VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Nevada Triangle

Posted on: April 28, 2025, 07:35h. 

Last updated on: April 28, 2025, 10:44h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

• Conspiracy theorists say the so-called “Nevada Triangle” is responsible for the disappearance of up to 2.000 planes over the past 60 years
• Experts believe the true number of crashes in the area is more likely between 100 and 500 aircraft
• Planes that crash in the area often go “missing” for years because the rough terrain makes finding crash sites difficult

Everyone’s heard of the Bermuda Triangle, that three-sided zone of terror where planes and ships go missing for no known reason in the Atlantic Ocean. Nevada has its own equally mythical place.

The Nevada Triangle traces out 25K square miles of desert in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Nevada and California — starting near Las Vegas at its southeastern point, extending to near Fresno at its southwestern point, and topping off the triangle with Reno at its northwestern point.

Here, according to a YouTube channel called The Why Files, “2,000 planes have been lost in the last 60 years.” Let’s start there.

That number seems quite high to me,” Dan Bubb, a former airline pilot and UNLV professor of aviation history, told Casino.org. “If there were that many crashes, I am not sure anyone in a small plane would fly over that area. My guesstimate would be somewhere between 100 and 500.

“The highest I would go is 1,000, which is a stretch.”

The Triangle’s Most Famous Victim

The most famous lost plane belonged to record-breaking aviator Steve Fossett, who crashed a single-engine Bellanca Super Decathlon about 65 miles from where he took off in Nevada’s Great Basin Desert on Sept. 3, 2007.

Since Fossett was such an expert pilot, conspiracy theorists like to connect his disappearance to his flight’s proximity (about 100 miles) to Area 51, where the government allegedly keeps all its UFOs.

But a two-year investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that Fossett’s plane crashed because of severe mountain downdrafts, according to a New York Times report.

Of course, that’s just the type of lie that the lamestream media would report, isn’t it?

“When it comes to mountain flying, especially with small planes, pilots have to be even more alert because the weather can change quickly depending on the stability of the air,” Bubb said. “There can be severe updrafts and downdrafts even on sunny days.

“That’s why getting a thorough weather briefing with a flight service station is so important, in addition to asking air traffic controllers if there are any pilot reports.”

Sorry, ‘The Why Files’ Fans

Severe updrafts and downdrafts are what sealed the fate of all so-called Nevada Triangle victims. They also included:

• Major Ross E. Mulhare, whose F-117A stealth fighter crashed into a mountain near Bakersfield during a training mission in 1986
• Charles Ogle, a Marine Corps-trained aviator who took off from Oakland in August 1964 and vanished en route to Las Vegas
• Second Lieutenants Robert Hester and Willis Turvey, whose B-24 bomber went missing on Dec. 5, 1943.

That last crash was not only the earliest documented in the so-called triangle, but also the costliest in number of lives. It killed not only Hester and Turvey but their four-man crew and eight of the soldiers dispatched to search for them. (Nine B-24s scoured the mountains, but only eight returned. The wreckage of the ninth would not be found until 12 years later.)

“I don’t think there is anything mysterious,” Bubb told us. “There also are many military flight zones in that area of the state, which means that unless pilots have gotten special permission to fly through them, they must stay out.

“This potentially could lead them to having to fly over this stretch of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to avoid the flight zones, and depending on the weather conditions, that could be a contributing factor to the plane crashes.”

As for why so many of the crashed planes are never found, that’s easy.

“Whenever a plane crashes in remote terrain, it can be very difficult for investigators and salvage crews to get there,” Bubb explained. “That is why hikers are often the first to see remnants of planes that have crashed.”

In the case of Hester’s plane, it was found by US Geological Survey researchers — but not until 17 years after it went down. It was discovered resting at the bottom of a High Sierra water body in July 1960.

That water body is now called Hester Lake.

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