A mixture of rain and sleet lashed the windscreen of the old Cortina as it drove slowly past the graveyard. The windscreen wipers could barely keep up with the onslaught. The headstones in Pennygown Cemetery barely visible as the car
headlights swept past. Dating from the early twelve hundreds, local law held that the penny Gown chapel and graveyard had once been home to unfriendly fairies, but malevelent fairies were the least of the driver's worries as he slowly inched his car as close as he dared to the edge of a steep drop off. It was Christmas Eve, and David Hewitt, manager of the nearby Glenforsa hotel on the Scottish isle of Mull, would have much preferred to be back at the hotel, sipping a dram of whiskey in
front of the pete fire. What brought him out was a growing concern for one of his guests, Peter Gibbs, a somewhat eccentric fifty five year old Englishman. Gibbs had arrived on malt a few days earlier with his girlfriend after discovering that the glen Forsa hotel boasted a rough but serviceable airstrip. Gibbs, an experienced pilot, had rented a plane from a local outlet to do some island hopping.
Gibbs had safely returned from one such trip earlier that day, but then, for some unfathomable reason, at nine p m. Gibbs jumped up and announced he was taking the plane up again for another short spin. Apparently, his last words before he taxied down the runway and took off into the darkly threatening skies were that if anything went wrong, it simply throttled back and jumped to safety. The weather deteriorated fast, the cold, blusty wind being replaced by a
steady gale, sleet, and icy rain. When Gibbs didn't return after a short time, everyone at the hotel began to wonder if the pilot had indeed experienced some kind of problem and ditched the plane into the sea, which was why hotel manager Hewitt was now maneuvering his Cortina back and forth on the cliff top to try and illuminate the choppy waters below, but he saw no sign of the plane. Peter Gibbs would never be heard from again in circumstances so strange that people had been trying to
unravel the mystery of what exactly happened to him. Ever since, you're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard McLane Smith. Norman Peter Gibbs was an expert flyer, serving as a young flight officer in the UK's Royal Air Force during the final years of World War II. A member of the
forty one Squadron, Gibbs became a seasoned spitfire pilot. On his final mission, he shot down four flying bombs before another plane crashed into the back of his Badly injured Gibbs spent three months in hospital with petrol in his wounds, having his kneecaps glued back together. As he would later say, doctors advised Gibbs to give up flying, but the pilot had a headstrong, impetuous streak, and despite everything he'd been through,
he continued to fly small planes after the war. The multi talented Gibbabbs was also an excellent violinist and played in several of Britain's major orchestras for a time, including the Philharmonia Orchestra. However, his musical career abruptly ended in nineteen fifty six when he fell out with the conductor while on a tour of the United States. Disillusioned with the world of classical music, in the following year of nineteen fifty seven, Gibbs sought solace in his other great passion, flying.
He joined the Surrey Flying Club and bought a Tiger Mooth biplane. Gibbs's son, Michael, was taken up in the biplane on numerous occasions, later describing his father as having a huge shock of dark hair and prominent eyebrows. He also recalled how his father was a bit of a dare devil who loved flying close to the ground. By nineteen seventy five, Gibbs, now fifty five, was the managing director of a successful property development company with a keen
interest in developing luxury hotels. On December twentieth of that year, Gibbs traveled via Ferry to the Isle of Mant, part of a group of islands known as the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. His plan was to visit available properties in the area with a view to buying one. While being based at the Glenfser Hotel. Its girlfriend, Felicity Granger, a thirty two year old university lecturer, accompanied him. Gibbs had been especially delighted to learn that the Glen
Forsa had its own airstrip. It was built a decade earlier to serve as the island's only runway for an air ambulance service. The facility was primitive, with a grassy surface and no runway lights. Classed as suitable for vs FR or visual flight rules only, it was never used in poor weather or after dark unless there was an emergency. Delighted by the possibility of flying around the islands, Gibbs got in touch with Ian Hamilton, a local man with a Cessna. He hired out from a place near Oben,
a short hop away on the mainland. The two seater light plane was in frequent civilian use at the time, designed for flight training, touring, and personal use. Only seven years old, it was painted red and white and was equipped with navigation and a radio communications system. When Hamilton asked to see Gibbs's private pilot's license, Gibbs told him he didn't have it with him because he hadn't anticipated flying on that trip, but this was a lie. Gibbs's
license had lapsed some time time before. On the morning of December twenty fourth, Gibbs and his girlfriend Felicity flew from Mull to Broadfoot on the Isle of Sky and spent a pleasant day viewing properties there. Flying back to the Glen Forsa Hotel, they enjoyed a full three course meal and a bottle of claret. With it being Christmas time, the hotel was lively. It was a popular place for the locals to drink and had a busy bar trade
with his guests. Cozily ensconced in the hotel lounge and bar, hotel manager Hewitt and his wife settled down in their own quarters to watch some Christmas Eve TV. They were startled when at around nine pm they heard the cesna's engine starting uplicity. Granger later said that Gibbs had suddenly declared that he was going to take the plane up on a short flight to see what a circuit of the air strip would be like at night. It said that hotel staff tried to dissuade him. There was no moon.
