Sunday, December 9, 2018

GHOST PLANES

Haunted Houses and Spirit Ships ruled lore for centuries, but new times bring about new ways to encounter apparitions and unexplained phenomena. When we're looking to the skies, this almost always means UFOs, but phantom flights can also be counted among the strange things witnesses have claimed to see flying in the skies. The following are some of these tales of haunted aircraft. So, put your seat backs up and securely fasten your belts. You're in for a bump ride on a Ghost Plane.

The Ghosts of Flight 401 - On December 29,1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 en route from New York's JFK airport to Miami suddenly crashed into the Florida Everglades when the aircraft's autopilot malfunctioned. 101 people died. According to reports, the wreckage was salvaged and reincorporated into other Eastern Airlines planes. In time, the crews and passengers of those planes refitted with the salvage parts began to tell strange stories of unexplained, paranormal occurrences.

Lady Be Good in the Libyan desert.

Lady Be Good - The account of Flight 401 is in some ways similar to that of the Lady Be Good, a US B-24D Liberator that vanished during its first combat mission during WWII in the Spring of 1943. The Liberator had been returning to its home base in Libya following a bombing run over Naples, Italy when it vanished. For years, it was believed to have gone down somewhere over the Mediterranean. Then, on November 9, 1958, the wreck o the Lady Be Good was found by in surprisingly good condition by oil explorers from British Petroleum. While broken in half, much of it was salvageable. The crew however was missing. It would be almost two more years before their remains were discovered. It was eventually surmised that the plane was caught up in a sand storm that forced to them to fly on until they lost fuel and were forced to ditch, parachuting to the sands below and leaving the plane to crash. An account of their harrowing last days was partially recorded in a diary recovered from the pocket of co-pilot Robert Toner. In 1994, the craft was removed from the desert and taken to an airbase in Libya for examination and evaluation. Eventually, these components made their way into aviation and military museums. But some of the salvaged parts were re-incorporated into other period planes. It has been reported that these crafts have experienced strange, unexplained malfunctions. A C-54 with salvaged autosyn transmitters was forced to jettison cargo in order to safely land when the crew encountered trouble with the plane's propellers. A C-47 with the Lady's radio receiver crashed in the Mediterranean A DHC-3 Otter with one the salvaged armrests crashed into the Gulf of Sidra with hardly a trace. Among those scant bits recovered was the armrest from the Lady Be Good.

Pearl Harbor Ghost Plane - On December 8, 1942--one year and one day after the devastating attach on this base in Hawaii--US radar tracked an unknown inbound aircraft coming from somewhere to west. The pilots scrambled to intercept were surprised to discover and American P-40 with military markings, damaged landing gear, and riddled with bullet holes. According to the legend the pilots could see the bloodied form of a man slumped wearily over the ruined controls inside the cockpit. He lifted his head and smiled weakly as he waved to pilots before suddenly plummeting to the ground. The wreckage of the crashed P-40 was located, but investigators could find no signs of the mysterious pilot. Where did he go and where did his plane come from? Skeptics point to a story written in a book by WWII fighter ace Colonel Robert Lee Scott, Jr. (of the famed Flying Tigers and, later, an Air Force brigadier general) entitled Damned to Glory filled with fictional accounts of the people, places, and tall tales he collected from the war. One particular story, "Ghost Pilot," recounts a nearly identical incident. It's from this, skeptics claim, that the legend took off, especially after Reader's Digest reprinted it shortly after publication. However, it is well-noted that Scott wrote these stories based upon accounts he had heard from others. So while he might have fictionalized the narrative, he mightn't have created the key elements. Perhaps these events--in some fashion--actually happened to someone during the war.

Battle Over Britain? - In 1997, near the Sheffield Peaks in the UK, witnesses described an old single-propeller plane flying dangerously low to the ground. As it flew overhead, those in attendance were forced to duck for cover. It seemed to crash in the moors nearby, but extensive searches yielded no wreckage. During WWII many fighter planes were downed in the region of the Peaks, begging the question: Was this a ghost plane?

Also in 1997, a single engine plane went down in the waters near Westbrook, Connecticut. Again, no trace of wreckage could be found.

There were similar cases of planes crashing without any sign of wreckage throughout the 1950s in Ovando, Montana and in Dark Hollow, Pennsylvania.

One wonders what is at the heart of these sightings. Is it all just tall tales and hokum, or are these very real craft and we are simply underestimating what an enormous task it is to locate small crashed planes in the expanse of our wilderness and seas? But maybe it is exactly what it seems like: the phantom appearance of long-vanished planes returning from the ether or purposes not yet clear.

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