Lesser Known Aviation Mysteries

hello everybody welcome back to another episode of side projects this one is all lesser-known aviation mysteries no amelia earhart here these are the ones you probably haven't heard of [Music] most of us are at least partly familiar with well-known aviation mysteries like amelia earhart's yes absolutely disappearance in 1937 the loss of u.s navy flight 19 over the beauty triangle in 1945 also out of that one and of course malaysia airlines flight mh370 that went missing in 2014. it's already seven years ago where does time go that said since regional and long distance flights became common after the wright brothers skimmed just a few meters over the ground in kitty hawk north carolina in 1903. scores of military and civilian airplanes have crashed and gone missing in bizarre circumstances though whether faulty design mechanical problems and pilot error are often to blame many incidents are shrouded in hearsay misinformation and competing theories and espionage industrial theft nefarious insurance payouts and religious fervor sometimes factor into the equation too also in case of the bermuda triangle which isn't really a thing people like it's a giant sea monster it's not whatever the case missing aircraft and crashes often baffle investigators and in many instances the truth remains in near perpetual obfuscation so now let's take a look at four lesser-known aviation mysteries in late may 2003 a boeing 727 that had once belonged to american airlines was stolen from cuatro de feverero airport in luanda angola prompting a bevy of investigations by the fbi cia and local authorities the narrow body tri-engine 727-223 was manufactured in 1975 but after more than two decades hauling passengers for american airlines it was bought by miami-florida-based aerospace sales and leasing the airplane long past its prime as a people mover ended up in angola where its seats were removed and replaced with large tanks capable of holding nearly 14 000 us gallons of diesel fuel which it regularly ferried to the region's mines with a maximum gross takeoff weight approaching 200 000 pounds that's about 91 000 kilograms the plane had a range of about 1 500 miles or 2 400 kilometers but though the airplane had been working as a fuel hauler for some time it had been variously leased to other airlines including tag angola airlines the state-owned carrier of angola however at the time of its mysterious disappearance it was apparently being retrofitted once again i guess they just couldn't decide what to do with it this time for another local airline and it had been sitting on the tarmac for more than a year during which time its owners purportedly racked up more than 4 million in airport fees which they just didn't pay in documents later released by the fbi the plane was described as unpainted silver in color with a stripe of blue white and red in other words american airlines colors minus the lettering the story goes that on may 25th 2003 at about 5pm local time just as the sun was setting two men stealthily boarded the massive jetliner one airport employee reported seeing one person board the aircraft while others stated that they'd seen two men one is thought to have been experienced american pilot and flight engineer ben padilla who wasn't certified to fly a 727 but i mean if you're stealing one well i guess who cares the other was a congolese mechanic named john matuantu with padilla at the controls and matuantu monitoring the engines and the vital systems the aircraft's engines roared to life and it taxied erratically toward the runway without any communication or proper clearance air traffic controllers in the tower repeatedly tried to make contact but had no luck with no lights it lined up and took off heading southwest over the atlantic ocean before disappearing during the investigation padilla's sister admitted that her family suspected that he was involved that had been forced to steal the plane against his will and that the aircraft had most likely crashed because he wasn't capable of flying it i guess certification does actually matter i had no idea i guess i thought he could fly the plane but maybe he wasn't certified on it i don't know u.s authorities discovered that prior to the instant padilla had been caught up in an accounting fraud scheme and that he was heavily in debt and in constant fear of prosecution and retribution from those he'd stolen the money from after the disappearance a number of sightings were reported in far-flung countries like sri lanka nigeria and guinea but though they were looked into investigators found no evidence that any of them were true nearly a decade later air and space magazine published an article re-examining the event surrounding the disappearance but despite extensive research and interviewing many of those involved they too were unable to draw any concrete conclusions on friday november 8 1957 just before noon pan am flight 7 took off from san francisco international airport for honolulu the boeing 337 strata cruiser nicknamed romance of the skies was embarking on a multi-stop around-the-world