They said it was too dark and the wind was rising, but Gibbs, already wearing his flight suit brushed past the protesting staff regardless, strode out into the darkness and headed toward the plane. In the past, he'd landed planes by the light of candles in jam jars, the lack of runway lights wasn't a concern. Felicities scurried along behind with two powerful flashlights to help Gibbs see what he was
doing as he began his pre flight checks. Some later said that Gibbs seemed to take an unusually long time to get the plane ready. Hotel manager David Hewitt grabbed a pair of binoculars and said that he saw the plane's on board lights flicker on and off for a while.
There were also reports that around nine thirty p m. As the plane began to taxi down the runway, there appeared to be two flashlights moving independently on the primitive landing field, suggesting the possibility that there was a third person present that night. Coming loudly. The cessner lifted off and banked north over the sound of mul Assuming Gibbs was simply going to make a circuit around the hotel, guests and staff rushed upstairs to get a better view.
They then dimmed the hotel lights in the hope of better seeing the planes navigation lights. Meanwhile, as she later explained it, Felicity apparently stood with the flashlights to mark the end of the runway in preparation for Gibbs's return. The wind was picking up and it was getting colder
by the minute. Then Felicity watched with confusion as Gibbs's plane, instead of making the promised circuit, just continued to head east until its navigation lights disappeared completely behind some distant trees. After half an hour of waiting for Gibbs to return, Felicity was getting seriously cold. The breeze had turned into a biting westerly wind. Then rain and sleep had started
to fall. It was just after ten pm when she eventually gave up and rushed into the hotel bar, where she told a member of staff to contact the emergency services. By then, hotel manager Hewitt had already gone out and was up on the cliff top scanning the coastline, but there was nothing they could do. Gibbs had seemingly vanished into the stormy night. The police arrived later in the evening and began questioning hotel guests about the circumstances. Of
Gibbs's departure. The next day, emergency services mounted a huge search and rescue operation which extended over the Christmas holidays. RAF and Royal Navy helicopters scoured the island and the surrounding sea, while teams from the Mountain Rescue Service, forestry workers and many local volunteers searched not only the Isle of Man but adjacent parts of the Western Highlands. They worked tirelessly, battered by brutal storm weather that lasted three days.
TV and radio broadcasts across Scotland also alerted listeners to keep a lookout for Gibbs or the wreckage of its plane, but both had vanished without a trace, inevitably in lieu of any concrete answers. Numerous theories sprang up to explain the strange disappearance. The obvious assumption was that the plane had experienced mechanical difficulties, or that Gibbs had become disorientated,
crashed into the sea and sunk. A quick circuit of the airfield in the rapidly worsening weather with no runway lights was no easy task even for the experienced Gibbs, and perhaps the dimming of bar lights inside the hotel, had left the pilot unable to locate the airstrip? Or were they events part of a deliberate plan. Was Gibbs facing some sort of financial crisis, having a mental breakdown, or had he perhaps been diagnosed with an incurable illness
factors that might have driven him to commit suicide. Had Gibbs even been in the Cessna when it took off? And what about that claim that two flashlights were moving on the airstrip independently of each other. Had there been three people present that night, including someone other than Gibbs or felicity? Was it mere coincidence that two days previously there had been a robbery in Oban involving the theft
of diamonds. Two farmers near Oben claimed they heard a plane go overhead at around ten pm on Christmas Eve? Was this Gibbs and an accomplice, perhaps escaping with a planeload of jewels. As it turned out, there was enough fuel on board to make it to Ireland, which was just over an hour's flight time away. On April twenty first, nineteen seventy six, four months after Gibbs went missing, Isle of mul Shepherd Donald McKinnon was enjoying the vista on a cold and breezy day as he walked his dog
on a hillside overlooking the penny Gown Cemetery. He stopped for a moment to watch the clouds scudding low over the sound of mull skirting a thicket of larch. McKinnon's dog ran into the trees and suddenly started whining. When McKinnon strode over to comfort them, he saw the body of a man lying straddled across a fallen tree. The man was clearly dead and in an advanced state of decomposition,
mostly held together by his clothing. The body was facing due north, which seemed to suggest that whoever it was had been walking downhill and tripped over the fallen tree. The location was only four hundred feet up the hillside, not far from the road below, and less than a mile from the Glen Hotel. Having discovered the body, Shepherd
