We've all heard of the Bermuda Triangle, right, where over the past 60 years, about 50
ships and 20 planes have mysteriously crashed or just vanished over the Atlantic.
But have you ever heard of the Nevada triangle?
It's much smaller than the Bermuda Triangle and much more dangerous.
Not talking 20 planes at 200 planes.
In the past 60 years, the Nevada triangle has claimed two thousand aircraft.
And we really watch that almost one plane a week.
Yeah, and it's not just the number of crashes in the Nevada triangle that's so strange.
It's the fact that nobody really talks about it.
Let's find out why. A region of the Sierra Nevada mountains between Nevada and
California, some 2000 planes have been lost in the past 60 years in this remotely
populated area of twenty five thousand square miles of mountain desert.
Many of the crash sites are still unknown.
The triangle is typically defined as spanning from Las Vegas, Nevada, in the southeast to
Fresno, California in the west and up to Reno, Nevada at the top.
The question, what's up with the backup?
Who owns the land in the Nevada triangle?
Most of it belongs to the United States government.
And what's that little spot right there northwest of Vegas?
That's Area 51.
OK, and when the plane start disappearing, the first report is nineteen thirty eight.
Right. Wooded Area 51 opened.
They began doing research in nineteen thirty eight they see.
Huh. But it's not just planes that vanish, it's also people.
May I have my hat please.
Go. You know, it's really bizarre as these disappearances aren't just casual civilian
pilots that kind of got lost.
Most of the missing planes were flown by experienced pilots and disappeared under
mysterious circumstances with wreckage never found.
And many of those cases, the pilots were highly trained Air Force pilots flying state of
the art military aircraft.
The most famous crash involved famous aviator Steve Fossett, who vanished in 2007.
His disappearance ignited a massive search that led to the discovery of eight more
wrecks. A Fossett was not some weekend warrior.
I mean, this guy held world records for flying solo aircraft gliders.
He even flew around the world in a hot air balloon, which sounds terrifying.
This guy was also an expert in cross-country skiing, mountain climbing.
He did ultramarathons, a triathlete.
So if there's one guy who could survive anything, it was Steve Fossett.
But on September 3rd, Fossett flying his single engine plane over Nevada's Great Basin
desert, took off and never returned after a major search effort that lasted over a month.
He was declared dead. Then the following year, Fawcett's ID cards were found by a hiker.
A few days later, the crash site was located about sixty five miles from where Fossett
took off. Two bones were also found about a half mile from the crash site.
And the bones were later confirmed to be belonging to Steve Fossett.
Where the rest of his bones.
Well, we're not sure, but most likely animals.
But Galbreath found his remains an alien scavenge them, but people will probably never
know. One of the first planes lost in the triangle was a B twenty four bomber that
crashed in 1943.
The bomber with a full crew, was on a routine night training mission taking off from
Whammer Field in Fresno, and it was supposed to fly from California to Tucson.
Gwon gone, never made it.
An extensive search began the very next day when nine be twenty four percent out to find
the missing plane. But rather than finding it, another bomber went missing.
It just vanished. Then in 1955 when Huntington Lake Reservoir was drained for repairs to
the dam there it was.
The investigation to the second bomber stated that the plane had experienced high wind
turbulence and began to lose hydraulic pressure.
When the captain saw what looked like a snow covered clearing, he told his crew to bail,
but only to jump. But the two soldiers who parachuted in survived made statements that
the lake wasn't frozen.
When the plane was finally found.
It was resting one hundred and ninety feet below the water with its five crew members,
still other stations.
In the meantime, Clinton Hester, the father of the co-pilot of the first missing bomber,
began a private search for his son that would last the next 14 years.
And when he died in 1959, he still hadn't found any evidence of his son or the plane.
A year later, geological researchers working on a remote part of the desert found
airplane wreckage in an unnamed lake.
