Without a trace!

Published April 12, 2014

THE mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has puzzled the world, and even after five weeks, it is still being searched for in the remotest stretches of the world's oceans. It really is surprising that with the sophisticated satellite, surveillance and communication technology being used today, no one came to know where and how a large commercial airliner vanished while carrying 239 people!

While the world searches for MH370, let us look at some other instances of unsolved mysterious mass disappearances over the last two centuries. Though there are many more examples of mysterious disappearances since ancient days, we will not focus on those as it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in those old tales.

Amelia Earhart

WHAT happened to famed aviator Amelia Earhart as she attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world in 1937 is a mystery that still baffles.

Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan were on the last leg of her round-the-world trip, flying from Lae, Papua New Guinea, to Howland Island, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Australia and 2,556 miles away from Lae, when they went missing. They took off on July 2, 1937, at 10am local time.

Howland Island, their landing spot, was difficult to spot as it was only 1.5 miles long and half a mile wide. To aid Amelia, special navigation precautions were taken, such as having US Coast Guard ship Itasca stationed off Howland Island to maintain radio communication with her.

Soon after takeoff, Earhart encountered overcast skies and rain, and it is speculated that the plane's radio antenna may have been damaged as they had problems in communication, which soon stopped completely.

As they neared Howland Island, they were unable to make sufficient connection with the Itasca or to land on the island. Earhart's last communication was at 8:43 am: "We are running north and south."

The US Navy and Coast Guard launched the largest and most expensive air and sea search in American history, but nothing was found. On Jan. 5, 1939, Earhart was declared legally dead.

Theories

o A widely believed and most probable theory is that Earhart and Noonan touched down on a remote South Pacific island called Nikumaroro, uninhabited and known as Gardner Island at the time. Since search began there in 1989, various things have been found that makes researchers believe that Earhart and Noonan probably lived there for sometime, waiting to be rescued.

o Earhart was a spy and her plane was forced down by the Japanese around the Marshall Islands she was executed.

o Earhart secretly returned to the United States and the government gave her a new identity.

You can make your own assumptions...

Mary Celeste

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THE disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste is widely regarded as the most famous mystery of the sea, and one of the strangest too.

The twin-masted vessel sailed from New York on its way to Genoa, Italy, on November 7, 1872, was found floating in the Strait of Gibraltar four weeks later. No one was on board - Captain Briggs, his wife Sarah, two-year-old daughter Sophia Matilda, and the crew of seven were never seen or found again. Also missing were the only lifeboat of the ship, the captain's chronometer, sextant, navigation book and ship's register. The cargo was intact as were other useful things on board, as if the ship was abandoned in a hurry.

A chart was found showing the ship's progress until November 24, on a slate log, there was an entry for 8am, November 25, mentioning that they had passed the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, about 600 miles from where Mary Celeste was found abandoned.

Theories

OVER the years, no clue of the missing seafarers were found so people came up with their own conclusions - some totally based on superstitions and some on logic.

o A giant squid had all the passengers for dinner.

o The ship was cursed.

o Pirates murdered the crew, although no pirates had been seen in the area since 1832.

o One cask of the alcohol had been broached in the hold and nine of the casks were empty. So probably the crew had gotten drunk and in a rage had murdered the captain and his wife. They then took to the boats in escape. But the crude alcohol the ship was carrying could not be consumed because it was poisonous!

o The strongest theory is that some of the barrels were broached which might have caused a build up of fumes which blew the hatch covers off. Fearing another, larger explosion, everyone must have moved to the lifeboat which was tied by a rope to the ship. They met rough weather and either the boat sank or the rope broke/loosened and the boat went adrift leading to everyone dying.

USS Cyclops

USS Cyclops, a US Navy vessel, departed from Rio de Janeiro on February 16, 1918, carrying 11,000 tons of manganese ore, more than three tons past her maximum capacity.

After an unscheduled stop in Barbados, the ship sailed into the North Atlantic en route to Baltimore and vanished without a trace with all 306 crewmembers.

