operator to scramble the message. [1][2], The last Morse code message sent by Star Dust was "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 HRS STENDEC". It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Background destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. message from Star Dust -. Almost a year after the loss of Star Tiger, her sister aircraft, Star Ariel, also vanished in good weather while on a flight from Bermuda to Jamaica. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was A Spanish magazine about UFOs appropriated STENDEK as its title, and at least one U.S. comic book illustrated the disappearance of the Stardust, pondering the meaning of STENDEC for its fascinated readers. A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown. / - /. . The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. three times.STENDEC/Stardust STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) - LGF Pages ntskeptics.org The "STENDEC mystery," referring to the cryptic message sent by a Lancastrian airliner before it vanished in the Andes, is a staple of the UFO culture. The crew of Stardust, including the radio operator Harmer, had all served in the RAF previously during WWII, so if this phrase is true, then it is possible that they were all familiar with the term and used it in a time of crisis. Submissions should outline a mystery and provide a link to a more detailed review of the case such as a Wiki article or news report. The STENDEC Puzzle Ever since BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust vanished on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, the ending of its final transmission - STENDEC - has continued to puzzle experts and amateurs alike. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go. The last word in Star Dust's final Morse code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes before its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained. Morse '._._.' The searchers discovered one propeller, its tips scarred and bent backward, indicating that the prop had been revolving when the Lancastrian plowed into the Tupungato glacier. A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled Then nothing. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . (STENDEC). Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. / -. The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting Despite Stardusts fate now fully resolved, the mystery of STENDEC is still argued to this day, with no definitive conclusion on what Dennis Harmer was intending to communicate that evening. But in the absence of A mix of misinterpretation and a lack of recent knowledge led to the operator instead hearing the term STENDEC, which, combined with the disappearance of the plane, led to one of South Americas greatest aviation mysteries. by aliens. "[12], A set of events similar to those that doomed Star Dust also caused the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972 (depicted in the film Alive), although there were survivors from that crash because it involved a glancing blow to a mountainside rather than a head-on collision. Bennett, commander of the Royal Air Force's [Pathfinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF) during the Second World War -- it developed an unenviable record for unexplained disappearances of its airliners in flight. On August 2, 1947, the Stardust, a Lancastrian III passenger plane with eleven people on board, was almost four hours into its flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile. Their curse was too much sky. [4], Star Dust's last flight was the final leg of BSAA Flight CS59, which had started in London on an Avro York named Star Mist on 29 July 1947, landing in Buenos Aires on 1 August. out, but seems unlikely. Five months after the episode described by OP, one of BSAA's Avro Tudor IV aircraft, Star Tiger, with 31 persons on board, vanished on a flight from Lisbon to Bermuda with an intermediate fuel stop in the Azores. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. STENDEC." That was the last communication sent in Morse code on August 2, 1947, by an Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft flying for British South American Airways from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile. It was also noted that, despite being a pilot for four years and accruing a total flying time of nearly 2,000 hours for both the RAF and the BSAA, this was Cooks first flight across the Andes as Captain. the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. . (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. Several body parts were found, mostly intact due to being frozen in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA testing as passengers of Star Dust. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. / -.. / . It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. it as an acronym or an abreviation yields little fruit. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Ice crystals accumulated on a probe, causing it to give incorrect speed readings and the autopilot system to disengage. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? [12], A report by an amateur radio operator who claimed to have received a faint SOS signal from Star Dust initially raised hopes that there might have been survivors,[11] but all subsequent attempts over the years to find the vanished aircraft failed. [18], Star Dust is likely to have flown into a nearly vertical snowfield near the top of the glacier, causing an avalanche that buried the wreckage within seconds and concealed it from searchers. A WGBH-Boston NOVA: Vanished (2001) program about the crash commented: Some of the six passengers on board seemed to have stepped straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. They included a Palestinian businessman with a sizable diamond sewn into the lining of his jacket; a German migr, Marta Limpert, returning to Chile with the ashes of her dead husband; and a British courier carrying diplomatic correspondence. They included Palestinian, Swiss, German and British passengers, a diplomatic courier and the crew: the pilot Reginald Cooke, 44; first officer Norman Hilton Cooke, 39; radiotelegraph operator Dennis Harmer, 27; second officer Donald Checklin, 27; and Iris Evans. Mysteries Of Flight: The Curious Case Of Pan Am Flight 914, Fond Farewell to a Titan: The Antonov An-225, Plane & Pilot Survey: Pilots and Politics, Accident Brief: Piper PA28R Crash In Georgia. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio Some of you watching may have already noticed that when you rearrange the letters in STENDEC, youre able to form the word DESCENT. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. . . Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. It wasnt until 1998 that a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, approximately 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon wreckage from the crash. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. / -. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. British . In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. For other uses, see, Discovery of wreckage and reconstruction of the crash, "Pilot finally cleared over mystery of 1947 mountain plane disaster", "Aircraft operated by British South American Airways", "DNA clues reveal 55-year-old secrets behind crash of the Star Dust", "Vanished: 1947 Official Accident Report", "I Am Alive: The Crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571", Ministry of Civil Aviation official report on the accident, 1948, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Star_Dust_accident&oldid=1142432641, This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 10:00. Using the Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. STENDEC - Solved?! The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. I couldnt find a source for this, but according to theorists online, this was a known phrase for allied fighter pilots in WWII for if their plane was about to crash land. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. 1. It would have been Whilst this possibility lends true to the first half of the word, the rest does not match up with this theory, and considering it was sent through and received the exact same three times over, its hard to imagine this error occurring on both ends. