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  3. Graveyard of the Atlantic At 2 p.m. on Dec. 5, 1945, five Navy bombers took off in perfect flying weather from the Naval Air

Graveyard of the Atlantic At 2 p.m. on Dec. 5, 1945, five Navy bombers took off in perfect flying weather from the Naval Air

admin2009-04-23  30
问题                                      Graveyard of the Atlantic
    At 2 p.m. on Dec. 5, 1945, five Navy bombers took off in perfect flying weather from the Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on a routine training mission over the Atlantic Ocean. Less than two hours later, the flight commander radioed that he was "complete lost". Then there was silence, a rescue plane was sent to search for the missing aircraft and it, too, disappeared. In all, six planes and 27 men vanished that day without a trace. Despite one of history’s most extensive search efforts, involving more than 300 planes and dozens of ships, the Navy was un- able to discover even floating wreckage or a telltale(明显的) oil slick.
    This is just one of the many chilling stories told of "The Bermuda Triangle", a mysterious area of the Atlantic Ocean roughly stretching south from Bermuda to the Florida coast and Puerto Rico. During the past 30 years, the triangle has claimed the lives of some 1,000 seamen and pilots. Among sailors, it is known variously as" The Triangle of Death", "The Hoodoo Sea" and "The Graveyard of the Atlantic" because of the mysterious calms, waterspouts, and sudden storms that have bothered seafarers in its water. When he entered this stretch of the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus noted curious glowing streaks of "white water". The mysterious patches of light and foam are still visible today and so bright that they have been seen by U.S. astronauts from outer space.
Mysterious Triangle
    In recent months, the triangle has aroused considerable public interest through three hot-selling books, a television documentary(narrated by horror master Vincent Price) and a special exposition at the Library of Congress. None of these investigations has produced convincing answers to the mystery of the triangle, but there is no shortage of interesting theories. Some scientists and popular authors go so far to suggest that the triangle is the hunting ground of extraterrestrial beings in search of human specimens for their "cosmic(宇宙的) zoos".
    Whatever the truth may be, planes and ships disappear in the triangle with eerie(可怕的) regularity. On July 3, 1947, a U.S. Army C-54 Superfort disappeared 100 miles off Bermuda without broadcasting any word of difficulty. An immediate search over 100,000 square miles of sea failed to turn up a single piece of wreckage. On Jan. 30, 1949, a Tudor Ⅳ British airliner, the Star Tiger, vanished over the triangle with 31 passengers and crew aboard. A year later, the Star Tiger’s sister plane, the Star Ariel, disappeared en route to Jamaica. Seventy-two search planes, plus dozens of ships, failed to turn up any sign of the missing aircraft.
    One of the largest ships claimed by the mysterious triangle was the U.S. Cyclops, a 500-foot coaling ship that disappeared on March 4, 1918. Investigations revealed no evidence of foul weather, no messages for help, no wreckage and no sign of the 309 men aboard. Strange yet are the numerous "ghost" ships that have been found floating crewless within the triangle. On one weird occasion in 1881, the cargo ship Ellen Austin discovered a schooner, sails flapping in the wind. A look through the captain’s telescope showed no one on deck. The schooner had a full cargo of timber, but no sign of human life. The captain of the Ellen Austin installed a new crew to sail it, but two days later, during a rough storm, the two ships temporarily lost sight of each other. When the captain again boarded the schooner, he found his crew had disappeared. After a second crew was assigned, the ship was again lost in a fog bank. This time, no trace of the schooner—or the crew—was ever found.
Investigations on Bermuda
    Officially, the U.S. Navy does not recognize the triangle as a dangerous zone and the U.S. Coast Guard is convinced that "the majority of disappearances(in the triangle) can be. attributed to the area’s unique environmental features". These include the swift Gulf Stream Current, the unexplored underwater valleys of the Atlantic and the often violent weather patterns within the mystery zone. Then too, the triangle is one of only two places on earth where a compass needle points to true north rather than magnetic north. (The other is "the Devil’s Sea", an equally treacherous zone in the Pacific, southeast of Japan.) Thus, a navigator who does not remember this may find himself well off course. "There are mysterious and strange things going on out there." admits Richard Winer, author of The Devil’s Triangle...a paperback that has sold 500,000 copies since its publication three months ago. "But I believe that all the answers lie in human error, mechanical malfunctions, freak weather or magnetic abnormalities."
    Officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are not so certain. "Despite efforts by the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard," NOAA reports. "no reasonable explanation to date has been made for the vanishings." Because of these uncertainties, private investigators have sought more fanciful explanations. John Wallance Spencer, author of Limbo of the Lost, a paperback that has sold 1.5 million copies in the past fifteen months, argues that beings from outer space have established a highly advanced civilization in the unexplored depths of the Atlantic inside the triangle. There, he believes, most of the missing vessels—and their crews—may still be on display for study by these higher intelligences. "It sounds weird," Spencer admits, "until you realize that it’s the only explanation that covers all the facts."
    These and other theories are all examined in Charles Berlitz’s current volume, The Bermuda Triangle...which has climbed onto the best-seller list less than three months after publication. A Yale graduate with a fascination for Atlantis, the legendary lost continent, Berlitz expands upon the theory that a giant solar crystal, which once sup Plied power for Atlantis, lies on the ocean floor. Periodically, he theorizes, passing ships and planes trigger the crystal, which confuses their instruments and sucks them into the impassable deep.
    To test such theories, a parapsychological institute called the Isis Center for Research and Study of the Esoteric Arts, bared in Silver Springs, Md. is planning to take 300 psychics and scientists on a cruise into the triangle next Jane. The researchers hope to make contact with whatever "high intelligences" may lie under the sea. A similar expedition into the Devil’s Sea was made by a group of Japanese scientists in 1955. Nothing has been heard of them since.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案A
解析 本文主要讲述的就是百慕大三角区之谜：无数船只、飞机在这里失踪，而至今没能找到原因，所以这句话是对文章总体的概括。
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