The most common account of the origin of the lake's name is the one told, for instance, on the Changlang District's website (the district is in Arunachal Pradesh, India), which speculates that the name is due to the number of Allied aircraft (on their approach to The Hump) which crashlanded in it during World War II,[1] a story repeated in both the Indian press[2] and in Indian fiction.

[3] American sources repeat that account, for instance in the 2008 book by Brendan I. Koerner, Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II, about the life of Herman Perry, a U.S. serviceman working on the Ledo Road who fled into the jungle and ended up marrying into the Naga tribe (of which the Tangsa are a subset): "The Americans called it the Lake of No Return, on account of all the crashed planes concealed in its depths.

[citation needed] According to a third story, US Army soldiers, working on the Ledo Road, were sent to examine the lake and got trapped by the undergrowth and perished trying to escape.

"[8] The lake's reputation is advertised in hopes of making the area more attractive to tourists: "Who knows, the ‘Indian’ Bermuda Triangle might just turn out to be the next tourist-puller of the region.

"[2] In a recent article Joydeep Sircar has claimed to have solved the 'mystery' behind the Lake of No Return, which he visited in 2002.