The year is 1950 and the US and Soviet Union are locked in a crucial arms race that epitomizes the tensions of the “Cold War”. US nuclear capable bombers routinely patrol the narrow corridors of the Pacific that barely separate US and Soviet airspace. In an age that predates the ICBM (Inter Continental Ballistic Missile) it is only heavy bombers that have the range, payload, and accuracy to deliver mutually assured destruction to Russia in the event of World War III. The year after the establishment of NATO, the possibility of the end of the world as we know it exists in the heavily patrolled and surveillanced region that hinges upon the “Alaskan Triangle”.

As Ivan T. Sanderson, a former intelligence officer for the British military has been the first source of exposure of USO’s (Unidentified Submerged Objects) and who identified some 12 worldwide “Devil’s Triangles” throughout the world, the Alaskan Triangle is one of those forbidden zones of disappearance! South along the Pacific Northwest shoreline if the “Los Angeles Triangle” an area in Southern California along the Redondo Trench where frequent UFO and USO activity is observed and documented! It is this north south corridor where the unexplained thrives with impunity and seemingly forever hides its secrets.

It all begins January 26, 1950 as a Douglas C-54 transport aircraft on a south easterly course from Elmendorf Air Base, has just completed a radio check in over Snagg, Alaska and will vanish with 56 people on board shortly afterward! The incident is so disturbing that a scheduled US and Canadian military exercise is cancelled as the largest search and rescue operation since WWII is deployed involving 85 aircraft flying over 300,000 square miles! Not one clue is uncovered! However, it doesn’t stop there! 14 days later a C-47 aircraft’s engine stalls and the crew crash lands. Luckily, they survive but one pilot must walk 13 miles to a roadside before getting help. They had been part of the air search for the lost C-54.

Radar stations and air group patrols are now on high alert, but the string of incidents continues. The death of Captain Mantel over Godman Airfield in Kentucky in 1948 is still fresh in the minds of the US Air Force who does not rule out the possibility of UFO related aircraft losses. Prior to the loss of the Douglas C-54 Sky Master, a US Air Navy pilot made contact with an unidentified aerial object traveling at a speed of 1,800 mph. a speed that no US or foreign aircraft could achieve! However, the Alaskan Triangle had already devoured previous airplanes and aviators. Famous pioneering aviator, Wiley Post, along with popular humorist, Will Rogers, would die near Point Barrow Alaska on what should have been a routine flight that ended in a fatal crash August 15, 1935.

There were suspicions by US Air Force investigators that the Douglas C-54 could have suffered instrument disorientation and causing the wrong course heading leading to a possible Soviet downing of the huge transport plane! Intentions in the area are high and such possibilities cannot be ruled out! February 10, 1950 a second C-47 Sky Train goes down this time near Haines Junction Yukon! Despite a crash landing into the side of a hill slope, the crew amazing survives unhurt and are rescued! Yet, the string of in-flight tragedies continues! On February 16^th once again, another C-47 goes down while on a search grid near Snagg, Alaska, but this time it’s a Royal Canadian Dakota transport! Thankfully the crew escaped with minor injuries and were rescued!

Number 5, and the most tragic of all was the crash of a B-36 Peacekeeper Nuclear Bomber that lost engine power and was forced to jettison a Mark IV nuclear device that landed in the Pacific waters. A conventional bomb load and the nuclear bomb were jettisoned while the crew bailed out of the plane! The conventional payload detonated but not the Nuke! The B-36 continued to fly abandoned by the crew and crashed on Mt. Kologet in British Columbia. This “Broken Arrow” incident ended “Project Mike”, the search for the Douglas C-54! In all 5 US Air Force planes where lost in quick succession! The nuclear bomb was never located despite several attempts at scanning for it by the US Air Force and others who assisted.

From a point north at Point Barrow, to Fairbanks, and then south to Juneau, Alaska, the Alaskan Triangle continues to this day to swallow hikers, hunters, aircraft, and even ships! To date 20,000 such vanishings have been recorded. An effort by authorities to record and catalogue all such incidents is underway. Ironically, the lost B-36 Peacekeeper was headed for Carswell Air Base in Ft. Worth, Texas where, Intelligence Officer of the 509^th Bomb Group, Jesses Marcel, and a B-29 crew had taken the Roswell crashed disk debris for a photo shoot ordered by General George Ramey in 1947!

Unpredictable weather, unexplored mountainous terrain, below zero temperatures, and electromagnetic interference are all blamed for making the recovery of airplane crashes so seemingly impossible, but that is not the only reason for these mysterious incidents according to researchers! The massive mystery remains!

A haunting aspect to this whole series of incidents is a ghostly reminder of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster disappearance, and that is the unexplained radio transmissions being picked up by USAF communications. The radio traffic was garbled and vague but operators reported that it seemed to be distress radio transmissions from the crew of the C-54 after it has already vanished as if coming from the other side of another dimension. These untriangulated radio transmission continued for some time, haunting the search and rescue operation!