It remains the largest non-combat loss of life in US Naval history. Strangely enough, two sister ships to the Cyclops, the USS Proteus and the USS Nereus, also vanished without a trace in the North Atlantic during World War II. Both ships were also carrying heavy loads of ore. Investigations concluded that both ships sank due to a catastrophic structural failure.

Theories

o The heavy load, engine failure and a storm in the Virginia Capes combined to sink the ship.

o The ship fell prey to a German U-boat, or some Germans aboard the vessels had hijacked it.

o Bermuda Triangle swallowed it up - since no wreckage was ever found and the Germans had no record showing the sinking of this type of vessel.

Flight 19

EARLY in the afternoon of December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from US Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on a routine navigational training mission. Designated as Flight 19, the 14 men and their experienced flight instructor, Lt. Charles Taylor, planned to fly a triangular route with some practice bombing runs.

Soon after the initial run, both of Taylor's compasses malfunctioned and he became lost. Till sunset, the planes first flew in one direction and then another, but they saw no land. Transcripts of the in-flight communications reported that the planes ditched at sea, but despite a search neither the planes nor the crew were ever found.

If this was not mysterious and spooky enough, PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, exploded in midair while searching for Flight 19!

Theories

o The US Navy's final report initially blamed the loss of Flight 19 on pilot error but after a review, the verdict was switched to a more fitting "causes or reasons unknown."

o The Bermuda Triangle claimed yet another victim! n

The Anjikuni mystery

Over 30 men, women and children literally vanished without a trace from an Inuit fishing village near Anjikuni Lake, along the Kazan River in the remote Canadian region of Nunavut, in 1930.

One cold evening in November 1930, Joe Labelle, a fur trapper, arrived in the village to take shelter for the night. Labelle had visited the bustling fishing village with friendly locals before, but he found it empty this time. No smoke was coming out of the chimneys, but he spied a fire crackling in the distance.

Labelle headed toward the glowing embers where he found burnt stew in a pot left above the dying fire woods! Labelle checked all the huts and, to his surprise, what he saw puzzled and spooked him. Each hut was stocked with food, clothing, weapons and things that no one could leave behind even if they were going anywhere in a hurry in this arctic wilderness. There were no signs of a struggle or pandemonium.

Being an expert tracker, Labelle scanned the borders of the village to look for signs of the mass exodus, which should have been there if they had left recently enough to leave food cooking on the flames. There was no trace of their flight.

Too terrified to stay, Labelle rushed through the sub-zero temperatures to a telegraph office many miles away. An emergency message was sent to the closest Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) barracks. On their way to the deserted village, the Mounties stopped at the hut of trapper Armand Laurent and his two sons. When asked if they had seen anything unusual, Laurents disclosed that they had seen a bizarre gleaming object soaring across the sky just a few days ago. The enormous, illuminated flying "thing" seemed to change shape before their very eyes and transformed from a cylinder into a bullet-like object. It flew in the direction of the village at Anjikuni.

On arriving at the outskirts of the village, the Mounties stumbled upon opened and emptied graves in the village burial ground! It is a taboo for an Inuit grave to be desecrated, so why were these bodies moved?

Another grisly discovery awaited the search team - a number of sled dog carcasses were discovered at the edge of the village. Apparently all had died of starvation and then became covered by snow nearly 12-feet deep! These dogs would have taken days to starve to death but how could that be possible if Labelle had found food still cooking on dying embers? Did the villagers intentionally kill their own dogs, animals that are prized possessions in the snowy landscape?

The final, and no less puzzling and eerie sign awaited them - they saw odd, bluish lights pulsating on the horizon above the village. Perplexed, they watched until the illumination disappeared, all concurred that the unusual light show did not resemble the aurora borealis.

Upon thoroughly investigating the village and its surroundings, the Mounties concluded that the villagers had been gone for at least two months. In that case, who was responsible for the fire that Labelle saw when he first arrived at the village? There are no theories about this most mysterious of mysteries!

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