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On the afternoon of January 26, 1950, the Douglas C-54 Skymaster carrying 44 crew members and passengers took off from Anchorage, Alaska for Montana. About 2 hours later, the plane passed through the Yukon region of Canada and the crew issued a check-in announcement, which was also the last time their voices were heard before the plane disappeared.
The Guardian quoted the director of the Yukon Civil Aviation Search and Rescue Association, David Downing, as saying: “It all happened very fast. It wasn’t like they had an engine problem and they were going down in altitude slowly. Turn around. Yes. that was the case, they would say. “
The Canadian Air Force and other forces launched a large search operation, but the defective aircraft has yet to be found. The director of an upcoming documentary on the missing Douglas C-54 Skymaster, Andrew Gregg, admits that this is the biggest unsolved mystery in Canadian history.
A US military transport plane mysteriously disappeared in Canadian airspace 70 years ago and the cause is unknown. Photo: EPA
The director’s work, “Skymaster Down,” is about a group of dedicated volunteers in the Yukon region. They constantly search for the plane as American families wait to reveal what happened to their loved ones.
During the search operation, nearly 7,000 soldiers participating in military exercises at the time supported more than 80 military aircraft in the sky, but all were desperate. It is worth mentioning that 3 planes participating in the campaign crashed during the mission. Fortunately, the crew survived.
The Canadian Air Force even sent 10 B-29s flying 20 miles from the search area to re-delineate the Douglas C-54 Skymaster’s flight path, looking for radio signals.
“They did everything they knew at the time. They just didn’t know how to go on,” said Bob Cameron, an aviation historian.
The large-scale search continued until February 14, 1950, when the United States Air Force lost its fifth aircraft in three weeks. It was a B-36 bomber carrying an inactive nuclear bomb. After that, the search campaign ended.
Amateur researchers have long hypothesized that the plane may have tried to land in an icy lake and through the ice. But no fuel or debris was found. Even the largest lake in the Douglas C-54 Skymaster’s flight path was scanned with ultrasonic waves, but to no avail.
Gregg speculates that the plane may have veered off and crashed into North America’s highest St. Elias mountain range, where it was buried deep in snow and ice.
70 years have passed, this mystery remains unsolved.
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