Star Tiger sent its last radio message at 3:17 a.m. in 1948. No wreckage was ever found.

At 3:17 a.m. on January 30, 1948, radio officer Robert Tuck aboard the Avro Tudor Star Tiger acknowledged receiving a bearing from Bermuda — and was never heard from again. The aircraft had been flying from the Azores to Bermuda through gale-force winds at just 2,000 feet, far lower than the route required. Every position report the crew had filed during the flight listed their altitude as 20,000 feet — the standard cruising height. The court of inquiry later concluded the crew may have simply forgotten they were flying at 2,000 feet.

Twenty-six aircraft flew 882 hours searching the Atlantic. No wreckage, no debris, no distress signal were ever found. Among the 31 passengers and crew was Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, a hero of the Battle of Normandy. His disappearance appeared on the front page of The New York Times on January 31, 1948, alongside news of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and Orville Wright's death.

Britain's official inquiry, led by Lord Macmillan, found "want of care and attention to detail" in the flight plan but nothing sufficient to explain what happened. Its conclusion: "What happened in this case will never be known and the fate of Star Tiger must remain an unsolved mystery."

Previously:

• A tanker of molten sulphur vanished with 39 crew in 1963
• The ghost ship that drifted the Arctic for 38 years