Five Unsolved Mysteries of Aviation1

∷吴悠 选 潘鑫 注

马航事故之谜震惊全球，是天灾抑或是人祸，风云诡秘，众说纷纭。各方的猜测与证据都尚不足以给出一个合理的解释。殊不知，在航空史上，这样的未解之谜还有不少。在这些案例中，人们在万米高空之上，面对的不仅仅是变化无常的神秘自然，还有暗流涌动的阴谋诡计。

People who love to fly love the adventure, the freedom, and the challenge of piloting2. pilot: 驾驶飞机。a craft through the sky. They also love the great stories of aviators over the last hundred years. There are heroes, daredevils3. daredevil: 爱冒险的人。, great explorers—and mysteries. This article looks at five of aviation’s most tantalizing4. tantalizing: 诱人的，引发好奇心的。unexplained disappearances,sightings, and scary coincidences.

Flight 19—the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle5. Bermuda Triangle: 百慕达神秘三角，百慕大、波多黎各和美国佛罗里达州所形成的三角地带，许多船只和飞机曾在此神秘失踪，故得此名。

Shortly after 2 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avengers took off from Fort Lauderdale, Florida,6. TBM Avengers: TBM复仇者式轰炸机；Fort Lauderdale: 劳德代尔堡，美国佛罗里达州东南沿海城市。on routine overwater navigation training flight that was to last about two hours. Their leader was an experienced pilot, USNR Lieutenant Charles Taylor.7. USNR: United States Naval Reserve，美国海军后备队；lieutenant: 海军上尉。Each plane had a pilot and two crew—except for one plane, which was a crewman short. The second crewman, Marine Corporal Allan Kosnar, had asked for permission not to fly because he had a strong premonition of danger.8. corporal: 下士； premonition: 不详的预感。

His premonition proved correct: 90 minutes into the exercise,something went horribly wrong. Fort Lauderdale received a series of confused transmissions from the Flight 19 pilots, including some from Taylor that seemed to indicate he believed he was over the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico.9. 劳德代尔堡机场收到了来自十九号航班紊乱的数据。其中包括驾驶员海军上尉泰勒传来的消息，他似乎确信自己正位于墨西哥湾的佛罗里达群岛上空。transmission: 无线电传输；Florida Keys: 佛罗里达群岛，美国佛罗里达半岛南端的岛群；Gulf of Mexico: 墨西哥湾，位于北美东南部边缘。For several hours, radio contact continued, but by the time night fell, the weather had deteriorated10. deteriorate: 恶化。,and no more messages were received.

No wreckage11. wreckage: 残骸。of Flight 19 has ever been found. This unsolved mystery is one of the major contributors to the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, a patch of waters between Florida and the Bahamas where planes, ships, and even lighthouse keepers have mysteriously vanished.12a patch of: 一块；Bahamas: 巴哈马群岛；lighthouse keeper: 灯塔看守人。

191: the Unlucky Flight Number

Many people believe the number 13 is unlucky. In high-rise buildings,this superstition is sometimes taken so seriously that the owners skip from 12 to 14 when numbering their floors.In aviation, it seems that 191 is the unlucky number. Since the 1960s, five flights bearing the number 191 have been subject to bizarre experiences—or met terrible ends.13. subject to: 经历；bizarre: 奇怪的。

In 1967, Flight 191 for the experimental X-15 test plane broke apart and crashed, killing the pilot—the only crash in the history of the X-15 experiements.

In 1972, Prinair Flight 191 crashed at Mercedita Airport in Ponce, Puerto Rico.14. Ponce: 庞塞，拉丁美洲波多黎各岛南部港市；Puerto Rico: 波多黎各，西印度群岛中的岛屿。

In 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 crashed at Chicago O’Hare15. Chicago O’Hare: 芝加哥奥黑尔国际机场。. 273 people were killed, making it the deadliest single-aircraft accident in American history.

In 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport,16. Delta Air Lines: 达美航空公司；Dallas-Fort Worth Airport: 达拉斯沃思堡机场。killing 137.

Finally, in 2012, JetBlue Airways Flight 191, en route from JFK to Las Vegas, had to make an emergency landing in Texas after the pilot apparently experienced a panic attack or psychotic break mid- flight.17. JetBlue Airways: 捷蓝航空公司；JFK: 肯尼迪国际机场；psychotic break: 精神上的打击。He began behave so erratically that the copilot locked him out of the cockpit.18. erratic: 行为古怪的；cockpit: 驾驶员座舱。A group of passengers were able to strap19. strap: 用带子绑。the pilot down, averting a disaster.

