Think it's just Malaysian Airlines flight 370? Here are 10 airplanes that also disappeared without a trace
Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went missing for weeks, creating one of
the mysterious events in aviation history, but it's not unprecedented.
The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
has left experts perplexed, leading to a variety of unsubstantiated
theories about what might have happened. Unfortunately, if history is
any judge, it's possible we may never know. Here are five other examples
of missing flights that vanished without a trace, and remain unsolved
to this day...
Amelia Earhart
Perhaps the most famous missing pilot in history, Amelia Earhart
vanished over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island in 1937
during an attempt to become the first female to circumnavigate the globe
by flight. Though some clues have emerged over the years, and theories abound, Earhart's plane has yet to be found.
A recent discovery
off the coast of Nikumaroro island, an uninhabited tropical atoll in
the southwestern Pacific, offers new hope that the Earhart mystery may
soon have a resolution. A sonar scan has revealed what some experts
believe could be Earhart's crashed Lockheed Electra plane, and an
expedition to the island is scheduled in 2014 to look into the findings.
Lending credence to the evidence, researchers have previously found
what appears to be a jar of '30s-era freckle cream on Nikumaroro
island, along with an American-made woman's compact, buttons and the
zipper from a flight jacket.
Could this be Earhart's final resting place? We'll have to wait for the expedition to know for sure.
Flight 19
Flight 19
consisted of a fleet of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that
disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on Dec. 5, 1945, during a routine
training mission. The fact that all five of the planes and all 14 of the
airmen on board vanished without a trace has fueled the myth of the
Bermuda Triangle. No wreckage from any of the planes has ever been
found, though an investigation involving the recorded radio
transmissions from the planes has determined that navigational errors
likely drew the planes off course into the Atlantic Ocean, where they
ran out of fuel and crashed.
Stolen Boeing 727-223 Angola Plane
Here's an intriguing aviation mystery for you.
On May 25, 2003, a decommissioned Boeing 727-223 plane mysteriously
began taxiing down a runway at the Quatro de Fevereiro Airport in
Luanda, Angola. It took off without clearance, and disappeared into the
sky, never to be seen or heard from again. It is believed that at least
one man was on the plane at the time of its departure: Ben Charles
Padilla, an aviation engineer and pilot. His motive for stealing the
plane, if indeed he intended to steal it, remains a mystery. No trace of
the plane or Padilla have ever been found.
Star Tiger & Star Ariel
Two separate flights of Avro Tudor planes
that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle have added fuel to the fire
about the mythology of that region. The Star Tiger disappeared over the
Atlantic Ocean while on a flight between Santa Maria in the Azores and
Bermuda on Jan. 30, 1948. The flight experienced extreme weather and
winds during the flight, so investigators assume the plane was blown off
course and ran out of fuel, or was forced to crash land in the choppy
waters.
The Star Ariel's disappearance was far more mysterious, however. It
took off in excellent weather conditions on Jan. 17, 1949, on a flight
between Bermuda and Kingston, Jamaica. The last radio transmission from
the flight reported good visibility and smooth flying, but the plane was
never heard from or seen again. The entire fleet of Tudor IV's was
retired after both the Star Tiger and Star Ariel were lost within the
span of 12 months.
Flying Tiger Line Flight 739
Flying Tiger Line Flight 739
was a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation propliner chartered by the
U.S. military in 1962 to fly 96 American soldiers from Travis Air Force
Base in California to Saigon, Vietnam. The flight landed in Guam for a
scheduled refueling and departed without incident for its next stop in
the Philippines. About 80 minutes into that leg of the flight, the pilot
radioed a routine message and reported no trouble, but that was the
last contact the plane ever had.
The search for the plane was, at the time, one of the largest
to ever take place in the Pacific, covering more than 200,000 square
miles of ocean, but the aircraft was never seen or heard from again.
Source: MNN.COM
