Welcome to a curated collection of Halloween-themed aviation stories and aircraft for you to browse at your leisure.
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B-17 “Swamp Ghost”
In the February of 1943 during WW2, Captain Frederick Eaton was forced to crash-land his B-17E Flying Fortress in a swamp in Papua New Guinea after attacking Japanese ships and getting intercepted. He and his crew survived, and hiked out of the area after the crash.
In 1972, the airplane was discovered, largely preserved since it was in a swamp. It was then recovered in 2006 and imported to the US four years later. It sits in a museum today.
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AC-47 “Spooky” Gunship
The Douglas AC-47 was the beginning of a long line of gunships developed during the Vietnam War after the civilian DC-3. The AC-37 was nicknamed “Spooky” due to its nature in combat. Its powerful nighttime attacks agains the enemy often left them unsettled, having realized the attack too late.
It was also nicknamed the Puff Dragon, as it was equipped with multiple machine guns that fired thousands of rounds a minute and produced an ongoing stream of fire. The AC-47 was essentially a modified C-47 with armament.
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The Disappearance of Flight 19
On the 5th of December, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers under the designation Flight 19 disappeared. The pilots, having taken off from Fort Lauderdale for a training exercise, are believed to have crashed due to mechanical failures, disorientation, and lack of fuel.
An additional search-and-rescue plane dispatched to look for Flight 19 also vanished, seemingly into thin air. These strange disappearances have often been blamed on the flight’s vicinity to the legendary Bermuda Triangle. The planes haven’t been found yet, and no wreckage of the search airplane has been identified.
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Spooky aircraft you can buy and build this Halloween:
Flight Online 