Militaries and other armed forces have some of the best logistics, investigations, and
equipment in the world, but even they aren’t immune to mysteries.
Number 5
It was the height of World War 1 when a converted sailing barge travelling from England to France
with a shipment of coal was found run aground and abandoned.
The ship, a schooner named Zebrina, had been built in the late 1800s for river transportation,
but when war broke out in Europe, it was one of many vessels acquired to help in the war
effort.
Zebrina was set to work as a cargo vessel, primarily shipping coal from Britain to France.
It was a simple trip, one the vessel and its crew had completed many times before, and
nobody suspected anything would be any different when it left Swansea in October 1917.
Two days after it left port, French authorities found it run aground near Cherbourg.
Like all good ghost ship stories, the five-man crew was not aboard, though all their personal
belongings and log books were found.
According to reports, the ship was found with a table set for a meal which had been being
prepared when the crew disappeared.
Even the gally fire was still burning, indicating the crew hadn’t long left.
There was no sign of damage on the vessel, other than what it sustained when it ran aground.
It would be easy to assume the ship was caught by German U-boats.
It had happened to countless similar vessels during the war.
The theory goes that the Zebrina crew had been captured by an enemy U-boat but, before
torpedoes could be launched at the Zebrina, a British ship attacked and sunk the sub,
not knowing its own men were aboard.
If this was the case, though, no ship ever reported such an attack.
Also, the Germans were under strict instructions to collect log books and documentation from
any ship they captured as evidence of their activities.
If Germans had time to round up all the crew and force them onto the sub, it doesn’t
make sense for them to leave that valuable documentation behind.
The other theory is that the Zebrina crew thought they saw a U-boat and, spooked, fled
the ship.
If this was the case, they decided against taking the lone lifeboat that was aboard,
which French authorities found when the ship was recovered.
Sources: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17728370 https://listverse.com/2015/01/10/10-baffling-world-war-i-mysteries-we-may-never-solve/
https://perdurabo10.tripod.com/ships2/id216.html
Number 4
Many different cultures around the world have their own version of the mythological bigfoot,
but it’s not often any of these mysterious ape-like creatures have been reported by the
military.
Even less common is for reports to be as numerous as those made about the Rock Apes in Vietnam.
The Vietnam war is already a disturbing part of human history without the help of supernatural
entities.
With the Vietcong having mastered Guerrilla tactics, it could often seem like the enemy
was completely invisible to the US and their allies, and the fact the US played haunting
audio recordings of fake ghosts didn’t make the hostile jungle any more settling.
But during the war, both sides claimed to have seen something that wasn’t human in
the jungle.
The creatures could be up to six feet tall.
They strongly built, with long limbs and brown or orange hair.
They lived in troupes in the most remote areas of the jungle, and appeared to have no fear
of humans.
In fact, they could be aggressive and would throw rocks at soldiers.
These were Batatut, or the Jungle People, and locals claimed they had lived in the jungle
for years.
They were allegedly seen throughout South East Asia.
But with the Vietnam War encroaching on their supposed territory sightings became more and
more frequent.
American soldiers nicknamed them the Rock Apes, and comparisons were made to the Bigfoot
that was a popular legend in the US at the time, but these creatures appeared to be much
more social.
Without any knowledge of the Vietnamese fauna, it would be easy to assume these were misidentified
orangutangs.
Their hairless faces with big mouths and protruding stomachs are definitely similar to the big
ape, but orangutangs had been extinct in Vietnam for thousands of years.
It’s possible this was a remote group who had survived undetected by scientists for
so long, but seems unlikely.
Other primates in the area do not grow to the size of the Batatut, though some smaller
sightings are believed to be misidentified gibbons.
During the war, a number of search parties were sent out to try to capture one of the
creatures, alive or otherwise.
However, no physical evidence was ever recovered.
Some have used this as proof the creatures were a figment of the imaginations of tired
and scared soldiers.
With so much fighting happening in the jungle, it’s remarkable none of the search teams
found a specimen which had been caught in the crossfire.
But as the apes are supposedly social creatures, it could be argued they might recover the
bodies of fallen members of their troupe.
