Archaeology & History

Bermuda Triangle hunt for lost plane yields unexpected discovery

By T.K. Randall
March 20, 2026 ·  6 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) An expanse of ocean in the North Atlantic that spans the area between Florida, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, the Bermuda Triangle needs little introduction.

Over the years, the region has become synonymous with the unexplained disappearances of ships and airplanes - often with no trace of them or their crews ever being found.

Back in 2022, a History Channel crew, alongside a team of expert divers, set out to find the wreckage of a long-lost plane that went down off the east coast of Florida during the Second World War.

Things seemed to be looking up when the team identified what appeared to be pieces of an aircraft on the sea floor, but when they went down to take a closer look, what they found shocked them.

The debris was unlike anything they'd seen before - it consisted of strange tiles that didn't look like they belonged to any known type of aircraft.Puzzled, the divers went back down for another look - then decided to contact NASA.

It turned out that what they had found was not the lost World War II aircraft - it was a significant piece of the Space Shuttle Challenger that was lost just 73 seconds into its ascent in 1986.

The accident, which was caused by a fatal design flaw, cost the lives of all seven of its crew members.

"This discovery gives us an opportunity to pause once again, to uplift the legacies of the seven pioneers we lost, and to reflect on how this tragedy changed us," former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the time.

"At NASA, the core value of safety is - and must forever remain - our top priority, especially as our missions explore more of the cosmos than ever before."

Source: Popular Mechanics | Comments (6)

Tags: Bermuda Triangle, Plane, Space Shuttle