1965 Argentine Air Force C-54 disappearance

Argentine Air Force TC-48 Flight

The missing aircraft, Douglas C-54G Skymaster with cadets before inital flight, October 31 1965.
Disappearance
Date	3 November 1965 (1965-11-03); 58 years, 10 months ago
Summary	Engine fire, some debris found
Website	Northwest Cordillera de Talamanca (presumed), Southeast Golfo de los Mosquitos and Northeast Braulio Carrillo National Park
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas C-54G Skymaster
Operator	Argentine Air Force
Call sign	TC48
Registration	TC-48
Flight origin	El Palomar Airport
Stopover	Cerro Moreno Base
1st stopover	Las Palmas Air Base
2nd stopover	Guayaquil
Last stopover	Howard Air Force Base,Panama Canal Zone
Destination	El Salvador International Airport
Occupants	68
Passengers	59
Crew	9
Fatalities	68 (presumed)
Survivors	0 (presumed)

Argentine Air Force TC-48 Flight (also known as TC-48 Flight or The Cadets Flight). TC-48 Flight of the Argentine Air Force was a military flight of graduated cadets from the Military Aviation School that dissappeared between Howard Air Base in Panama and El Salvador International Airport on November 3, 1965 aboard a Douglas C54G, registered as TC-48. The aircraft last contact was 30 or 40 minutes after taking off, the pilot reported a fire in one of the engines and notified the control tower of San José in Costa Rica that they will go there, a destination to which they would never be able to arrive, currently the plane is missing and is considered the greatest mystery of Argentine aviation All cadets, crew members and passengers were presumed dead.

Timeline

The TC-48 took off from El Palomar on October 31, 1965 to the Military Aviation School, the crew consisted of 9 members, to which were added 5 officers and 54 cadets, thus totaling 68 occupants. The training flight would take them to San Francisco on the United States. During the trip a second Douglas DC-4 was used, the TC-43 that carried the rest of the promotion. Both aircraft departed the following day, flew to the Cerro Moreno base (Chile) where after a technical stopover, the flight continued to Las Palmas base in Lima (Peru). There they spent the night and incorporated two cadets from the Peruvian Air Force, which were distributed in both planes. On November 2 they flew to Panama with a technical stopover in Guayaquil (Ecuador); and the next day, they had to complete the journey between the Howard Air Force Base and San Salvador International Airport (El Salvador).

Aircraft

Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948.

TC-48 Flight was operated with a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War, derived from the DC-4 civilian airliner.

The aircraft was assigned to the 1st Air Brigade based in El Palomar and immediately began to be used for military personel, officials and relatives relocation flights. From October 20 to November 19, 1964 she participated in the Final Instruction Trip of the XXX Class of cadets of the EAM, in the company of the Douglas DC-4 TC-44.

During the 1964/65 Antarctic campaign she was part of the Antarctic Task Force (FATA). Among the missions in which the machine participated during that campaign, the cosmic measurements in flight stand out, by means of equipment mounted on board the device and different launches of supplies on the Esperanza Base. On February 5, TC-48 was part of the so-called Operation Matienzo, supporting the legendary C-47 TA-05, at the crossing to the white continent. On March 15, 1965, it would give the same support to the BS-03 Grumman HU-16B aircraft. There are reports that indicate that in February 1965, the Douglas DC-4 TC-48 managed to fly over the Antarctic Circle. On May 7, 1965, by order of the Executive Power of the Nation, the Argentine Air Force dispatched two Douglas DC-4 aircraft (TC-48 and TC-42) to Santo Domingo carrying troops, medical supplies and medicine to attend to the victims of the revolutionary events registered in the Dominican Republic. On September 22, 1965, again supported the TA-05 in the crossing made from the continent to Antarctica.

Passengers and crew

People on board by nationality

Nationality	No.
Argentinien	67
Peru	1

The aircraft was carrying 9 Argentine crew members and 53 cadets passengers from Argentina, 1 cadet from Peru and 5 officers.

Crew

All nine crew members—three pilots and six staff were Argentine citizens.

Rank	Nationality	Name
Commander	Argentinien	Renato Humberto Fellipa
First Pilot	Argentinien	Miguel Ángel Moyano Vizzarra
Second Pilot	Argentinien	Esteban José Viberti
Navigator	Argentinien	Luis Gaudencio Merlo
Mechanic	Argentinien	Basilio Rotchen
Mechanic	Argentinien	Amado Fernández
Radio-operator	Argentinien	Osvaldo Juan Arto
Commissar	Argentinien	Roberto Mendozi
Technical Support	Argentinien	Santiago Horta

Passengers

Of the 59 passengers, 53 were Argentine cadets, 5 Argentine military officers and 1 Peruvian cadet.

