On this day in 1948, the Star Tiger, a Tudor IV passenger aircraft of British South American Airways, disappeared during a routine voyage between the Azores and Bermuda. The aircraft was carrying 31 passengers and crew, among them Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, who had commanded the British Second Tactical Air Force during World War II. Coningham’s presence on the doomed flight ensured massive press coverage of the disappearance, which featured on the front page of the New York Times alongside the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

The British government initiated an official inquiry into the disappearance. They concluded that the crew was experienced and there was no known reason why the aircraft should vanish. Its official report contained the ominous statement that “…In the complete absence of any reliable evidence as to either the nature or the cause of the accident of Star Tiger the Court has not been able to do more than suggest possibilities, none of which reaches the level even of probability. …. What happened in this case will never be known and the fate of Star Tiger must remain an unsolved mystery.”

Later investigators have noted that there were ample suggestions of trouble, that the original inquiry either ignored or passed over. The Star Tiger had been flying into headwinds which might have disabled its engines; the plane also had a history of running low on fuel, and had been forced to divert to Newfoundland for emergency refueling during a previous voyage. It was also believed that the plane was flying far lower than its normal altitude, suggesting the crew might have accidentally crashed it during an attempted descent. Still, nothing definitive was ever learned about its fate, leading to speculation that the plane was sabotaged by one of Coningham’s enemies (a theory lodged at the inquiry). And the disappearance of its sister plane, the Star Ariel, a year later ensured that in the future, it would be connected with the Bermuda Triangle.