19, Marine Sulphur Queen, and the 1949 case of the Driftwood, which had deeply affected the Fort Lauderdale/Dania area. He now comes to more recent cases. The first is the cabin cruiser Dottie with Gilmore Hennessee and William Nelson. They left the Dania yacht basin on December 29, 1964, bound for Bimini and were never seen again. More recently in October 1965, George Boston disappeared sailing the catamaran El Gato he was sailing to Puerto Rico. He last put into port at Great Exuma on October 28 and never arrived at Great Inagua later (a distance of 225 miles). A light plane also vanished. On December 6, Mr. and Mrs. William Bridges took off from Fort Lauderdale International headed to West End, Grand Bahama (Ercoupe N99660). Bridges last reported over West Palm Beach, heading out into the Triangle, and they were never seen again. “The Coast Guard has suspended both searches,” writes Moake, “with the fateful terse notation on its report ‘. . . pending further developments.’ The cases will be kept inactive for 5 years and then destroyed.”
“Many officials are at a loss to give a complete explanation of exactly why planes and boats vanish without trace in the Florida-Bahamas water.”
We are given a number of explanations that pertain only to very limited areas, like the 90 miles per day drift of the Gulf Stream (not applicable in the Bahamas), sudden minicanes, storms, the lack of pilots and captains listing flight and float plans. Ultimately, the sea is blamed. “When you engage the sea, you are dealing with a powerful force,” said Coast Guard Lt jg Kevin Clancy.
But Moake doesn’t completely buy it. “A very powerful force, indeed, which has silenced the only true experts [victims] on the subject of these strange disappearances.”
There’s no need to list every usage. The purpose here is to establish the Bahamas were regarded as very distinctive in the experience of pilots and boaters, quite distinct from the Bermuda Triangle. This became apparent with the increase of air traffic after the Cuban revolution.
As such the unique underwater geography of the Bahamas has been suggested, giving rise to theories regarding the Atlantic Transition Geomagnetic Anomaly and even inspiring the search for lost Atlantis.
Instead of the cynicism usually promoted as sophistication by scoffers, continued investigation and record keeping (independently by me and Bruce Gernon) has revealed what Gernon termed “electronic fog” to be real. It has to be pursued and not mocked. Properly handled, if a pilot should encounter the phenomenon it should not be a source of angst.
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