The missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH730 has caught the
world’s attention as an international whodunit. An al-Qaeda operative named Saajid Bada claims that a Malaysian cell was planning to hijack
a plane, and he even provided them with a shoe-bomb to gain entry into the
cockpit. Of course if this was a terrorist operation, it must have gone
terribly awry if no one is claiming responsibility. It is also suspected that
at least one of the pilots may have acted out his anti-government views by
hijacking the plane himself. All that is known for certain is that someone or
someones deliberately attempted to alter the flight’s original course and
conceal its altered flight trajectory—apparently quite well, or too well, for
more than 200 innocent passengers.
Given the present state of technology, it is a wonder that such inexplicable disappearances are still possible. The legends of the Bermuda Triangle and
Amelia Earhart aside, airplanes—particularly large ones—only in the rarest
occasions disappear without a trace. On March 15, 1962 Flying Tiger Line Flight
739, a military charter flight out of Travis Air Force Base in California
carrying 107 military personal and crew to Saigon, South Vietnam disappeared
and was never found. The Lockheed L-1049H Super Constellation’s first stop in Honolulu was delayed for minor maintenance on
two engines, and the stewardesses insistence on the use of rest facilities at
the airport. Continuing problems with ignition systems caused another delay at
Wake Island; after a refueling stop in Guam, Flight 739 was to continue on to
Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, a little over six-hour flight.
Two-and-hours later, the crew made a weather report, and was never heard from again. When the plane failed to arrive
in the Philippines as scheduled, a search was conducted that included 48 planes
and 8 ships over a 144,000 square mile area, but no trace of the plane or
bodies were ever found. The crew of a supertanker claimed to have seen a bright
light and two falling red lights not far from Flight 739’s expected position at
that time, about 90 minutes after its last radio transmission and 550 miles
west of Guam. A Civil Aeronautics Board
investigation was unable to determine the cause of the accident because of the
lack of physical evidence, but investigators doubted that under “normal”
circumstances the aircraft could have exploded in the manner described—unless sudden,
deliberate sabotage occurred, which many believed at the time since the crew
never reported any problems in-flight.
Another famous missing plane case was
that which carried famed band leader Glenn Miller. On December 15, 1944 Miller
was scheduled to make a flight to Paris to entertain troops with his Army Air
Force band, but the day was heavy with fog, and a concerned Miller reportedly
asked “Where are the parachutes?” The Norseman C-64 transport plane left
an RAF airbase and was reportedly last sighted by a 17-year-old plane-spotter,
flying under the fog cover southeasterly in the direction of the English
Channel. Theories about what happened included a crash into the channel after icing on the wings from a combination of fog
and freezing temperatures, claims by his brother that he in fact died in bed
from cancer but fabricated the crash story so he could go out as a “hero,” and that
Miller’s plane had been found crashed in France, but there was a cover-up to
conceal responsibility for the death of the Army’s “number one” morale-booster.
Other theories included various “friendly fire” incidents,
such as the plane being accidentally struck by an anti-aircraft battery, or RAF
bombers dropping unused incendiaries high over the area that Miller’s plane was
flying through. More dubious was a 1997 report in a German tabloid that claimed
that Miller died after a night of frolicking in a Parisian brothel, while
another claim was that the German-speaking Miller was actually bound for an
undercover mission to convince German generals to overthrow the Nazi regime,
but was caught, tortured and killed by the Nazis.
Most of these incidents occur over deep
water, and naturally it is much more common for watercraft and passengers to
vanish without a trace. There is the famous case of the Mary Celeste, found adrift and abandoned in the Atlantic Ocean west
of Portugal in 1872. In its hold were 1700 barrels of commercial alcohol bound
for Italy, untouched save for nine barrels mysteriously empty. The ship was
found waterlogged but otherwise seaworthy, and the life boat gone; it was also
observed that a rope was dangling from behind the ship, its end frayed.
Many fantastically theories developed
about the fate of those on board and why they abandoned the ship, but the most
plausible explanation was that the empty barrels, made of red oak, were too
porous to contain the vapors emanating from the alcohol, causing a build-up of
vapor in the hold that eventually erupted in an “explosion” which alarmed the
ship’s captain, Benjamin Briggs—who also happened
to have his wife and infant daughter on board. Confused about what was
occurring, Briggs likely tethered the lifeboat to the ship with rope and put
all aboard it until the danger had passed. But a fierce storm rose-up, causing
the weak rope to detach, which explained its frayed end and no lifeboat.
Presumably the lifeboat and its occupants were then lost at sea.
Other strange incidents included the
schooner Carroll A. Deering, which was
discovered run aground outside of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in January,
1921. No trace of its mostly foreign 10-man crew were ever found. In November, 1955 the Joyita, originally
built as a luxury yacht, was discovered 600 miles off course on its last cruise,
listing heavily but still afloat. All 25 persons listed aboard were missing and
never found.
But other disappearances included both
ship and crew. The Australian passenger/cargo steamer SS Waratah with 211 persons on board disappeared in a
storm off the coast of South Africa in 1909; some have speculated that a rogue
wave hit the unstable ship. The Danish ship København was believed to be
the largest sailing ship ever built; it was last heard from in December 1928, vanishing
in the South Atlantic with 75 aboard. Submarines—especially German U-boats during
World War II—were frequently lost without a trace. The USS Kete was on
its way to Midway Island for refueling when it simply disappeared with 87 hands
aboard sometime in late March 1945; it was believed that it was sunk by a
Japanese submarine, which itself was sunk before it could report its attack.
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