page_title: Disappearance of Alejandro Bello
section_title: Disappearance
hierarchical_section_title: Disappearance of Alejandro Bello / Biography / Disappearance
caption_attribution_description: Español: El teniente 1º Alejandro Bello Silva (*1887 - ¿1914?), fue un aviador chileno que se extravió en 1914, mientras efectuaba una prueba necesaria para obtener el título de piloto militar.
context_page_description: First Lieutenant Alejandro Bello Silva was a Chilean aviator who disappeared during his qualifying flight for certification as a military pilot.
context_section_description: In the pre-dawn hours of 9 March 1914, Lieutenant Bello was in the Lo Espejo aerodrome, where he was to take an examination to earn the designation Military Pilot. Bello and two companions had to complete the circuit from Lo Espejo to Culitrín, to Cartagena, and back to Lo Espejo, in the central region of Chile, in order to pass the exam. The total distance of the flight was 111 miles, and should have taken two hours to complete.
  On the first attempt, the aviators had to return to base due to near-zero visibility caused by heavy fog. Bello damaged his aircraft during the landing, and switched to an 80 horsepower (60 kW) Sánchez-Besa biplane (tail number 13, nicknamed "Manuel Rodríguez") for the second attempt. He took off together with one companion and the instructor, who had to make an emergency landing for refueling. Nevertheless, Bello continued his route and was lost among the clouds.
  At 09:30 hours, they undertook flight and an hour later Bello and Ponce, they were landed in Culitrín, where they agreed to wait for the conditions to continue their flight to Cartagena and then return to Lo Espejo.
  Bello and Ponce were in Culitrín waiting for the south wind to cease, a situation that occurred around 16:00 hours, times when they checked the engines of their planes and Bello at 4:45 p.m. and Ponce at 16:50 they en route to Cartagena.
  In his subsequent report on the performance of his test, Lieutenant Ponce says:
  "At 4.55 p.m. after a 10-minute test flight I departed about 5 minutes after Lieutenant Bello heading for Cartagena with a strong wind from the coast and a thick mist that prevented it from seeing clearly. Lieutenant Bello didn't miss a moment of sight, and at 6.20 p.m. about 20 or 30 kilometers to E. de Melipilla vi returning. I thought the clouds were too high, because we were shipping about 1900 meters away and I thought I'd do what I assumed Lieutenant Bello would do, go down to continue the road under the clouds. Lieutenant Bello was lost in sight and in the impossibility of continuing I went directly to the O. the wind blowing led me to very close to Angostura that I recognized for being very close to her."
  At the school, Ponce claimed to have seen Lieutenant Bello flying in front of him, so he was presumed to have landed somewhere along the route, as information had also been received that he had landed in a camp near Llo-Lleo and was out of danger. However, the information was wrong.
caption: Bello in his aircraft
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:05 16:04:47", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6905", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "951", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "606"}