As aircraft and ships continue to comb parts of the Indian Ocean on Thursday in search of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, questions continue about what happened. But as history shows, sometimes the answers, as well as the planes themselves, are never found.
With concern and speculation growing over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, some now wonder if MH370 could end up being another unsolved mystery like the unsolved case of Amelia Earhart. Earhart’s disappearance in 1937 shocked the international community and sparked numerous debates and theories as to what happened.
Although rare, when an airplane “disappears,” it’s disquieting—generally a large number of people suddenly meeting some kind of “unknown end.” We want to know what happened so we can think this won’t happen to us. We want to believe we have some sense of control, but as aviation history shows, sometimes an airplane can just vanish and the reason remains unknown. Worse yet, sometimes multiple aircraft disappear at the same time. Such is the mystery surrounding Flight 19.
On December 5, 1945, at about 2:10 p.m., Flight 19, consisting of five TBM Avenger Torpedo Bombers, departed from the U.S. Naval Air Station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on an authorized navigational training flight over the Bermuda Triangle. At about 4 p.m., a radio message was intercepted indicating Flight 19 was “lost,” and that the aircraft were experiencing malfunctions of their compasses. All radio communications were subsequently lost before the exact nature of the problem or the location of the flight could be determined. The flight was never heard from again, and no trace of the airplanes or the crew members was ever found. Adding to the mystery, a PBM patrol plane with 13 crew members was sent to search for missing Flight 19 around 7:30 p.m. That aircraft also disappeared and was never seen nor heard from again after take-off. In total, six aircraft and 27 crew members “disappeared” on December 5, 1945, official cause “unknown.”
There have been other disappearances of airliners over open waters throughout the years as well. On March 10, 1956, A Boeing B-47 Stratojet carrying two capsules of nuclear weapons material took off from MacDill AFB, Florida, for a nonstop flight to Morocco. It completed its first aerial refueling without incident, but after descending through solid clouds to begin its second refueling, the plane failed to make contact with its tanker. In spite of an extensive search, no debris was ever found and the crew was declared dead.
In 1962, a chartered U.S. military plane with 107 people on board disappeared after taking off from Guam. Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 disappeared on March 16, 1962, over the Western Pacific Ocean. It had stopped for refueling at Andersen AFB, Guam, and was en route to Clark Air Base in the Philippines when it disappeared. The airliner’s disappearance prompted one of the largest air and sea rescues in the history of the Pacific, but no trace of wreckage or debris was ever recovered.
In January 1979, Varig Cargo Boeing 707 PP-VLU disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean. No trace of the airliner or the crew was ever found. What makes this disappearance even more unusual is that the captain of the flight, Gilberto Araujo da Silva, was also involved in a fatal crash six years earlier. “In 1973, Captain Araujo da Silva was in charge of flight RG820, a Boeing 707 carrying 134 people, which crash-landed near Orly Airport in Paris, with 123 fatalities.” One passenger survived while the majority of the crew, including Captain da Silva, escaped the burning plane through the emergency exit at the top of the cockpit. At the time of his disappearance in 1979, Captain da Silva had logged more than 23,000 hours.
Disappearances of aircraft over large bodies of water present many problems for search personnel. Ocean turbulence and currents may wash debris far from where an airliner went down. In the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the search area is enormous, from the South China Sea up and over Asia back down to the southern Indian Ocean, which is known for rough weather, high winds, and large-white-capped waves, all of which can obscure debris.
But even relatively smaller bodies of water, such as the Great Lakes, can hide a missing airliner. Such is the 64-year-old mystery surrounding Northwest Airlines Flight 2501. On June 23, 1950, the flight, carrying 55 passengers and three crew members, vanished over Lake Michigan. A widespread search ensued, including the use of sonar and dragging the bottom of Lake Michigan. “Considerable light debris, upholstery, and some human body fragments were found floating on the surface,” but the plane’s wreckage was never located. It remains a mystery to this day.
We may never know what happened in some of these cases, and while it’s disturbing to ponder what might have happened in the final moments, we need to remind ourselves that flying remains one of the safest modes of travel, even over the open waters of the world’s oceans.
Link: http://www.gcnlive.com/CMS/index.php/component/k2/374-aviation-mysteries
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