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Learn about different colleges for aviation. Learn more about Spartan College. http://www.spartan.edu/
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FIVE UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF AVIATIONby Artium Lisa Hanlon in Uncategorized
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People who love to fly love the adventure, the freedom, and the challenge of piloting a craft through
the sky. They also love the great stories of aviators over the last hundred years. There are heroes,
daredevils, great explorers—and mysteries. This article looks at six of aviation’s most tantalizing
unexplained disappearances, sightings, and scary coincidences.
Flight 19 – The Legend of the Bermuda Triangle
Shortly after 2 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avengers took off from Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, on routine overwater navigation training flight that was to last about two hours. Their leader
was an experienced pilot, USNR Lieutenant Charles Taylor. Each plane had a pilot and two crew—
except for one plane, which was a crewman short. The second crewman, Marine Corporal Allan
Kosnar, had asked for permission not to fly because he had a strong premonition of danger.
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His premonition proved correct: 90 minutes into the exercise, something went horribly wrong. Fort
Lauderdale received a series of confused transmissions from the Flight 19 pilots, including some
from Taylor that seemed to indicate he believed he was over the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico.
For several hours, radio contact continued, but by the time night fell, the weather had deteriorated,
and no more messages were received.
No wreckage of Flight 19 has ever been found. This unsolved mystery is one of the major
contributors to the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, a patch of waters between Florida and the
Bahamas where planes, ships, and even lighthouse keepers have mysteriously vanished.
191: The Unlucky Flight Number
Many people believe the number 13 is unlucky. In high-rise buildings, this superstition is sometimes
taken so seriously that the owners skip from 12 to 14 when numbering their floors. In aviation, it
seems that 191 is the unlucky number. Since the 1960s, five flights bearing the number 191 have
been subject to bizarre experiences—or met terrible ends.
• In 1967, Flight 191 for the experimental X-15 test plane broke apart and crashed, killing the pilot
—the only crash in the history of the X-15 experiements.
• In 1972, Prinair Flight 191 crashed at Mercedita Airport in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
• In 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 crashed at Chicago O'Hare. 273 people were killed,
making it the deadliest singe-aircraft accident in American history.
• In 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, killing 137.
• Finally, in 2012, JetBlue Airways Flight 191, en route from JFK to Las Vegas, had to make an
emergency landing in Texas afte the pilot apparently experienced a panic attack or psychotic break
mid-flight. He began behave so erratically that the co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit. A group of
passengers were able to strap the pilot down, averting a disaster.
D.B. Cooper
On November 24, 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 was en route from Portland, Oregon to
Seattle when “D.B. Cooper”, a non-descript male passenger in a dark suit, passed a note to the
flight attendant. She set it to one side, but the man leaned over and said, “Miss, you’d better look at
that note. I have a bomb.” He then cracked open his briefcase, showing her a glimpse of what
appeared to be an explosive device. Then he ordered another bourbon.
He never used the bomb, but he still managed to pull off the most daring hijacking in history. He
demanded $200,000 in American cash, four parachutes, and a fuel tanker to be waiting for the
plane when it landed at Seattle.
The pilots radioed his demands to SEA-TAC, and the president of Northeast Orient Airlines
ordered complete cooperation with his requests. At Seattle, he took his money and his parachutes.
After refuelling, he allowed the other 42 passengers and some of the flight attendants to leave the
craft. Then he ordered the pilots to take off again.
He told them he wanted them to fly to Mexico, at the lowest possible speed and altitude that would
avoid a stall-out or a crash. About forty minutes after take-off, he ordered the flight attendants into
the cockpit. Then, warning lights told the staff he had opened the aft airstair. When the flight
attendants came out to investigate, “Cooper”, the money, and two of the parachutes had vanished
into the night.
Despite an immense man-hunt and years of searching, he has never been found again.
The 1952 Washington National Airport Incident
Flying-saucer mania had begun in America with the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico incidents, and had
steadily built up to a fever pitch in 1952. During that year, there were thousands of reports of UFOs
all over the world —some of them easily explained away by mundane phenomena, and some not.
Perhaps the most notorious were those that occurred over the nation’s capital.
Between July 12 and July 29, 1952, a series of unidentified aircraft were reported in the skies over
Washington, D.C. Air-traffic controllers out of National Airport (now known as Ronald Reagan
National Airport) at two different radio towerswere able to confirm the existence of the craft on
radar, as were crew at Andrews Air Force base. Military and civilian pilots and flight crews
reported sighting strange white or orange tail-less lights near their aircraft which moved as if
controlled by intelligence. A few ground-based observers even claimed to have seen structured
craft, rather than lights.
The Air Force held a press conference on July 29th that explained the radar evidence as the result
of “temperature inversions” which cause radar interference. They declared that the lights and other
visual sightings were shooting stars or meteors. That would appear to be case closed, but many
people dispute the official explanations to this day.
Amelia Earhart
The greatest of all unsolved aviation mysteries is the disappearance of pioneering pilot Amelia
Earhart and her naviagator, Fred Noonan, over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. Earhart and Noonan
were more than two-thirds of the way through their circumnavigation of the world at the equator. The
final 7,000 miles of the 29,000-mile trip would take place over the Pacific.
On July 3, 1937, Earhart and Noonan were closing in on a small strip of land called Howland Island,
located between Hawaii and Australia, where a U.S. Coast Guard Vessel, the Itasca, had radio
contact with them. But Earhart and Noonan couldn’t seem to find the island. They radioed the Itasca
several times, never seeming to hear the ship’s replies. Earhart’s last message, delivered in a
level, unruffled voice, was "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will
repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait."
The Itasca waited, but no further message came. The Itasca began an immediate search, and a
further 66 ships and 9 aircraft were mobilized to find the missing heroine. After two weeks of
fruitless searching, the rescue was called off. Earhart was declared legally dead in 1939.
While recent artifacts found on Gardiner Island south of Howland Islandoffer circumstantial
evidence that Earhart may have successfully ditched her plane and survived for a time, no concrete
proof yet exists.