Mysterious Passengers, An Unexplained Message and Ghost Pilots: 5 Unsolved Aviation Mysteries

At 5:04 pm on November 8, 1957, Captain Gordon Brown radioed air traffic control in Honolulu to report the status of his flight from San Francisco. Brown was at the helm of a Boeing Stratocruiser 377 named "Romance of the Skies," operating as Pan Am Flight 7, ferrying 38 passengers and eight crew members across the southern Pacific. He relayed that he was cruising at 10,000 feet with a 14 mph headwind and promised to check in again at 6:00 pm.

Those were his final words to the outside world.

When Brown failed to reach out to ground control at 6:00 pm, initial concern was minimal. Pilots occasionally missed their check-in times, but by 6:30 pm, the plane remained silent. A 90-minute silence was unusual, prompting Pan Am controllers to report the situation.

By 8:00 pm, emergency protocols were activated, and the US Coast Guard was alerted that Flight 7 had vanished.

The search operation began with four surface vessels, two submarines, and several aircraft deployed from Honolulu. As days passed without any sightings, the search fleet expanded to include over 30 aircraft and 14 ships.

On November 14, a Navy search plane spotted bodies and debris floating in the water, marking the location of Flight 7. Nineteen victims were recovered; 14 were in life jackets, one was still buckled into a seat, and none wore shoes.

This evidence suggested that passengers and crew had some warning before the crash, yet it remained unclear why the wreckage was found 90 miles off the planned course.

Wristwatches stopped at 5:27 pm, indicating the crash happened just 23 minutes after Captain Brown's last communication. Some bodies and wreckage bore signs of fire damage, and others mysteriously showed signs of carbon monoxide poisoning in their bloodstreams.

Investigators would officially state that there was no apparent cause for the crash.

However, new theories have emerged following decades of private research aided by collaboration on the internet, with one major theory suggesting the plane might have been sabotaged.

Researcher Ken Fortenberry, son of the flight's second officer, pinpointed two suspects: Eugene Crosthwaite, the flight's head steward, and William Payne, a former Navy frogman with demolitions training.

Payne, who had mentioned traveling to Honolulu to settle a debt that cost less than his flight ticket, had secured a large life insurance policy shortly before the flight. A witness later stated that Payne had shown him explosive black powder in the days leading up to the flight.

Crosthwaite was known to harbor resentment towards Pan Am for issues that had occurred during his employment, and he had updated his will and left it in his car on the day of departure. His stepdaughter, Tania Crosthwaite, later disclosed to Fortenberry that her stepfather had been in a severe mental decline before the flight.

Other experts, like Gregg Herken, argue for a mechanical failure, noting the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser's history of propeller issues. This model had previously crashed in the Amazon in 1952, and another incident in 1956 involved engine failure and an ocean landing, resulting in four deaths.

Without further evidence, the true cause of Pan Am Flight 7's crash, claiming 46 lives in 1957, remains speculative...

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