Post by Graveyardbride on Jan 17, 2014 19:53:40 GMT -5
Disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle
In the early morning hours of Monday, January 17, 1949, Star Ariel, an Avro Tudor IV passenger aircraft owned and operated by British South American Airways Corporation (BSSAC), was sitting at Kindley Field in Bermuda without passengers. Her crew was on a return trip following west-bound service to Jamaica. However, another plane lost an engine while on approach to Bermuda and Star Ariel was refueled and instructed to fly the 13 passengers on to Jamaica, their destination.
Pilot J. C. McPhee received a weather briefing while other crew members greeted the passengers. The weather forecast was perfect, so McPhee decided on a high altitude flight. Star Ariel took her place in the traffic of airplanes taking off that day and she was never seen again.
About an hour into the flight, McPhee’s voice came over the receiver, saying:
I departed from Kindley Field at 8:41 a.m. hours my ETA at Kingston 2:10 p.m. hours. I am flying in good visibility at 18,000 ft. I flew over 150 miles south of Kindley Field at 9:32 hrs. My ETA at 30° N is 9:37 hrs. Will you accept control?
At 9:42, a second message came:
I was over 30 N at 9:37. I am changing frequency to MRX.
At this level, the Sargasso Sea below must have been stunning: great mats of floating green sargassum on a deep blue ocean. Above the clouds, the visibility was limitless; below, never less than 12 miles.
So what happened? Nothing was ever heard of Star Ariel again. Kingston finally reported the flight overdue.
The search began with another Tudor IV, Star Lion, which had landed at Nassau on a routine flight. Now refueled, she took off at 3:25 p.m. to fly Star Ariel’s route, bisect it at 27 NL, 69 WL and follow it back to Bermuda. Another aircraft took off from Bermuda, flew 500 miles out, then did a 10-mile lattice search all the way back. A U.S. Navy task force headed by the battleship Missouri coordinated the effort, which expanded to dozens of ships and several planes over the next few days. Not one shred of evidence was ever found.
* * *
Adding to the mystery of Star Ariel’s disappearance was the disappearance of Star Tiger, another BSAA Tudor IV, just a year before.
In the early morning hours of January 30, 1948, the Atlantic would have been a pitch black void outside the large futuristic windows of the airliner. The plane, carrying 25 passengers and six crew members, on a flight from London to Havana, was on its third stage from Santa Maria in the Azores to Hamilton, Bermuda, a distance of 1,960 miles. Those passengers who weren’t sleeping would likely have been moving about in slow motion within the silence of the dimmed cabin as “Star Girls” (stewardesses) Nichols and Clayton quietly performed their duties.
Things were also slow and silent at Kindley Field, Bermuda, until 3:04 a.m., when the radio came alive and Radio Officer Robert “Tucky” Tuck of the Star Tiger requested a radio bearing from the Bermuda airport, however, the signal was not strong enough to obtain an accurate reading. Tuck repeated the request eleven minutes later and this time, the Bermuda radio operator was able to obtain a bearing of 72°, accurate to within 2°. The request was routine enough, allowing Tuck to fix his position in relation to Bermuda. He depressed his transmitting key so Bermuda could home in on it. The Bermuda operator transmitted the requested information and Tuck acknowledged receipt at 3:17.
That was the last communication with Star Tiger. The Bermuda operator attempted to contact the aircraft at 3:50 and receiving no reply, assumed it had gone over to direct radio contact with Bermuda Approach Control. However, Approach Control indicated this had not happened. The Bermuda radio operator tried at 4:05 to contact Star Tiger, again without success, and after trying again at 4:40, declared a state of emergency.
US Air Force personnel operating at the airfield immediately organized a rescue effort that continued for five days in increasingly rough weather. Twenty-six aircraft flew a total of 882 hours combined, while surface craft also searched, but no signs of Star Tiger or her passengers and crew were ever found and the fate of the plane remains a mystery to this day.
* * *
Following the vanishing of Star Ariel, it was noted there were no weather complications, however, the tower in Bermuda had been vexed by communication problems from static, to hazy reception, to total blackouts lasting as long as 10 minutes. A low pressure system was centered around 28 N 53 W and an anticyclone about 32 N 14 W. The aircraft track lay about halfway between these coordinates.
With the disappearance of Star Ariel, the British Civil Air Ministry was faced with a second disturbing mystery, as was a now bereft BSAAC. Lord Barbazon of Thara headed the investigation.
Among other factors investigated was McPhee’s rather early switch over to Kingston frequency when he was still so close to Bermuda. It was thought that perhaps no one would have heard a distress call for this reason because of the distance to Kingston. However, when a BSAAC representative in Kingston was questioned, he wrote:
“It would appear that the aircraft should have made firm contact with MRX before requesting permission from Bermuda to change frequency. This was obviously not done as MRX never worked G-AGRE on this frequency at all. In addition I am convinced that G-AGRE did not ever transmit on this frequency of 6523 kc/s., even if Bermuda did give authority to change frequency which they could quite readily have done. This latter opinion is based on the fact that not only was MRX in Jamaica listening out on 6523 kc/s but so also were New York, Miami, Nassau, Havana and Balbao and, so far as we are aware and from what definite information we have, none of these stations ever heard from G-AGRE on 6523 kc/s. Whilst it may have been possible for us not to hear G-AGRE owing to the bad reception Palisadoes [Kingston Aerodrome] was experiencing at the time of the requested QSY, it would seem most improbable for similar conditions to obtain with all those other stations listening out on that frequency.”
The Barbazon Committee agreed. “The Captain’s procedure was correct. That he did not re-establish communication with Bermuda after failure to contact Kingston or any other Caribbean Station must be assumed to have been because of inability to do so.”
Such a conclusion seems undeniable; Star Ariel must have vanished within minutes, or even seconds, after her routine call to Bermuda before she could raise Kingston. In hindsight, this scenario does not seem too maverick. It is precisely what we have seen in almost every disappearance since – a sudden and extremely destructive force.
Indeed, just prior to Star Ariel’s disappearance, another airliner, a Douglas DC-3, vanished December 28, 1948, in even more inexplicable conditions near Miami. The aircraft, with 32 on board, was never found. From documentation compiled by the Civil Aeronautics Board, the plane possibly crashed into the sea because the batteries were inspected and found to be low on charge, but they were not recharged in San Juan. However, because piston-engined aircraft rely on magnetos to provide a spark to the cylinders rather than a battery-powered ignition coil system, this is highly unlikely.
Without any solution to two unexplained disappearances of BSAAC aircraft, the company was in trouble. Sabotage was ruled out, leaving the suspicion in the minds of would-be ticket holders that the carrier itself was somehow at fault. BSAAC went bankrupt and BOAC took over as sole carrier.
Although the Tudor IV aircraft was a beautiful plane, performed well in the Berlin Airlift, and none of the other craft had experienced anything remotely out of the ordinary, the Civil Air Ministry withdrew the aircraft. None was to fly again because of the two that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle ... until, that is, Freddie Laker brought them back and modified them as the “Super Trader,” after which they were used for cargo flights only.
In addition to Flight 19’s disappearance in 1945, it was the loss of Star Tiger, Star Ariel and the DC-3 that started the enigma of the Bermuda Triangle.
Author: Graveyardbride.
Sources: BermudaTriangle; Disappearance of the Star Tiger; and Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
Sources: BermudaTriangle; Disappearance of the Star Tiger; and Mystery of the Bermuda Triangle.
