At 2 pm on 5 December 1945, five US bombers took off from Fort Lauderlale in the USA for a training flight in perfect weather. Shortly afterwards, the pilots radioed that their flight instruments were all malfunctioning. Two hours after take-off, all contact with the planes was lost. A reconnaissance plane was immediately dispatched to search for the missing planes. Within 20 minutes, radio contact with it had also been lost. No trace of any of the planes was ever found. In all, six planes and 27 men had vanished into the air.
The disappearance of the six planes was far from being the first mysterious incident in the area: for years, navigational problems and strange magnetic forces had been reported. The disappearance was not even the greatest disaster within the triangle. The Cyclops, a 19,000-ton US ship was sailing from Barbados to Norfolk, Virginia. In March 1918, when it vanished with its crew of 309 from the surface of he ocean without making a distress call and without the slightest wreckage ever being found.
The losses of boats and planes in that area defy explanation. The disasters are the origin of a new phrase in the English language – the Bermuda Triangle and this phrase has entered legend. The Bermuda Triangle has been called the 'Devils’ Triangle, the Triangle of Death, the Graveyard of the Atlantic. It has swallowed up 140 ships and planes and more than 1,000 people. Today many airmen and sailors are still afraid of that area of the Atlantic Ocean.
СРОЧНО
ЗАДАЙТЕ 5 ВОПРОСОВ К ТЕКСТУ
1. (General)
2. (Negative Interrogative Sentence)
3. (Special)
4. (Disjunctive)
5. (Alternative)