Donald McKinnon rushed home immediately and called the police. When they arrived, they had to cut a branch off the fallen tree where the corpse was wedged in order to remove it. It seemed almost certain it was Gibbs. Despite the decay, he was recognizable from his flight suit and boots. A subsequent forensic examination eventually confirmed it so. A few days after that, Gibbs his girlfriend Felicity arrived on the island. Hotel manager David Hewitt took her to see the spot
where the body had been found. As they looked down at the tree with its now hacked off branch, Hewitt noticed something in a patch of heather that had been depressed by the weight of the body. It was a piece of Gibbs's scalp. Hewitt scooped the remains into a plastic bag, saying nothing to Felicity as he did so. Far from settling the question of what had happened to Gibbs that fateful Christmas Eve, the discovery of his body only served to deepen the mystery. It seemed strange that
it had been in plain sight all this time. Why hadn't it been found during the search of the island by hundreds of volunteers who'd passed through the area, and where was the plane. While the theory of Gibbs running away to live a new life was instantly disproved, other rumors began to circulate. The body was sent for a post mortem in Glasgow, and the findings made things even stranger. Only minor injuries were found on the body, namely a small cut on one leg, likely acquired when Gibbs tripped
over the fallen tree. More serious injuries that would indicate he'd bailed out of a plane over land weren't present. The toxicology results also negative. And if Gibbs had bailed out over the sea or been forced to ditch in the water, why did forensic tests find no traces of salt from seawater or marine organisms on his body or in his clothing. It seemed to rule out any possibility
that Gibbs had been forced to swim to shore. Pologist's report concluded that Gibbs had simply died from exposure, with the condition of the body being consistent with having lain out in the elements for four months. But what if Gibbs had died somewhere else in some other manner, and his body had been placed on the tree. In June nineteen seventy six, Norman Peter Gibbs was finally laid to
rest A few months later. In October, Isle of Maul farmer Robert Duncan was walking along the coast two miles northwest of the Glenforter Hotel when he found a washed up aircraft tire and inner tube of the type used on Cessna aircraft. It would be a whole decade later when in September nineteen eighty six a local clam diver named George Foster claimed to be out diving when he discovered the wreckage of a small red and white aircraft with the same registration as the one Gibbs had been flying.
It was, he said, about one hundred feet deep in the water and a mile east of the Glenforsa hotel. Foster took photographs which he said showed an aircraft in pieces, with one of the wheels torn off and both wings missing. He also claimed that the cockpit doors were locked. However, his images of the apparent wreckage were so low quality it wasn't possible to definitively identify the plane either way. With everything he'd claimed to see, Foster expressed doubts about
the official version of events. He also wondered why the authorities didn't follow up his report and lift the wreckage to clear the matter up once and for all. It would only have taken a couple of airbags to bring it to the surface, he claimed was some kind of cover up going on. Retired engineering academic and author Alan Organ spent years investigating the circumstances around the last flight
of Norman Peter Gibbs. His tireless delving into the science of the various scenarios culminated in his twenty to fifteen book Unraveling the Great mull Air Mystery. The lack of salt water or other marine traces in gibbs Its clothing seemed to rule out the possibility that the pilot had
bailed into the sea. However, Organ spoke with a local diver who told him that there are places around the coast of Scotland where runoff from an adjacent hillside or stream concerned sometimes result in areas of the sea where fresh water effectively sits on top of the seawater in a layer up to five feet deep. If Gibbs had entered the water in such a spot, he might only
have been soaked with fresh water. The problem with that theory was that the stormy conditions the night of the disappearance made it likely that the choppy waters would mix the fresh water and seawater together. There was another possibility, having potentially laid out on the open hillside for four months. It's possible that Gibbs's body and clothing were simply washed clean by the rain, but all that would only mean something if Gibbs had even dished the plane in the
first place. Is it really possible that Gibbs had ditched the plane just offshore from Glenforth Hotel, managed to swim to shore, then attempted to walk back to the hotel, climbing the hill, only to then trip over the fallen tree in the dark, knocking himself unconscious and perishing from exposure. As the autopsy had concluded, Landing in seawater there was likely under fifty degrees fahrenheit without special gear typically results
in an average survival time of one hour. Assuming the swim to shore had been around three hundred yards, That distance would likely take around half an hour in flat calm conditions, longer in a heavy sea, but it was theoretically possible at least without succumbing to hypothermia and drowning. But there were other physiological challenges Gibbs would have had to face. When a body hits cold water, the initial gasp reflex followed by a steady heat loss typically causes
