What Happened to Flight 739?

Let's take a look at the conspiracy theories surrounding Flight 739 and determine if any of them are in fact true!

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[edwardsfamilychannel]

This guy's the spitting image of the bloke on casual criminalist

[kepanoid]

Simon, the Lockheed Super Constellation was powered by four Wright R-3350 turbocharged radial piston engines. High power aircraft piston engines tended to need lots of maintenance, and it was very common for them to need servicing at each stop. One might say, it was quite a feat to complete a trip without one of them having some kind of minor issue. Oh, those engines had 18 cylinders each, and aircraft engines have two spark plugs per cylinder. You suspect one of the plugs is faulty? You change all 36. What did you say, mr. mechanic, your shift is ending? Sorry about that...

[herluka]

Simon Whistler's channels: when you want to hear an interesting conversation but you only want one person to do the talking 😜

[JM-wubh]

Travis AFB has a Falconer and it's cool to watch the falcons fly. That's how they reduce the chance of bird-strikes. Random comment that I thought others might find interesting

[ignitionfrn]

1:20 - Chapter 1 - The history
14:00 - Chapter 2 - Theories
16:50 - Chapter 3 - Sabotage
22:30 - Chapter 4 - Kidnap
24:45 - Chapter 5 - Collision with an object
32:30 - Chapter 6 - Conspiracy
34:55 - Chapter 7 - Aftermath

[Lee-in-oz]

Once again Simon's rants and tangents totally make this series.

[ahniiso]

A grenade has a large blast radius, pretty much a detonation anywhere on the plane would depressurize the hull. If it is anywhere near the wings it could rupture the fuel tanks quite easily.
Grenades should be shipped in a crate, not in the troops kit, but it was waaaayy before my time, so who knows what their SOP was.

[rickbarnes]

Simon, look into the crash of TWA flight 2. It was also a Lockheed Constellation that collided mid-air with a DC-4 over the Grand Canyon in the mid-50s. Those things did happen, in that era, there was a lot less radar controlled airspace, so no collision avoidance systems. They operated VFR.

[pastelclouds]

25:25 For those interested, the almost collision between two planes in midair that Simon talked about were Japan Airlines flights 907 and 958.

[smenbb]

Simon, back in their day, they used "observe and avoid" rule, no anticollision warnings (radars). That rule continued even to 1980's, when it became a must to have system that will alert pilots in case they are going to collide with another plane and they can't observe (see) the other plane.
For example, "Shershen" patrol boats (torpedo boats) where my grandpa served in 1960's had radars that could cover 900 kilometers, basically intruding nearby countries sea and air space. And this being "civil" aircraft, I highly doubt they had some advanced military tech inside.

[itsapittie]

To answer your question about military aircraft, yes you do have to go through a security screening to board military aircraft. Obviously there are exceptions for personnel who are enroute to a mission but those personnel are nevertheless screened, manifested, and under the control of a commanding officer. Since the Rangers on the flight weren't (supposedly) enroute to an actual assault, their weapons and ammunition would most likely have been separately palletized and loaded but we can't rule out the possibility that they were actually about to engage in an active mission and were fully armed. It's not 100% impossible that a grenade could have gotten loose and lost its pin but it's pretty damned unlikely with a group of elite professionals like the Rangers. It's also not impossible that there could have been explosives -- maybe even a lot of explosives -- unrelated to the Rangers' mission onboard and an errant electrical short or the like could have set it off. Loadmasters take precautions to prevent this but it's not entirely impossible.

Humorously, it was standard during my time in the Air Force for even troops on a tactical mission to receive the usual briefing on prohibited items even though we were exempted for that trip. We'd collapse into howls of laughter at the list -- daggers, switchblade knives, knives having a blade longer than 3", handguns, rifles, machine guns, explosives, etc. I do recall one occasion upon which my team was on the way to a training exercise and we carried our rifles without live ammunition. Our commander carried a handgun with live ammunition to protect the rifles if anyone tried to steal one. The aircraft commander demanded that our commander turn over his handgun for the duration of the flight. Our commander said, "We are literally the people whose job it is to rescue you if you get hijacked. Do you really want to get into a pissing match over this?" The AC wisely backed down. 😂

[powwowken]

My favorite tidbit I've heard about the "Moon landing being fake" conspiracy is:
With the technology available in that era it would've been more expensive and difficult to fake the landing than it would be to actually send people to the moon.

[xVolta]

"this doesn't seem like a conspiracy theory, it seems like logical thought", said every conspiracy theorist ever.

[Kaharameiaren]

A word of advice: you can still redact a pdf that was just saved in the free Adobe Reader. You have to print it to another pdf for the editing marks to "lock" and become uneditable. If you just Save the or Save As, anyone who opens that pdf can remove your reactions.

[imdoctorsan]

Simon, I would put money on it being one of the outboard engines that was worked on at one of the stops. A fuel leak could have caused a fire that could have caused the engine to come off, possibly with the outer section of the wing. This would account for the sighting of two fireballs and be able to bring the craft down. Until wreckage is found, we may never know for sure.

[rogerpenske]

You’ve inadvertently solved the mystery, Simon! It was the piano playing duck! At 10, 000 feet, the duck could still breathe; but at 18, 000 feet, the duck would have lost pursuit at that altitude. The dock had to strike fast before the plane could get away

[AX_H_]

Simon you did a Worlds Greatest Terrorist attacks. One was a guy who blew himself up and out of a plane being the only one who died.

[MurphysEveryWhim]

Conspiracy theories are fun, but I’d love to see videos on confirmed conspiracies.

[ryanm]

The service ceiling for the Lockheed Super Constellation is 24, 000ft, so the altitude change seems unexceptionable.
I lightly browsed it's specs and operational history and it doesn't appear to have a design flaw that would cause an explosion like the Avro Tudor VI which had heaters that could cause fires and likely led to the crashes of the Star Tiger and Star Ariel in the late 40's.
However, they did have skylights used for sexton navigation that shattered and caused explosive decompression in at least one case in 1948 that sucked out a navigator, but those probably were removed by the 60's.
A Super Constellation was involved in a midair collision with a DC-7 (TWA Flight 2 & United Airlines Flight 718) in 1956, which led to changes for better collision avoidance systems.
Given that Flight 739 was one of two Flying Tiger Line flights with military connections that were destroyed under similar circumstances on the same day, it seems unlikely that it was just coincidence or accident.

However, they were the same plane design and both crashed on the same day over the Pacific (similar conditions?), so it's possible it could be a fault with the planes themselves, as measures like fire detection and suppression in the cabin/cargo areas weren't standard until the 80's and inerting fuel tanks/eliminating sources of sparks from wiring wasn't standardized until the 90's (after the disasters of Air Canada Flight 797, ValuJet Flight 592, and TWA Flight 800, respectively).

[adenkyramud]

Quick question for Simon: with all the channels you have, how many times do you get confused during the intro and say the wrong channel name and have to start again?