The 4 most mysterious plane crashes of all time
There are always plane crashes that are never solved – whether over the famous Bermuda Triangle or over the Himalayas. Also, because many cases are never processed, there is all the more speculation…
From Flight 19, which simply disappeared in December 1945, to Flight MH370, about whose fate new theories are constantly being set up, to Pia Flight 404: TRAVELBOOK shows four mysterious plane crashes from the past and explains what is fact and what is fiction.
Flight 19, disappeared without a trace in December 1945
The Facts:
The first of the mysterious plane crashes is the case of Flight 19, or Flight 19. It consisted of five American torpedo bombers with a total of 13 crew members, which took off on December 5, 1945 from the Fort Lauderdale base on a training flight. 90 minutes after takeoff, one of the pilots, Charles C. Taylor, reported problems with the orientation in a radio message: The compass had failed, the national borders below them could no longer be made out and one had gotten lost. The tower then instructs Taylor to fly west. But Taylor replied, “Can’t tell where west is. Nothing is right anymore.”
Then the weather got worse and fuel ran out. Taylor is reported to have said in one of the last radio messages, “We’ll have to ditch if we don’t get to shore… If the first plane drops below ten gallons, we’ll all go down together.” Eventually, after Flight 19’s final report, a seaplane took off a search operation. But when it reached the suspected position of the five torpedo bombers, it also disappeared without a trace. To date, neither the fatalities nor a single piece of wreckage from the six military aircraft have been found.
The speculation:
Many conspiracy theorists see the case as one of the most important pieces of evidence supporting the Bermuda Triangle theory. For example Allan W. Eckert, who for the first time dedicated an entire article to “Flight 19” in a magazine for military veterans, as reported by “Spiegel Online”. The theory behind the Bermuda Triangle is about the fact that ships and planes keep disappearing inexplicably in the sea area in the western Atlantic north of the Caribbean. However, experts are assuming a more realistic event: They believe that the pilots must have run out of fuel at some point, they fell into the sea and sank there. The seaplane was believed to have exploded in mid-air.
Flight MH370, disappeared March 2014
The Facts:
The story of the infamous Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 began on March 8, 2014. At the time, the plane was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. In addition to the experienced pilot, who had more than 18,000 flight hours, and the rest of the crew, there were 239 passengers on board. The plane suddenly disappeared from radar around 40 minutes after take-off. In retrospect, however, it was determined on the basis of satellite data that the machine did not crash at that time. Instead, she flew for about seven more hours, first west, then a long way south. The MH370 probably crashed in the Indian Ocean. However, a complete wreck was never found.
The most recent example is the new book “Disappeared” by the French journalist Florence de Changy, who lives in Southeast Asia. In it she speaks out for the possibility that the machine was shot down. Supposedly, according to de Changy, by the US military who wanted a spy device that was on board.
Canadian crash investigator Larry Vance considers a completely different cause to be likely. he announced in his book “MH370 – Mystery Solved” that the Malaysian pilot put the machine on the water on purpose – he wanted to commit suicide. He attributes this to the good condition of the two dozen pieces of wreckage that were discovered. The chief investigator Peter Foley, on the other hand, is convinced that the machine crashed into the sea due to a lack of fuel, such as the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” .reported. Other sources believe the flight was shot down by the military, like flight MH17 in 2014 over Ukraine. There is also no lack of abstruse explanations. It’s probably one of the mysterious plane crashes that has one of the most conspiracy theories. Sometimes the Russians are said to have hijacked the plane to Kazakhstan, sometimes North Korea and then again aliens are to blame for the disappearance of the machine.
Egypt Air Flight 990, crashed in October 1999
The Facts:
Egypt Air Flight 990 (MSR990 for short) was scheduled to fly from New York to Cairo on October 31, 1999. But the scheduled flight crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles from the island of Nantucket. Before the crash, the flight recorder allegedly recorded the co-pilot saying “I rely on God” over and over again. When the pilot got back in the cockpit, he allegedly said, “What’s that? What is that? Did you switch off the drive?”. All 217 people on board the plane died in the crash.
Officers carry the container with the recorder of the voice recordings from the cockpit of the Egypt Air flight
The speculation:
The cause of the accident has not been precisely clarified, and the USA and Egypt are still arguing about the true cause to this day. The Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority justified the crash with a defect in the altitude measuring system, such as the “ARD”reported. However, the US authorities believe it was a suicide: the co-pilot had long been conspicuous for sexual harassment and was allegedly given a warning the morning before the crash. On March 21, 2002, the NTSB published the above-mentioned final report of the investigation, which stated that the accident probably resulted from the misconduct of the first officer of the backup crew. In Egypt, however, this thesis and the work of the NTSB was criticized. The fact is that the case has not been clearly clarified to this day.
PIA Flight 404
The facts:
Flight 404 of the “Pakistan International Airlines” (PIA) has been missing for more than 27 years now. The plane took off from the Pakistani city of Giglit at 7:36 am on the morning of August 25, 1989. There were 54 people on board the Fokker F27 Friendship aircraft, the destination was Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The crew’s last radio message came in just 4 minutes after take-off: Landing in Islamabad is expected at 08:32. But the machine never arrived, and no wreck has been found to this day.
The speculation:
It was never clarified why the flight never arrived at its destination. One assumption is that the plane may have crashed over the Himalayas, another that it was shot down by Indian authorities for accidentally flying over the border. However, there is no evidence for any of these theories. This is also one of the reasons why relatives are still wondering today, decades later, why the authorities put this case on hold.
