Which Navy Constellation disappeared without a trace in 1958 during a radar patrol?

The WV-2 was the early warning version of the Super Constellation for the US Navy, later redesignated EC-121K. It carried a large search radar under the fuselage and a height-finder radar above it, along with a large crew of operators and technicians who watched the skies during patrols lasting many hours. The WV-2s formed radar barriers over the oceans to give early warning of any approach toward North America.

The aircraft with serial number 141310 had taken off from Naval Air Station Argentia, in Newfoundland, bound for Lajes Field on Terceira Island in the Azores, on a radar patrol. At some point west of Corvo Island, the westernmost island of the archipelago, all contact was lost. Searches found no trace of the aircraft or the 22 men aboard.

Since no wreckage was ever recovered, it was never possible to establish what caused the loss. The case ranks among the missing aircraft of US naval aviation history, and is one of several Constellations that vanished over the sea without a trace.

That same year the WV-2 fleet suffered other losses, but the loss of 141310 is the only one from 1958 in which the aircraft and crew disappeared entirely. Its story recalls the human cost of the Cold War's oceanic radar barriers, maintained day and night by piston aircraft over cold waters far from any coast.

Within the same family, the Navy also had the WV-3 version, later EC-121P, and in 1966 Lockheed converted 28 EC-121Ks and two EC-121Ps from the Navy into EC-121Rs for the Air Force, dedicated to a very different mission.