flight between california hawaii and ultimately philadelphia pennsylvania but after departing from the west coast the massive pratt whitney radial engine powered airliner was never seen again with nearly four dozen onboard including passengers and crew the globetrotting bear moth vanished and the search and rescue effort that followed was the largest since the disappearance of amelia earhart in june of 1937. loaded with enough fuel for nearly 13 hours of flight at about 260 miles per hour the 147 000 pound aircraft climbed to its cruising altitude of 10 000 feet the plane's crew made their last scheduled communication at just after 5 pm that evening and less than 2 hours later the company alerted the coast guard that they'd failed to check back in at 6 pm in response merchant ships naval vessels submarines coast guard cutters and various aircraft were sent to scar huge swaths of the pacific ocean north and east of honolulu convinced that the airliner may still be afloat if it had been able to make a relatively soft landing pan-american dispatched another strata cruiser loaded with supplies that could be airdropped to the survivors as well as a douglas dc-7 that carried enough fuel to search for more than 15 hours but those small bits of wreckage were spotted it wasn't until days later that a navy ship recovered 15 bodies most of which were wearing life jackets and had severe injuries like lacerations burns and broken bones in addition watches found on some of the bodies it stopped at about 4 30 indicating what time the plane had gone down and post-recovery autopsies determined that many had high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems pointing to faulty exhaust and ventilation systems but despite the presence of toxic gas and physical trauma it was determined that most of the victims had died from drowning meaning they'd been alive while in the water yet for pan am the fbi and the civil aeronautics broad predecessor to the national transportation safety board or ntsb determining the cause of the crash particularly tricky and some suspected foul play not only were no distress calls made but the wreckage was well outside of the plane's normal flight path one theory centered on a disgruntled airline employee named eugene crossway who may have sabotaged the aircraft out of revenge for contracting tuberculosis while working on the company's flying boats in the orient in addition crosswade was still distraught over his wife's death three months earlier and was apparently so convinced that his daughter-in-law had murdered her that it reported her to the local sheriff investigators also looked into whether any of those on board had made any abnormal life insurance purchases and they uncovered the interesting case of a 41 year old called william payne the owner of a california hunting lodge purportedly flying to hawaii to collect a business debt payne had taken out three life insurance policies just before flying and it previously worked in the explosives and demolitions business but the angle was dropped when it was discovered that his plane ticket cost more than the debt itself it was also well known that strata cruisers had a number of persistent mechanical problems including oil pressure issues and overspeeding holocal propellers which under certain circumstances could actually throw their blades ah air travel in the past super dangerous despite a number of promising leads in early 1959 the civil aeronautics board ruled that no definitive cause for the crash could be determined and the case was closed on the morning of june the 5th 1969 a four-engine boeing rc-135e radar and reconnaissance aircraft known as rivet amber departed the shemya air force base in alaska the ilson afb on a non-operational mission with 19 people on board designated as irene 92 at 9 36 a.m local time less than an hour after parting from shenya controllers at elmendorf afb in anchorage received a message that the plane was experiencing vibrations of unknown origin but that the aircraft was under control minutes later controllers at elmendorf asked for confirmation that the crew wasn't declaring an in-flight emergency and received a non-verbal radio click in response followed by suspicious grunting and heavy breathing this was followed by more clicks and the words crew go to oxygen the troubled crew transmitted additional clicks for nearly an hour after which there was no further communication even among the air force's enigmatic and high value inventory rivet ember was a unique bird namely because it carried the world's most powerful airborne radar designed to track soviet icbms from as much as 300 miles away in fact it was so powerful that soviet fighters and interceptors were generally commanded to steer as far clear of rivet amber as possible developed by hughes industries the seven megawatt phased array radar added an additional 35 000 pounds to the aircraft's overall weight and cost more than 35 million or about 300 million dollars today making it the most expensive military aircraft of its time but despite its awe-inspiring capabilities the radar caused a lot of problems