List of People Who Disappeared Mysteriously - 1940s

1940s

• 1941 – Thomas C. Latimore, U.S. Navy captain and former Governor of American Samoa. Never returned from a hike in the Aiea Mountains of Hawaii during July 1941. No body has ever been found.
• 1944 – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French author and aviator. His plane vanished while conducting an intelligence mission over German-occupied France near Marseilles. A bracelet bearing his name was recovered in a fishing dragnet in 1998, and part of his airplane—a Lockheed F-5B reconnaissance plane—was found in 2000, recovered in 2003. The wreckage was confirmed in 2004.
• 1944 – Glenn Miller (40), the popular American jazz musician and bandleader, was en route from England to France on December 15, 1944, to play for troops in recently liberated Paris, when the single–engined, Noorduyn Norseman aircraft in which he was a passenger disappeared over the English Channel. The plane and those on board have never been located. As a U.S. military officer who vanished in wartime, Miller continues to be listed officially as missing in action.
• 1944 – Rocco Perri (born 30 December 1887, date of death unknown, last seen alive 23 April 1944) was an organized crime figure in Ontario, Canada, in the early 20th century.
• 1944 – Szilveszter Matuska, Hungarian mass-murderer known as "The Train Killer", escaped from jail in 1944 and was never recaptured.
• 1945 – Heinrich Müller (45), Nazi Gestapo chief, last confirmed sighting in the Führerbunker on the evening of May 1, 1945. His CIA file and related documents state that while the record is "...inconclusive on Müller's ultimate fate ... most likely died in Berlin in early May 1945."
• 1945 – Raoul Wallenberg (32), Swedish diplomat credited with saving the lives of at least 20,000 Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust, was arrested on espionage charges in Budapest following the arrival of the Soviet army. His subsequent fate remains a mystery despite hundreds of purported sightings in Soviet prisons, some as recent as the 1980s. In 2001, after 10 years of research, a Swedish-Russian panel concluded that Wallenberg probably died or was executed in Soviet custody on July 17, 1947, but to date no hard evidence has been found to confirm this. In fact, in 2010 evidence from Russian archives surfaced suggesting he was alive after the presumed execution date.
• 1945 – Constanze Manziarly (25), cook and dietitian to Adolf Hitler, disappeared while escaping Berlin following the Soviet invasion and fall of Nazi Germany. She was believed to be raped and killed by Soviet soldiers in an U-Bahn subway tunnel.
• 1945 - Alfred Partikel, German painter of East Prussian origin, vanished while picking mushrooms in the woods near Ahrenshoop, Darß. His remains have never been found.
• 1945 – Subhas Chandra Bose (48), one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian Independence Movement, disappeared after a plane crash in Taiwan. His body was never recovered and his death has long been the subject of dispute.
• 1945 – Flight 19: Five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers disappeared on 5 December while on a training flight in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle. During the subsequent search, a PBM-5 Mariner flying boat participating in the search disappeared, apparently the result of a mid-air explosion. No remains of the six planes and 21 crewmen involved have ever been positively identified.
• 1945 – Supriyadi (22) was an Indonesian national hero. On 6 October 1945 in a government decree issued by the newly independent Indonesia, Supriyadi was named Minister for Public Security in the first cabinet. However, he failed to appear, and was replaced on 20 October by ad interim minister Muhammad Soeljoadikusuma. To this day his fate remains unknown.
• 1945 – Genrikh Lyushkov (45), high-level Soviet defector and former Far East NKVD chief. A participant in the Great Purge, he fled to avoid what he believed would be arrest and execution into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. After his defection, he became a military consultant and analyst for the Imperial Japanese Army. He disappeared during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and was reported as being last seen in a crowded train station in Dairen (Dalian). Several theories exist about his fate, but he is presumed to have died in 1945, killed either by Soviet or Japanese forces.
• 1946 – Paula Jean Welden (18), Bennington College sophomore, disappeared while walking on the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain, Vermont, USA.
• 1948 – Sir Arthur Coningham (53), retired RAF Air Marshal, disappeared when Avro Tudor IV G-AHNP Star Tiger went missing over the western Atlantic. He was one of 25 passengers, together with 6 crew, who were lost when the flight from Santa Maria Airport in the Azores failed to reach its destination of Kindley Field, Bermuda. Star Tiger's sister aircraft G-AGRE Star Ariel also disappeared over the western Atlantic, with the loss of all 7 crew and 13 passengers, while flying from Bermuda to Kingston Airport, Jamaica, the following year.
• 1949 – Jean Spangler (26), American dancer, model and bit-part actress, disappeared in October 1949 from Los Angeles, California. Last seen by her sister-in-law before going to meet her ex-husband. Two days later her purse was found near the entrance gate to Griffith Park in Los Angeles.