a person's mental processes to become confused. The swim would have been tough enough, and then if Gibbs had reached the shore, as he stood up, freezing cold and dripping wet, the blood in his chilled body would have drained rapidly from his brain, leading to more confusion. This phenomenon is so well known and potentially lethal that rescue crews always keep a person horizontal when they're pulled out of cold water on his own in the dark without the benefit
of a search and rescue team or a flashlight. Likely dazed, confused, and fairy cold, Gibbs then faced climbing the four hundred foot hill in front of him to get back to the hotel. This might have seemed like a sensible strategy. Once on the hill, you would have a good viewpoint
from which to orient himself. Author Alan Organ decided to put the theory to the test by attempting to make the climb himself, starting at the point on the shore directly below where gibbs His body had eventually been discovered. Even though he did this in broad daylight, equipped with dry walking boots and clothing, it was difficult going in many places there were vertical rock walls three to nine feet high with few breaks in between them, which would
also have been impossible to see in the dark. But why, Organ also wondered, would Gibbs crossed the perfectly decent paved road that led directly back to the hotel. Did human physiology again point to the answer. It wasn't just that it was dark and sleeting. With restricted visibility, Gibbs, his cold, wet feet would likely have lost all sensation. It's possible he didn't even realize that he was crossing a road
at all. Alan Organ eventually gave up on the climb, having taken forty minutes to get only halfway to where the body was found. His conclusion was a stunning one. According to Organ, Gibbs never actually made the climb because he wasn't in the plane when it took off that night. On her website fear off Landing dot com, retired engineer, experienced cesnapilot and mechanic Sylvia Wrigley has also examined all
the evidence, and her conclusions agree with Alan Organ. She too has proposed that Gibbs never left the ground on that last flight. Wriggly points out that Gibbs made a big show to everyone in the hotel that he was going to take the plane up in dangerous conditions, conditions that would have made it hard for onlookers to see
what was happening out on the runway. Why. Wriggly suggests that the Cessna's control column could have been fitted with what's known as a gust block, which would have disabled the column. Once under full power, the aircraft would be enabled to fly off the strip unaided. The Cessna would then simply drift according to the prevailing wind. Once the engine ran out of gas, it would stall and ditch wherever it happened to be. If that was somewhere out
over the Atlantic, no one would be the wiser. Was the plane fixed to fly unaided? Or was there a third person who snuck into the Cessna while Gibbs made his escape, piloting the plane to another airfield, then later having the plane dumped from a boat into the sea
to fake a crash. Did Gibbs get lost as he made his escape on foot over the hill behind the hotel, falling then dying of exposure, perhaps failing to rendezvous with accomplices waiting to help him steal away did those accomplices secretly go looking for him, only to find him dead, then retreat unable to alert the authorities without revealing their own culpability in the plot. Or did they turn against Gibbs and kill him before moving his corpse to its
final location to make it seem like an accident. It's tempting to build extravagant plots, but there is one last clue that might yet yield the answer. Before his private pilot's license had lapsed during a previous flying test, he'd been ordered to wear glasses at all times, Yet his girlfriend, Felicity Granger, stated that she'd never seen him wear glasses and that she was certain Gibbs wasn't wearing them when
he flew that last time. Perhaps having taken off impetuously and over confidently in the dark, with low visibility and impaired vision, Gibbs simply lost sight of the airstrip. Then, having crashed the plane into the sea, he'd managed to make it back to land, but in his effort to walk back to the hotel, he'd simply slipped and knocked
himself out before dying of exposure. Almost fifty years on, it seems likely that these questions will remain unanswered, and that the mull Air Mystery as it came to be known, will forever remain unexplained. Thank you as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so. Unexplained will be coming to YouTube very shortly in video form, so please watch out for future developments there. You can subscribe to the channel at
YouTube dot com Forward Slash at Unexplained Pod. You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok dot com Forward Slash at Unexplained Podcast. This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by me Richard McLain smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound recordedst in her own right. You can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram at in the Soundfield. Unexplained as an AV Club production podcast created by Richard McClain smith.
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
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