Yet another aircraft crash in Odisha’s Bermuda Triangle

Rairangpur (Mayurbhanj), March 20, 2018: Another trainer
aircraft has crashed in the area. The last crash in 2015 too was of the Hawk
fighter trainer from the Kalaikunda Air Base, the crash was once again in
Odisha’s Bermuda Triangle. 

According to researcher Anil Dhir, the triangle from Piarboda
near Bankura to Chakulia in Jharkhand and Amarda Road Airfield in Odisha has
seen nearly fifteen crashes since the airfields were set up in the last years
of the World War II.

The earliest recorded crash was on the May 4, 1944, when an
American Liberator had collided with a Harvard de Havilland plane and crashed
in flames at the Amarda Road airfield killing four crewmen. This spot is just
100 kms from today’s crash site. On the night of May 7, 1944, another Liberator
had taken off from Digri on a special mission and had crashed 20 minutes after
takeoff killing 10 crewmen. Digri tois 90 kms from the present crash spot.
Another De Havilland fighter had crashed after takeoff from the Amarda Road
Station on the May 13, 1944, but the crew was saved.

On the October 28, 1944, a Liberator had taken off on a night
sortie and crashed near Salboni, approximately 90 kms from the present crash,
killing eight of the crew. The biggest crash was on the 26th of July 1945 when
two British Royal Air Force B-24 Liberator four-engine bombers, EW225 and
EW247, had collided at low altitude. The aircrafts were based at the Amarda
Road airfield and were part of a six-plane contingent from the Air Fighting
Training Unit engaged in a formation flying exercise. Fourteen airmen – the
crews of the two aircraft – died due to the severity of the collision and
resulting crashes which happened an altitude of less than 2000 feet. The debris
fell into paddy fields swollen from the monsoon rains. The exact spot is now in
West Bengal, just 70 kms from yesterday’s crash site.There are at least another
half a dozen more crashes from these airfields in which the planes crashed in
the Bay of Bengal and were never found.

In the last two years of World War II, the allied forces had
anticipated the Japanese onslaught from the North-East and a string of
airfields were made in the region. These included the airfields at Jharsuguda,
Amarda Road, Charbatia, Hijli, Dudhkundi, Digri, Salua, Chakulia, Kalaikunda
and Bishnupur Amarda Road was the biggest.

Hundreds of aircraft which took part in the Burma operations
were managed from here. The Burma operations and the China Hump operations had
the highest causalities; the Hump route was termed as the graveyard of
aircraft. One in six pilots who operated this route lost his life. In all 594
aircraft were lost, missing, or written off and 1,659 crewmen killed or went
missing. In fact crash wrecks are still being discovered in the hills of
Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya. Most of the airfields are now disused and
forgotten.

Dhir says that one can attribute the crashes to the reason
that training crafts are stationed in the vicinity, but on scrutiny he has
found that other training centres of the Indian Air Force have much higher
flying sorties with lesser crashes. He says that most of these crashes in this
area occurred in good weather conditions. Actually there is no single theory
that can explain all disappearances. The airplanes that crashed have been
victims to different circumstances and situations while flying over this
triangle area. Half of the crashes remain unexplained, hence speculations are
raised.