To this day, what exactly the soldiers saw, if anything at all, remains unknown.
Sources: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/rock-apes-not-a-70s-rock-band.html https://blog.theveteranssite.greatergood.com/vietnam-batatut/
Number 3
On February 19th, 1945, the U-530 submarine left Kiel in Germany.
The Commander was a young man named Otto Wermuth, only 24-years-old and on his first ever mission
in command.
Five months later, the submarine emerged in Argentina and surrendered to the military
there.
The time it took the sub to take the trip has been the subject of countless conspiracies
and what really happened on the trip remains a mystery.
Germany had surrendered to the allied forces two months before the sub emerged in Argentina.
At the time, a message had been sent out to all submarines still on patrol to surrender
to the nearest United Nations port and only travel on the surface.
It wasn’t a command Otto Wermuth had followed.
Wermuth would later tell investigators he believed the message to be a trick by the
enemy, but aired on the safe side and ended any combat.
The submarine had been patrolling the US and Canadian east coast at the time, and Wermuth
decided to travel to Argentina rather than surrender in the US, as he figured they would
get a slightly warmer welcome in a country he believed was still neutral.
Along the way, the submarine dumped all its ammunitions, including the deck guns, as well
as radar equipment and, strangely, all log books and other secret documents.
Even ID badges worn by the staff members had been discarded.
When asked how he could even prove he was the commander of the submarine, the only thing
Wermuth had been able to come up with was that he had signed a marriage document for
one of his men who had been married by proxy over the radio during their voyage.
The complete lack of any documentation has led to many questioning what exactly the crew
was trying to hide.
There were 54 men aboard and Wermuth told investigators he hadn’t taken any passengers.
He added nobody had left the sub since it had left Germany all those months ago.
However, local press at the time reported a man who appeared to be wearing a high-ranking
military clothing and a civilian woman were seen exiting the submarine.
They also reported some fire damage, which didn’t appear to be accounted for.
Officials who interrogated Wermuth didn’t believe that he thought the call to surrender
was false, and caught him out on a few other lies.
He would not give details about the path the submarine had taken, and he later said he
looked forward to living in Argentina, and wanted to bring his family over when everything
blew over.
He, his crew, and the submarine were turned over to the US.
It’s more than likely Wermuth hadn’t been secretly smuggling the leaders of the German
regime, but the complete destruction of the log books and other documentation has left
questions that will probably never be satisfactorily answered.
Sources: http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-530A/U-530NAReport.htm https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/the-mystery-of-u-530.36844/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hitler-nazis-u-boat-escape-argentina-u3523-found-wreck-denmark-south-america-mengele-eichmann-a8312581.html
Number 2
On January 26th, 1950, a US Airforce plane left Anchorage, Alaska, with 44 people onboard.
It was never seen again.
The mysterious disappearance of the C-54 is one of the biggest disappearances of US military
personnel.
42 servicemen, including eight crew members, and two civilians vanished that day.
What happened to the plane as it flew over the Yukon is a question family of the victims
are still asking the government to answer, but no progress in the investigation has been
made since 1950.
Even before the plane left the ground in Anchorage, there were issues.
The original departure time had been some time in the morning, but the take-off had
to be abandoned due to a problem with the engines.
They were able to get it fixed the same day, but it was much later by the time the C-54
got into the air.
From that point on, though, nobody reported any issues.
The plane was on a well-established route, following the Alaska Highways south-east.
The route had regular emergency strips in case an emergency landing was needed, and
special radio stations to make sure the pilots could keep in touch with ground control.
At 3.09pm, two hours after the plane left Anchorage, the pilot made a routine report
to say they were flying over the town of Snag in the Yukon.
It expected to reach the next station in 30 minutes.
It didn’t make another report.
When the plane failed to arrive at its scheduled destination in Montana, US and Canadian armed
forces sent out search parties.
It was one of the biggest searches in the history of the area.
There had been planned war exercises nearby, so 7000 soldiers were on hand to search for
any sign of a wreckage.