Cadets

All argentine citizens unless noted

• Ricardo José Salomón García
• Carlos José Marchesoni
• Jorge Reymundo Sellares
• Oscar Ricardo Taddeo
• Juan Carlos Monferini
• Luis Nicolás Origone
• José Luis Ferletic
• Jorge Luis Betoño
• Adalberto Manuel Carrilero
• Juan Carlos Santiago
• Osvaldo Enrique Giussani
• Héctor Oscar Atie
• Jorge Eduardo Catalá
• Roberto Francisco Vitetta
• Julio Segundo Gamen
• Jorge Amilcar Sánchez
• David Cristian Gauna
• Pedro Alberto Zabaleta
• Gerónimo Lorenzo Terradas
• Juan Bernardino Tomilchenko
• Jorge Juan Stamelos Ruefli
• Emilio Carlos Guarnieri
• Roberto Lionel González de Luca
• Roberto Luis Pessana
• Alberto Aberlino Senas
• Bartolomé Esteban Vesco
• Raúl Daniel Ortiz
• Raúl Alberto Ramello
• Ricargo Guillermo Montenegro
• Mario Omar Castellano
•  Héctor María Becerra
•  Marcelo Pirusel
•  Víctor Domingo Colantonio
•  Alfredo Luis Trigo
•  Lorenzo Juan Martínez
•  Mario Alberto Pérez
•  Luis Ricardo Bellés
•  Roberto Nicolás Ramaglia
•  Roberto Luis Stangalino
•  Argentino Osiris Rodeyro
•  Orlando Pedro Bravino
•  Antonio Rafael Nomdedeu
•  Walter Horacio Almada
•  Julio Mario Pereyra
• Juan José Seco Rincón
• Juan Carlos Royo
• Juan Domingo Alguacil
• Juan José García
• Enrique Miguel Páez
• Ricardo Augusto Guzzo
• Oscar Vuistaz
• René Benjamín Labroisans
• Federico Carlos Bremme
• Tulio Salomón Ortiz Ugaz Calderón Peru

Military Officers

All argentine citizens

• José Alberto Fonseca
• Mario Nello Zurro
• José Carlos Lozano
• Miguel Ángel Álvarez Paz
• Jorge Eduardo Olocco

Flight and disappearance

Departure

Around 05:43 (-5 GMT) the TC-43 takes off from Howard Air Force Base on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal Zone and at 05:49 the TC-48 does the same. Both aircraft would follow the same route to San Salvador International Airpot, known as "Mike", having set a cruising altitude of 6,500 feet (2,145 m) and keep sporadic radio contact for a distance of about 1,150 km that would take about 3:45 h of flight.

Communication lost

The last two transmissions from the aircraft were at 06:27 when the TC-48 reports to Panama tower confirming reached to position "Mike-5" without incident at an altitude of 6500 and heading for San Salvador. The "Mike-5" position is a navigational point close to Escudo de Veraguas island on the panamanian caribbean Mosquitoes Gulf of the Bocas del Toro Province. The weather conditions for this first part of the route were not the best, forecast indicated severe turbulence, heavy rain, and visibility from very limited to zero. At 06:36 the pilot reported fire on engine 3 and engine 4 stopped working, and will attempt to land or ditch the aircraft to the water, the signal was pickup by Tegucigalpa ATC and a Lacsa cargo plane pilot. The cargo plane pilot recommended to land in Limón International Airport or El Coco International Airport, now called Juan Santamaría International Airport, but the aircraft never arrived.

From this moment on, a large number of cross reports began to emerge, where schedules and data supposedly provided by the TC-48 pilots mismatch, like a third unconfirmed communication at 07:05 stating that the TC-48 reported that it was flying over Bocas del Toro, heading towards Puerto Limón runway, where the emergency had already been declared and firefighters and ambulances were being mobilized while waiting for the aircraft.

Reported sightings

In 2008, Teletica journalist Gerardo Zamora interview several witnesses that indicate the aircraft entered to Costa Rican territory by Sixaola, then was seen on Valle La Estrella, and a last witness indicate that saw survivors near Telire, all communites close to the Talamanca Range.

