[bermuda triangle] and now we swing back to the rational

The Avro Tudor IV - so bad, only BSAA ended up flying it

So, two of the planes might have disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle due to mechanical error:

The plane's poor design may well have been to blame, according to Don Mackintosh, a former BSAA Tudor IV pilot. The cabin heater mounted underneath the floor where the co-pilot sat is his prime suspect. At the time, aircraft heater technology was still in its infancy. "The heater bled aviation fuel on to a hot tube - and was also fairly close to the hydraulic pipes," he says.

A pressure switch should have allowed the heater to operate when it was in the air but it was unreliable and was often deliberately short-circuited by staff, allowing the pilot manual control. The switch prevented inflammable fuel from flowing, but if the heater was switched on manually, gas that may have collected could have ignited.

Captain Peter Duffey, a former BSAA pilot who went on to become a captain of British Airways Concorde, also believes that the proximity of the heater and the hydraulic pipes was significant. "My theory is that hydraulic vapour escaped from a leak, which got on to a hot heater and caused an explosion," he says.

All right, let's not swing wildly to the theory: "No, no, it was the Bermuda Triangle," or wildly the other way to: "No, no, it was all mechanical - everything on all disappearances can be explained away because of this particular case."

The Avro Tudor IV was a pretty poor design, by all accounts. Fine - that's why those two went down.

Now, what about 1945: December 5, Flight 19 (5 TBF Avengers), lost with 14 airmen, and later the same day PBM Mariner BuNo 59225 lost with 13 airmen while searching for Flight 19? What about 1948: December 28, Douglas DC-3 NC16002, lost with 3 crew and 29 passengers, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Miami?

What about at the end of the war, some almighty atmospheric project like HAARP's antecedents or even Woodpecker brought closer to the States - remember the Cuban crisis was not so far away and the Cold War was just getting started. Why could that not have exacerbated an already problematic aircraft without needing to resort to the metaphysical explanation?