Recovery teams would trek through the mountains, acting on tips made by members of the public
about smoke or explosions.
The army sent 10 planes, flying 20 miles apart, along the route the C-54 was supposed to have
taken, hoping to pick up on any radio messages calling for help, but there was nothing.
The area in question consists of two steep mountains, with the highway running between
them, and some locals reported seeing a plane flying very low around where the missing plane
would have been, but there was no sign of a crash site.
The army actually lost more planes in the search, though everyone onboard survived,
and the search was called off after a few weeks.
It hasn’t stopped unofficial searches taking place.
The area is still frequented by trappers, Indigenous peoples, geologists and miners,
but none have come across the wreckage.
It’s possible, though unlikely, the plane deviated off course for some reason and was
lost over the Pacific Ocean.
Alternate theories suggest the plane tried to land on what would turn out to be a frozen
lake, and disappeared beneath the waters when the ice cracked, though there are no lakes
deep enough to submerge the entire plane in the area.
Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/31/canada-plane-crash-mystery-documentary https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/disappearance-of-a-usaf-c-54.html
Number 1
The full extent of the secrets held by the United States during the height of the cold
war is unlikely to ever be known.
Many of the mysteries from the 1950s such as UFOs and unknown satellites are believed
to now be then classified experimental technology that the government was trying to develop.
What happened to Lieutenant Paul Whipkey may be one of those secrets.
Paul Whipkey grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He studied civil engineering at university and earned his Army pilot’s wings in 1956.
Not long after, he was stationed at Fort Ord in California.
On July 10th, 1958, he told some of the other officers he was going out for a drink in the
town.
He would never return.
When Whipkey didn’t return the following day, his fellow officers weren’t too concerned
at first.
Then, less than 24 hours after he was last seen, his belongings were packed into crates
ready to be shipped home.
Paul’s brother Carl happened to call the base on July 12th, only to find out that his
brother wasn’t there.
He was AWOL, apparently, but this only made Carl even more suspicious.
He knew the army didn’t work that quickly.
It should have taken much longer to start packing up his things.
Carl believed Paul had been involved in the atomic bombing tests in Nevada the year before.
He had been stationed at Camp Desert Rock, near where the tests were taking place, but
the army’s official stance was that he wasn’t involved.
However, one of the items that was mistakenly packed with Paul’s personal belongings was
a list of his assignments, which included five hours logged as an observation pilot
during the test.
According to another officer, he would relay messages to the ground team.
Not long after the tests, Paul grew sick.
He developed black spots and warts on his hands, lost weight and suffered constant colds.
Carl believed his brother was exposed to radiation.
Again, this was denied by the army.
In the months leading up to Paul’s disappearance, he had been interviewed by two army intelligent
agents on a number of occasions.
Naturally, what they discussed remains unknown, but the meetings made Paul noticeably worried
and he wouldn’t talk about them.
The army and the FBI were able to trace some of Paul’s actions after he left the base
the night he disappeared.
He checked into a motel hundreds of miles away from the base.
The next day, he bought 14 gallons of gas.
Five weeks later, the car Paul had been driving was found abandoned in Death Valley.
The keys were still in the ignition and a pile of cigarette butts was found next to
it, even though Paul didn’t smoke.
The army claimed Paul had been under pressure because of an assignment, had driven to the
desert where he perished the day after he vanished.
The explanation does make some sense, although there are some aspects that don’t add up,
such as a rancher who claimed to have seen someone in military clothing driving the car
four weeks after Paul disappeared.
Carl kept digging, only to discover the FBI, who had been brought in to investigate after
Paul was declared AWOL, had destroyed their files on the case.
In 1982, the army changed its official stance to say Paul had died in the line of duty,
which only helped to muddy the waters.
Carl always suspected the military knew what happened to his brother.
Whether he had left to join the CIA, had died due to secretive experiments, or was taken
out by agents, he didn’t know.
But, if the army was involved in his disappearance, getting the FBI involved to investigate also
doesn’t make much sense.
Carl passed away in 2019, still without answers to the questions he had been asking for decades.
It’s unlikely now those answers will ever
be revealed.