D.B. Cooper

On November 24, 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 was en route from Portland, Oregon to Seattle when“D.B. Cooper”, a non-descript male passenger in a dark suit, passed a note to the flight attendant.20. Oregon: 美国俄勒冈州；non-descript: 普通的；attendant: 乘务员。She set it to one side, but the man leaned over and said, “Miss, you’d better look at that note. I have a bomb.” He then cracked open his briefcase, showing her a glimpse of what appeared to be an explosive device. Then he ordered another bourbon21. bourbon: 波旁威士忌（酒）。.

He never used the bomb, but he still managed to pull off the most daring hijacking in history.22. 尽管他从未使用炸弹，但他仍成功完成了史上最勇敢的一次劫机。pull off: 做成某件难事；hijacking: 劫机。He demanded $200,000 in American cash, four parachutes, and a fuel tanker to be waiting for the plane when it landed at Seattle.

The pilots radioed his demands to SEA-TAC23, and the president of Northeast Orient Airlines ordered complete cooperation with his requests.At Seattle, he took his money and his parachutes. After refuelling, he allowed the other 42 passengers and some of the flight attendants to leave the craft. Then he ordered the pilots to take off again.

He told them he wanted them to fly to Mexico, at the lowest possible speed and altitude that would avoid a stall-out24or a crash. About forty minutes after take-off, he ordered the flight attendants into the cockpit. Then,warning lights told the staff he had opened the aft airstair. When the flight attendants came out to investigate, “Cooper”, the money, and two of the parachutes had vanished into the night. Despite an immense man-hunt and years of searching, he has never been found again.

The 1952 Washington National Airport Incident

Flying-saucer mania had begun in America with the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico incidents, and had steadily built up to a fever pitch in 1952.25During that year, there were thousands of reports of UFOs all over the world—some of them easily explained away by mundane phenomena, and some not.Perhaps the most notorious were those that occurred over the nation’s capital.

Between July 12 and July 29, 1952, a series of unidenti fied aircraft were reported in the skies over Washington, D.C. Air-traf fic controllers out of National Airport (now known as Ronald Reagan National Airport) at two different radio towers were able to con firm the existence of the craft on radar, as were crew at Andrews Air Force base.26Military and civilian pilots and flight crews reported sighting strange white or orange tail-less27lights near their aircraft which moved as if controlled by intelligence. A few ground-based observers even claimed to have seen structured craft, rather than lights.

The Air Force held a press conference on July 29th that explained the radar evidence as the result of “temperature inversions” which cause radar interference. They declared that the lights and other visual sightings were shooting stars or meteors.28That would appear to be case closed29, but many people dispute the of ficial explanations to this day.

Amelia Earhart

The greatest of all unsolved aviation mysteries is the disappearance of pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart and her navigator,30. Amelia Earhart: 艾米莉亚·埃尔哈特，第一个飞越太平洋的女飞行员；navigator:领航员。Fred Noonan, over the Paci fic Ocean in 1937. Earhart and Noonan were more than two-thirds of the way through their circumnavigation of the world at the equator.31. circumnavigation: 环游世界一周之旅；equator: 赤道。The final 7,000 miles of the 29,000-mile trip would take place over the Paci fic.

On July 3, 1937, Earhart and Noonan were closing in on a small strip of land called Howland Island, located between Hawaii and Australia, where a U.S. Coast Guard Vessel, the Itasca, had radio contact with them.32. Coast Guard Vessel: 缉私船；the Itasca: 艾塔斯卡号。But Earhart and Noonan couldn’t seem to find the island. They radioed the Itasca several times, never seeming to hear the ship’s replies. Earhart’s last message,delivered in a level, unruf fled33. unruf fled: 平静的。voice, was “We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6,210 kilocycles34. kilocycles: 千赫。. Wait.”

The Itasca waited, but no further message came. The Itasca began an immediate search, and a further 66 ships and 9 aircraft were mobilized to find the missing heroine35. heroine: 女英雄。. After two weeks of fruitless searching, the rescue was called off. Earhart was declared legally dead in 1939. While recent artifacts found on Gardiner Island south of Howland Island offers circumstantial evidence that Earhart may have successfully ditched her plane and survived for a time,36. Gardiner Island: 加德纳岛；cir cu ms t a ntial evidence: 间接证据；ditch:紧急迫降。no concrete proof yet exists.