MH370 joined a ghostly squadron of aircraft that vanished without a trace

The mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may be close to being solved, but many other aviation puzzles have had experts baffled for decades.

CopyPic/Robertson of (L-R) Charles Kingsford-Smith and co-pilot Charles Ulm. headshot aviator

If wreckage on Reunion Island is from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, it will ­answer questions left open for scores of aircraft since Algerian pilot Edouard Bague vanished over the Mediterranean Sea in 1911.

Great aircraft mysteries include six US military planes lost in 1945 over the notorious Bermuda Triangle, where a rescue craft vanished the next day, and a Boeing 727-223 stolen from Luanda international airport in Angola in 2003, never to be seen again.

Since 1948, the Aviation Safety Network lists 100 aircraft as missing in flight, with wreckage and ­occupants never recovered.

Bague was attempting the first flight across the Mediterranean when he left Nice, without a compass, in a Bleriot XI monoplane on June 5, 1911, then vanished. Despite an extensive search by two French naval destroyers and 12 torpedo boats, no trace of Bague or his aeroplane was found.

Charles Kingsford-Smith and co-pilot Charles Ulm both went down while flying over the ocean.

PIONEER PAIR LOST AT SEA

The fledgling aviation industry listed almost 20 pilots and their wood, wire and canvas aircraft as missing when Australian pioneer Charles Ulm vanished in December 1934. Ulm, who was Charles Kingsford Smith’s co-pilot on the first aircraft crossing of the Pacific in 1928, left Oakland, California, with co-pilot George Littlejohn and navigator J. Leon Skilling on a test flight to Hawaii in Airspeed Envoy, Stella Australis.

At about 10am on December 3, after Morse code radio messages to Hawaii advising they were lost and running out of fuel, the Envoy ditched into the sea. Ulm had not carried a life raft to save weight, predicting the aircraft would float for two days if he was forced to land on water.

An extensive search by aircraft and 23 naval ships began immediately, but no trace of Stella Australis or her crew was ever found.

Kingsford Smith became another aviation statistic when his Lockheed Altair, Lady Southern Cross, disappeared over the Andaman Sea early on November 8, 1935. Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge were flying overnight from Allahabad, India, to Singapore, in an attempt to break the England-Australia speed record.

Burmese fishermen found an undercarriage leg and wheel washed up at Aye Island in the Gulf of Martaban in May 1937. Lockheed confirmed they came from the Lady Southern Cross, but no trace of Kingsford Smith or ­Pethybridge was ever found.

US aviator Amelia Earhart went missing in 1937.

THE SEARCH FOR AMELIA

Two months later American darling Amelia Earhart, who in 1932 became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, also vanished. Her Lockheed Electra, with navigator Fred Noonan, left Lae in New Guinea at 10am on July 2 for a 20-hour flight to Howland Island in the central Pacific.

A multimillion-dollar search found no wreckage or remains, fuelling speculation she had been captured by the Japanese as a spy for US president Franklin Roosevelt, or escaped to live under an assumed identity in New Jersey.

USA band leader musician Glenn Miller vanished on a flight to Paris in 1944

US big-band superstar Glenn Miller had given a string of performances in England for Allied forces with the US Army air force Band in mid-1944. On December 15, 1944, he left RAF Twinwood Farm in a single engine monoplane to fly to Paris to entertain Allied troops over Christmas. His disappearance was announced on ­December 24, 1944.

With the mystery behind Miller’s disappearance unsolved, theories range from the plane going down in bad weather over the ­English Channel, to a fatal hit by British Lancaster bombers jettisoning unspent munitions, or death at the hands of German officers after a failed peace mission, when his body was dumped outside a Paris brothel.

SWALLOWED BY THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

World War II had ended when five Navy Avenger planes, led by experienced instructor Charles Taylor, took off on a training mission from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on December 5, 1945. Some 90 minutes later, pilots reported being disorientated and unable to recognise landmarks.

Taylor radioed the Naval Air Station that his compasses were out of action, a phenomena also noted by explorer Christopher ­Columbus in 1492. As the weather deteriorated, pilots ditched into the sea, killing 14 airmen. That evening, a PBM Mariner sea plane sent out to search for the lost training mission also disappeared.

Frederick Valentich reported lights over his plane during a flight over Bass Strait in 1970.

UFO OVER THE BASS STRAIT TRIANGLE

Socialite and environmentalist Brenda Hean made a high-profile departure to Canberra, to lobby against flooding of Lake Pedder, in a 1930s Tiger Moth on September 8, 1972. It vanished over Bass Strait. Hean, 62, and her pilot Max Price, are among several aviators lost in the Bass Strait Triangle since a military Airco DH. 9A went down while searching for a missing schooner in 1920.

In October 1934, 11 people perished when the de Havilland Express Miss Hobart went missing off Wilsons Promontory. A year later a similar aircraft was lost off Flinders Island.

Flying saucer enthusiast Frederick Valentich, 20, disappeared over the Strait during a training flight in a Cessna 182L aircraft on October 21, 1978. He had radioed Melbourne air traffic control that he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 300m above, but ended by saying: “It’s not an aircraft”.

UFO sightings were later reported on the night of the disappearance, although officials suspect Valentich “became disorientated and saw his own lights reflected in the water ... while flying upside down”. Neither Valentich nor his plane was ever found.

Originally published as MH370 joined a ghostly squadron of aircraft that vanished without a trace