The New Zealand pilot and the Bermuda triangle

​Whether you believe in the strangeness of the Bermuda Triangle or not, there have been disappearances there that are unexplained to this day.
And one is the flight captained by New Zealander and war veteran John McPhee.
John Clutha McPhee was born on June 21, 1918, to Gilbert James McPhee and his wife Elizabeth Charlotte McPhee.
He went to school in Dunedin before going to Victoria University.
Athletically inclined, he decided to enlist in the RNZAF in 1942 and showed an aptitude for flying.
He was one of many sent to Canada for training before going on to England as pilot of a Liberator bomber.
John flew many missions until the war's end and after a desk job did not appeal he was put in touch with airlines, getting a civil flying licence.
In 1947, he began flying for the British South American Airlines Corp where he made headlines for having been the co-pilot on a world record setting flight from London to New Zealand.
John often flew the route between Bermuda and Kingston, often stopping over in Bermuda where he would play golf and gather with other pilots at the White Horse Tavern.
He was back in the newspapers in 1949 when the Star Ariel plane he was pilot of vanished without trace on a flight that left Kindley Field in Bermuda at 8.41am to Kingston on January 17.
There were 19 people on board.
A massive search was commenced, with two US fleet carriers, five other naval vessels and 63 aircraft.
There had been no SOS and the last radio report was a standard position relay.
Nothing was ever found and over time it was relegated to yet another mystery of a missing plane in the notorious Bermuda Triangle.
There were odd theories, including the manufacturer of the plane claiming sabotage.
It was much much later that the plane became known for the possibility of explosive decompression due to metal fatigue.
The Star Ariel however was a Tudor IV, a relatively new airliner and there was never any debris found.
To make it weirder, the Star Ariel’s sister airliner, the Star Tiger had also vanished, the same way nearly a year before.
As of now, the plane and its crew and passengers are still missing. Among them, ironically, was the deputy director of accident prevention at the Air Ministry during the war.