for the aircraft in addition to putting undue strain on the engines it required so much energy to run and produce so much heat that an additional generator and radiator were added when the rivet amber went silent on that paper day a massive search was launched multiple aircraft from alaskan and west coast bases searched for weeks but no wreckage was ever found eventually the search was called off and to this day the plane's fate remains a mystery though it's most likely the plane went down due to mechanical issues far-flung theories do abound including those that the russians unhappy about the airspace near the borders being prowled by a technological wonder jolly down while there's no evidence to support this claim those making it often point to the fact that if that were the case the u.s government would likely cover it up to save face whatever happened to the rivet amber it was the last plane of its kind to ever fly and more than five decades after its disappearance it remains one of aviation's most enduring mysteries egypt air flight 990 departed from los angeles california on the evening of october 31 1999 before stopping in new york city and continuing on toward cairo the long-range boeing 767-3666 had two separate crews for the lengthy transatlantic portion of the flight which was slated to take about 10 hours as scheduled it took off from john f kennedy international airport at about 1 20 in the morning after 30 minutes in flight it had descended to an altitude of 33 000 feet but just a few minutes before 2 am the plane began a series of erratic course and elevation changes first it dove rapidly to approximately 16 000 feet at an angle of nearly 40 degrees during which time it accelerated to more than 750 miles per hour much faster than the plane's airframe was designed to go just a minute later the rapid descent stopped and the jetliner began gaining altitude again this time reaching 25 000 feet before changing course then the plane began its final and fatal descent traveling so fast that one of its engines sheared from its wing-mounted nacelle and plummeted into the sea all 237 on board 203 passengers and 14 crew were killed instantly when the airplane followed suit just moments later since the crash occurred in international waters it was initially investigated by egypt's ministry of civil aviation the ecaa as well as america's national transportation safety board the ntsb however citing inadequate funding and lack of expertise egypt later handed the investigation over to the ntsb entirely nearly 70 of the wreckage including the cockpit voice recorder or black box was recovered from just 230 feet of water and just a few weeks into their investigation the ntsb determined that the crash had been caused by operator input and was likely intentional and not accidental with a potential crime or terrorist event on their hands the ntsb proposed passing the investigation onto the fbi but as was their right under international aviation agreements the egyptian government declined and the ntsb continued on alone from the plane's black box it was determined that the first officer and relief co-pilot gamel albertuti had insisted on taking over the co-pilot's seat just 20 minutes after takeoff then the pilot left the cockpit to relieve himself after which the autopilot was manually turned off and the plane made its first erratic dive in fact the dive was so rapid and violent that it apparently created zero gravity conditions inside the fuselage stumbling back to the cockpit the astonished captain repeatedly asked what's happening what's happening in arabic albatuti clearly responded i rely on god there was additional evidence that the pilot and co-pilot were fighting over the controls namely because the right and left elevators in the tail were set in opposite directions one for ascent on the pilot side the other for descent on albertutti's side then the engines were shut off and moments later the electrical system failed among those on board were a large contingent of egyptian military officers who just wrapped up training exercises in the u.s their presence led some to suspect that the flight had been targeted by egypt's enemies namely israel though no evidence was ever put forward to support that claim as the country's official airline egypt air was an icon of national pride and the ntsb's findings were far from popular later the ecaa conducted its own investigation and issued a report vehemently rejecting the possibility that albatuty had caused the crash instead the egyptians determined that sheared rivets and one of the elevator's control mechanisms caused the plane's erratic maneuvers and that everyone in the cockpit was working together to regain control up until the time it hit the water so on that note i'm not going to ask if you enjoyed that video but i do hope you found it interesting if you did please do use that like button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Sideprojects

Views: 470,329

Keywords: megaprojects, construction, engineering, projects

Id: RpogAqza1-M

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 10 2021