10 Strangest World War II Unsolved Mysteries

5. Pearl Harbor's Missing Pilot

Numerous tales of supposed "ghost planes" spotted during World War II exist, but perhaps the most freaky and spine-tingling is the P-40 fighter that allegedly returned to US soil a full year after the Pearl Harbor attack. On December 8, 1942, US radar picked up an unaccounted-for plane heading straight for American soil from Japan - with many fearing a new type of attack or diversion from the Axis Powers. In order to determine what was happening, two fighter planes flew up alongside the UFO and reported back that it was a P-40 not used since the defence of Pearl Harbor a year previously.

What was even more bizarre was that the landing gear was completely disabled, the plane had bullet holes in the side, and the pilot was covered in fresh blood and slumped forward in his cockpit. The pilot then waved moments before the flight nosedived towards the ground and crash landed. Yet when the wreckage was analysed, there was no trace at all of any pilot - and a diary was discovered that claimed the plane had come from the island of Mindanao, 1,300 miles into the Pacific Ocean.

If the pilot had crash-landed on the island following the Pearl Harbor attack, then how did he survive for a full year, how did he get the plane off the ground without a landing gear, why did he have fresh blood on him, and what happened to his body? Extremely freaky, isn't it?