Suche

Initial searches for survivors were made by Unites States Navy until November 17 1965 when attempts ceased, relatives rejected the official version, and continued to demand the search of the plane in the Costa Rican jungle, convinced that the aircraft could well be in some inaccessible place and not in the seabed. The suspicion gained even more force when it became known that some of the elements supposedly rescued and offered as evidence, which belonged to one of the disappeared cadets, had been entrusted by their owner to a colleague who was traveling on the other plane, who more He later handed them over to his superiors. In addition, at that point it was already certain that the aircraft were not in perfect condition and that the TC-48 was flying overweight. Relatives traveled to Central America to restart the search on their own. This is how groups of relatives of cadets and officers entered the Costa Rican jungle over and over again and made contact with the aborigines who lived around the Cordillera de Talamanca, looking for any clue that would allow them to find the whereabouts of their loved ones. However, they only encountered misleading versions, ladino characters, fear and reluctance of the natives, and insurmountable difficulties; ingredients of a mystery that seemed to grow with the passing of the months. Then they would inevitably return empty-handed.

A total of 23 expeditions were made to the Talamanca in Costa Rica jungle, and more than 50 flights in planes and helicopters, the search was stopped in 1967. For the Civil Aviation of Costa Rica and for the relatives, the aircraft is somewhere in the jungle. In 2015 the Argentine Air Forces carried out four searches called Esperanza, both by land and by sea, which ended without results.

Investigation

After disappearance, an investigation carried out by the United States concluded that the aircraft fell to the sea ​​between Panama and Costa Rica, 30 km from the coast. A disclassiffied video of a US Navy helicopter marking the location of life vest and objects in the sea, that later were shown to family members. Argentine Air Force authorities accepted the conclusions reached by the US experts

Speculated causes of disappearance

• Faulty engines

Engines reported failure at first stop over in Chile and 2 engines were inoperative minutes before dissappearance.

• Overweight.

68 passaengers, luggage and military gear overloaded the aircraft.

• Explosive boxes used as seats.

The aircraft had very few seats available and boxes were improvised as seats, some of the boxes contain explosives.

• Instruments failure due to thunderstorms.

Electric instruments on panel failed to operate under heavy thunderstorms.

• Pilot error.

First hypothesis: Pilots were not able to return to land or coast line after declaring emergency, instead continued into sea.
Second hypothesis: following the testimony of several witnesses that saw the aircraft on Valle La Estrella, pilots with 2 engines down, skipped several posible landing options in Panama territory: Bocas del Toro International Airpot, Almirante air strip (now converted into a main road), Changuinola International Airport, Farm 67 (MPSS) air strip, Deborah (MPDE) air strip (5 km off Sixaola); in Costa Rica territory: Sixaola air field and Pandora air field. Its unclear why pilots decided to land in farthest locations like Limon or San Jose with the described conditions.

• The TC-48 was shot down by a US Air Force fighter jet, mistaken with a Cuban aircraft.

Aftermath

Myths

• The most important legend that appeared at first was that the natives of the area where the plane supposedly had fallen, had kept different belongings of the cadets. This is how the famous "Porfiador" indian claimed to have found the wreckage of the plane and to have killed three surviving cadets to cover the theft. The native indian was arrested but neither argentine money nor cadet clothes were found, nor any other element that directly related him to the TC-48; by this actions the indian´s father a tribe leader cursed the searches.
• Captain Juan Tomilchenko, claimed to have located two wooden boxes set on fire with explosives. According to him they belonged to the plane, but that has never been proven.
• A second legend states that local indians stole the airplane belongings and moved the airplne to a small lake, making it difficult to locate the aircraft.
• There is another Bermuda Triangle that "swallowed" the plane.
• The cadets are alive, living on a parallel universe.

Relatives pshychological concerns

Trauma impacted severely to close relatives of the cadets, since they were young at the moment of the accident, many of them are dissappointed of the lack of searching efforts by Argentine Air Force, tampering evidence and providing misleading information. Many of them keep alive the memory of the lost by not touching their personal belongings or not moving thinking they may come back someday and misfortune would accompany them for the rest of their lives and for many of them death came before the truth.

In popular culture

Books

The book "TC-48, the cadets plane", written by Ricardo Becerra, a former Army lieutenant and brother of cadet Héctor, mentions thirteen witnesses who saw him fly low in the jungle.

Documentary

On December 2018 a documentary film "The Last Search" was released in Córdoba, Argentina on local movie theaters, in wich Cecilia Viberti, pilot Esteban Viberti´s daughter describes searches made in Talamanca, Costa Rica and shares her thoughts about the aircraft is located in Costa Rica..

See also

• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
• List of missing aircraft
• List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1960–1974)
• List of accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-4
• List of aircraft of the Argentine Air Force

References

Category:Missing aircraft Category:Argentina Category:Argentine military-related lists Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in 1965 Category:1965 in Argentina