Army investigators confirmed the wreckage to be that of the first missing bomber piloted
by Second Lieutenant Willis TRV and co-pilot by Second Lieutenant Robert Mester.
The lake is now known as Hester Lake.
Another crazy story happened in 1957.
On May 9th, Air Force Lieutenant David Steeves was piloting a T-3 training jet taking off
from Hamilton Air Force Base near San Francisco on a flight to Arizona.
The plane disappeared after a thorough search without success.
The Air Force declared the twenty three year old pilot officially dead.
But fifty four days later, he reappeared gaunt and dressed in tattered clothing.
He had made his way to a camp in the back country of Kings Canyon National Park, east of
Fresno. He said something in the plane exploded, so he ejected and dragging his parachute
to keep warm and injured from his landing.
He crawled over twenty miles in freezing temperatures for fifteen days without food or
shelter. Eventually, he came upon an abandoned cabin where he found a few cans of food
and fishing gear. He said he survived by fishing and hunting with his pistol.
There were some who questioned his story, even speculating that he sold his plane to the
Russians. And Steve's always maintained that he was telling the truth.
But he died only a few years later.
With his story still in doubt.
Why did he die?
Plane crash. You see an coming in.
Twenty years later, Boy Scouts on a hike found the canopy of his jet.
So Steve was telling the truth, but the rest of his plane still hasn't been found.
On October 4th, 1941, five military aircraft went down in one day and one of the pilots
was Lieutenant Leonard C.
Liden, who parachuted to safety after the squadron got lost over the mountains.
He said his P4P fell within a mile of where he landed in Kings Canyon National Park.
They find his plane?
Nope. Another famous case was Charles Ogle, a wealthy real estate developer who lifted
off from Oakland, California, in August 1964 but vanished on his way to Las Vegas.
Now, he was a Marine Corps trained pilot, but he was never seen or heard from again.
And his plane, no sign of it.
This is getting weird.
Oh, it gets weirder.
Well, bring it in and we it terrible hours as the of zero requesting touch-And-Go the
strength of zero hour period before you ever approach, says the three five zero tower
over there says the tree five zero tower over.
On July 11th, 1986, Major Ross Mulheron flew an F 117 into a mountain near Bakersfield,
California, and the cause of the crash has never been officially revealed.
What do you mean officially?
Well, congressional sources have said he was flying an experimental aircraft designed with
special materials and structural features, structural features, a disc shaped, we don't
know. Still, classified design is Blaen, Lockheed Martin, Double Myplace, and the stories
go on and on. So what is it that's causing aircraft to go missing within the Nevada
triangle, as some claim the area's climate creates a special type of atmosphere, a
condition that can actually rip the aircraft from the sky.
Now, Steve Fossett case.
Some believe conditions created a 650 CPK downdraft at the most.
His aircraft could climb at 500 copies.
So that speed difference meant he had no chance of surviving.
If that's what happened, if that's what happened, the NTSB didn't find any mechanical
issues with the plane. So what was it?
And why have so many other aircraft disappeared in the same area?
Well, conspiracy theorists that claim the reason so many flights have disappeared has
something to do with Area 51, where the Air Force is known to test secret prototype
aircraft yet.
But most experts think the disappearances are due to the geography and the atmospheric
conditions. Sierra Nevada mountains run perpendicular to the jet stream, which creates
volatile, unpredictable winds and downdrafts.
This weather phenomenon is sometimes called the mountain wave, where planes are seemingly
ripped from the air and crashed to the ground.
No. As for why so many of the crash sites are never located, that's probably because of
the complex, rugged terrain and the heavy vegetation.
Not a during the search for Fossett.
Eight other crash sites were found.
So chances are they're all out there hidden within the peaks and valleys of the Sierra
Nevada mountains. Know or could it be something else?
Yet. What a headcount.
What is this place? I have no idea.
I got a bad feeling about this.
Thanks for hanging out with us today.
My name is A.J. That's Hagfish.
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