Almost from the advent of aviation, there have been stories of disappearing aircraft. Preachers thundered about man’s magnificent flying machines being plucked from the air by the hand of God, retribution for defying the laws of gravity. A cottage industry has grown up around the myths, theories and counter-theories associated with, say, those many ‘disappearances’ in the Bermuda Triangle. One such story is closer to home: the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines MH370 somewhere over the Indian Ocean in March 2014.

Robert Macfarlane, Pelham Andrews, Nicholas Cannon and Eddie Muliaumaseali’i in State Opera South Australia’s Madeline Lee. Photo © Jason Vandepeer

Such misadventures have long fascinated purveyors of pulp ‘histories’ – look around the counters of airport bookshops – film directors, creators of television mini-series and even composers of opera.

Several decades ago now, the Australian composer John Haddock was drawn towards the tale of a US Air Force B-240 Liberator bomber that disappeared over the Libyan desert in April 1943. Its nine-member crew was thought lost under the sands but traces of their fate emerged with discoveries by geological teams from November 1958.

Haddock came to the story by means of a television mini-series, the...