FANS of sea legends and the supernatural are gearing up for the 60th anniversary next week of one of the great myth-making mysteries: the disappearance of Flight 19 and the birth of the Bermuda Triangle.

Flight 19, known as the Lost Patrol, consisted of five US Navy Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared without trace on a mission from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on December 5, 1945. A total of 27 men vanished that night after a Martin Mariner seaplane also disappeared in the search.

Were they sucked into a time warp? Did they fall prey to the lost empire of Atlantis, or were they abducted to another galaxy, as shown in the 1977 Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

The argument raged on this month after the US Congress passed a resolution honouring Lieutenant Charles Taylor and the men of Flight 19. Clay Shaw, a Florida Republican in the House of Representatives, tabled the resolution to help families to move on. “There are just so many weird things here that experienced pilots would have not acted this way,” Mr Shaw said. “Perhaps some day we will learn what happened and lay this mystery to rest.”

An inquiry in 1945 concluded that Taylor, a veteran combat pilot, lost his bearings and led his patrol to their doom in the Atlantic after they ran out of fuel on a mission over the Bahamas and northwards.

After pressure from Taylor’s family, the verdict was revised and left open. Enough mystery remained to feed a longstanding belief that some terrible force awaits mariners and airmen who venture into a “Devil’s triangle” defined by Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Miami.

Since 1945 hundreds of vessels and aircraft and more than a thousand people have disappeared in the 1.5 million-square-mile expanse. They include several dozen substantial ships and aircraft. In a recent case, a father and son vanished from their fishing cruiser in October 2003. Space entered the equation again when their boat washed up near Cape Canaveral on November 3. Sober-minded aviators and seamen offer rational explanations for the Bermuda Triangle, which was given its name in 1964 by Argosy, a pulp fiction magazine.

The ocean and air space off Florida is packed with traffic, often under the command of amateurs. Before radio and satellite navigation, the wrong heading from a compass could lose a navigator. The hurricane-breeding atmosphere of the Atlantic-Caribbean zone and the fast-moving Gulf Stream contribute to the risk.

Yet many enthusiasts are convinced that there remains too much mystery over so many disappearances without distress calls or a shred of debris. They have invoked authorities ranging from Christopher Columbus to the Bible.

Columbus reported a strange light and veering compasses on his 1492 pioneering voyage to the Americas. The buffs do not like to be reminded that Columbus logged his report near the Canary Islands on the other side of the Atlantic. Sea monsters and the legend of the Mary Celeste, abandoned by her crew but in perfect conditon, have also been cited.

Gian Quasar, a writer and Triangle expert, believes that an “electronic fog” may disorientate instruments and pilots, although he believes that there may be a further, unimagined explanation.

“It is something that will seize the aircraft and travel with you,” he told US media last week. Mr Quasar says on his website, www.bermudatriangle.org, that the only honest approach is an open mind.

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