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based A WGBH-Boston NOVA: Vanished (2001) program about the crash commented: Some of the six passengers on board seemed to have stepped straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. They included a Palestinian businessman with a sizable diamond sewn into the lining of his jacket; a German migr, Marta Limpert, returning to Chile with the ashes of her dead husband; and a British courier carrying diplomatic correspondence. I personally believe that the word was a misinterpretation of the code, but theories span far and wide on what the now notorious phrase stood for. / -.. / . The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. Plane and Pilot builds on more than 50 years of serving pilots and owners of aircraft with the goal of empowering our readers to improve their knowledge and enthusiasm for aviation. The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the For a more detailed explanation / -. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. In 1950, one of these, Star Girl, had no fewer than 83 passengers and crew crammed into it on a charter flight from Dublin to Llandow, a low-cost airport near Cardiff in Wales. It was also, as OP says, unpressurized, so that passengers as well as crew had to breathe supplemental oxygen through masks while above 15,000 feet. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was The Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris Joel is a founding member and the resident keyboard wizard for Umphreys McGee AND a long-time Phish fan! Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. [17] One of the pilots recalled that "we had all been warned not to enter cloud over the mountains as the turbulence and icing posed too great a threat. Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. just confirmed his time of arrival? When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from Investigators concluded that the crew, flying in a snowstorm against a powerful jet stream, had become confused about their location and believed they were closer to Santiago than they actually were. An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. All Rights Reserved was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example radio operator and/or receiver in Santiago, and playfulness on behalf . As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . - /. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites, Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given After getting the boot from BSAA, he launched his own fly-by-night airline, Airflight Ltd., using two Tudors he'd picked up cheaply and one of which he flew himself. message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. Already a member? "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago When Harmer and his crew sent their final message to Los Cerrillos, they had no idea that they were seconds away from a fatal impact. A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" Sometimes human error leads to some of the most interesting mysteries but generally when you hear hooves you want to think horses before you think zebras. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. With that in mind, and the fact that the operator himself mentioned that Harmer sent the message extremely quickly, its likely that this was the message after all. in other words 'EC' without the space. These included suggestions that the radio operator, possibly suffering from hypoxia, had scrambled the word "DESCENT" (of which "STENDEC" is an anagram); that "STENDEC" may have been the initials of some obscure phrase or that the airport radio operator had misheard the Morse code transmission despite it reportedly having been repeated multiple times. in other words 'EC' without the space. In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final There's still no explanation for the loss of Star Ariel, but so many things went wrong with Tudors on such a regular basis that its disappearance is hardly to be wondered at. The mystery became an obsession of the innumerable "Bermuda Triangle" crackpots, who attribute almost all unexplained losses of ships and aircraft within a 500,000 square-mile area to paranormal activity. With the disappearance occurring less than a month after the now infamous Roswell incident, unexplained events such as a vanishing plane were easily connected to the possibility of alien interference. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. The International Civil Aviation Organisation had only recently implemented the airline code for Los Cerrillos just four months prior to the event in April 1947, so its more than possible that the airports radio operator was not yet familiar with the term and failed to recognise it. And why not -, Press J to jump to the feed. Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. - /. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before This sentence now makes perfect sense, with Harmer announcing that they were expected to arrive in Santiago at 17:45 hours, at Los Cerrillos Airport. . This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. Well that was fascinating and, while kinda sad I'm not going to pretend is not kinda funny hearing you explain all the ways that the Tudor sucked shit. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common What did the crew of BSAA Flight CS-59 mean when they sent and repeated the cryptic message STENDEC via Morse code seconds before crashing? - / . With morse code being a binary combination of dots and dashes, something as simple as one or two incorrect inputs can make a drastic difference to how a word is interpreted. / . The Theory The theory about it meaning emergency crash landing is interesting but given a lack of sources outside of a few people telling anecdotes I don't know how believable it is. Another noticeable similarity is that the word STENDEC has some resemblance to the word STARDUST, and perhaps Harmer misspelled the name of the aircraft in morse code. Whilst many accepted that the fate of Stardust and its crew had been settled, the absence of a wreckage, along with the mysterious circumstances surrounding its final message, lead to widespread speculation, with theories spanning from sabotage to extraterrestrial in nature. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy The public, still reeling from the now-famous flying saucer incident in Roswell, New Mexico, a few weeks earlier, went wild with theories, speculating everything from sabotage to alien abduction. As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. The between the letters). message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. After this, British civil aviation authorities withdrew the Tudor's certification to carry passengers, and the few remaining examples concluded their operational service as cargo and tanker aircraft. full message sent at 17.41 hrs was as follows: It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. course. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. STENDEC - Solved?! Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? The flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. On August 2, 1947, the crew of a British South American Airways (BSAA) Lancastrian, an airliner version of the Avro Lancaster WWII bomber, sent a cryptic message. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code Spektator 13K subscribers Subscribe 20K views 1 year ago #Documentary #Mystery When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, its. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. Investigators concluded that the crew, flying in a snowstorm against a powerful jet stream, must have become confused about their location and believed they were closer to their destination then they actually were, with the crash being the result of a controlled descent into terrain. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie Weird December 2010 Views: 31,837 ntskeptics.org The "STENDEC mystery," referring to the cryptic message sent by a Lancastrian airliner before it vanished in the Andes, is a staple of the UFO culture.
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