Unsolved Histories by KSL Podcasts

When the captain of a passenger steamer misses a critical right turn on a dark January night, it sets in motion a tragedy that still haunts the Pacific Northwest.

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After Flight 293 disappeared and the US military turned its back on the families of the lost, a community of tragedy forms by those left behind. Decades later, led by Greg Barrowman, they find a way to gather, mourn and ultimately celebrate their loved ones and formally, permanently commemorate their loss.

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Since the Revolutionary War, the US military has promised active duty members that, wounded or dead, they’ll never be left behind. Having a body to mourn and bury can bring comfort to loved ones. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year to search for and bring home the missing and to take care of the families of the fallen. But why not for Flight 293?

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Pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents and other airline employees form tight networks many of them describe as a “family.” When a plane goes down, news quickly spreads within this family. Sometimes the information shared is accurate. Other times, it leaves the door open to conspiracies.

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Less than a year before Flight 293 vanished, an identical airliner on the exact same route – with, incredibly, the exact same flight number – loses an engine midway through the trip and goes down in the waters off the coast of Alaska. This time, everyone survives.

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Captain Albert Olsen has thousands of hours as a commercial and military pilot. He’s exactly the kind of skilled, experienced aviator you’d want in the cockpit if a problem came up miles from any airport and thousands of feet in the sky. Somewhere over the Gulf of Alaska, that’s exactly what happens.

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When Susan, a teenager in Texas, sees her best friend Jody walking toward her one afternoon in June, she doesn't quite know what to think. Jody shouldn’t be here. She and her family just left town, headed to Alaska on Flight 293.

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In the Gulf of Alaska, Coast Guard ships from the US and Canada search for any sign of the missing airliner, which sent no distress call. What they find – and what they don’t – will frustrate researchers and historians, and torment families and friends of the passengers and crew for decades.

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Private Bruce Barrowman is just 17 years old when he boards a military airliner near Seattle for a routine flight to Anchorage, Alaska. Neither Bruce nor the other 100 passengers and crew aboard Flight 293 will reach their final destination.

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An airliner carrying 101 people took to the skies near Seattle moving military personnel and their families to their new assignments in Anchorage. Flying 14,000 feet above the Gulf of Alaska, one of the pilots radioed air traffic control asking to change altitude. It was the last thing anyone heard from Flight 293. Come follow along on October 1st!

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