Keith McCloskey - Unsolved Aviation Mysteries: Five Strange Tales of Air and Sea

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St Georges Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Keith McCloskey, 2020

The right of Keith McCloskey, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9457 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Dedicated to Norrie Simpson

This collection of five aviation mysteries all have the theme of aviation and the sea. Aircraft that disappear over the sea, lakes or rivers are always more difficult to solve or explain because in many cases they literally disappear from sight, often leaving just a tantalising clue such as a wheel, as in the case of the missing Sri Lankan Learjet or the Isle of Mull Cessna. In the case of the Mull Cessna, I believe I am publishing here for the first time three underwater photos of the wreckage of the aircraft (Cessna F.150H registered G-AVTN). The photos are part of a batch of twenty-eight slides taken in September 1986 by diver Richard Grieve, who kindly gave them to me. They have been seen by others, who say they are not conclusive enough, but I reproduce two (out of three) of the slides showing the registration, and the reader can then agree or disagree that this is the missing Cessna flown by Peter Gibbs on Christmas Eve 1975.

The Kinross Incident has attracted much attention from those interested in UFOs. The most puzzling aspect of this story is the manner in which the F-89C Scorpion disappeared after it was seen to merge with an unidentified aircraft (supposedly a Canadian military aircraft) on a radar screen. Not a single trace of it was found on the surface of Lake Superior.

The Learjet that carried Sri Lankan businessman Philip Upali Wijewardene also disappeared from radar screens as it approached the coast of Indonesia. Apart from a wheel, this too has left no other trace and the question remains as to why it suddenly disappeared as it was climbing towards a height of 39,000ft (11,887m).

Although some may say the JFK story can be explained, there are also many who feel there is more to the loss of the aircraft than first appears. There is also the other aspect of a seeming curse that hangs over the family, particularly with respect to aviation.

The last chapter concerns the case of businessman Alfred Loewenstein. The story involves the death of a man, rather than the disappearance of a plane, but nonetheless it is one of the most intriguing stories in aviation mysteries. Quite simply, he did not have the strength to open the aircraft door on his own, so how did he fall 4,000ft (1,219m) to his death in the English Channel?

I hope the reader finds these stories interesting, also bearing in mind that each one involves the tragic loss of life.

Keith McCloskey

Berkshire

June 2019

The Isle of Mull is the second largest island of the Inner Hebrides after Skye. Despite its size, it has always had a fairly low population, with the small town of Tobermory acting as the main centre on the island. The island is known for tourism and its whisky, but despite being 90 miles from Glasgow, it used to require an eight-hour journey by road/rail and ferry to get there. With the advent of Scottish airline Loganair in the early 1960s, a proposal was put forward to establish an airfield on Mull. Army sappers cleared an area near Salen of 50,000 tonnes of earth and 1,000 trees to lay out a 780ft (238m) grass runway in only fifty-four days.

Once the airstrip was ready, Loganair started a service from Glasgow to Mull via North Connel, which was the airfield for Oban. The service ran at weekends in the summer and eventually became a daily service during the summer months. The schedule continued until 1975, when it was dropped as not being viable, which was a blow to the tourist economy of the island. However, the airstrip with the adjoining Glenforsa Hotel proved to be popular with private flyers, who would fly in and park their aircraft there, stay at the hotel and explore the island. The hotel had almost burned down in 1968 and was rebuilt in a Norwegian log style with chalets. In the same year that Loganair discontinued its summer service from Glasgow, the Glenforsa strip became the scene of one of the most enduring mysteries in Scotland to date.

On 20 December 1975, two guests arrived at the hotel, Norman Peter Gibbs and his companion, university lecturer Dr Felicity Grainger. They had visited previously on a few occasions and enjoyed the laid-back atmosphere of the area. Gibbs, who used Peter as his first name, was a 53-year-old property developer and had formed a company named Gibbs and Rae with a partner. He had come to Mull on holiday but also tohave a look at property in the area with a view to buying a place he could turn into a hotel with some land, where he could make an airstrip for visiting aircraft. What had given him the idea was the Glenforsa Hotel itself, with its own airstrip.

The two of them had driven to the Glenforsa Hotel by car having travelled over from Oban on the ferry. Gibbs was a pilot and had served in the RAF during the Second World War. After his arrival, he was advised that there was an aircraft for hire at North Connel airfield at Oban. The aircraft was Cessna F.150H G-AVTN and its owner was a well-known person named Ian Robertson Hamilton, a local market gardener and businessman and one of the four men who had stolen the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day in 1950. After a phone call from Gibbs to Hamilton, it had been intended that Hamilton was to fly the Cessna from North Connel over to Gibbs at the Glenforsa Hotel strip and Gibbs would then fly Hamilton back to North Connel before returning to Mull. It was a fairly short journey each way of around twenty minutes, and with the time taken for the formalities of handing the Cessna over to Gibbs when he arrived at Glenforsa and Gibbs landing at North Connel to drop Hamilton off and take off again the whole exchange should have taken well under two hours. However, the weather, which was to play a significant part in this story, intervened and so Hamilton rang Gibbs to say he could not fly over. From all accounts, Gibbs was never one to let anything stand in his way, so he arranged with Hamilton that he would drive over on the ferry from Mull to Oban with Grainger, meet Hamilton and return himself with the aircraft. Grainger would then drive the car back to the hotel.