message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. [citation needed], Mistakenly assuming their ground speed to be faster than it really was, the crew might have deduced that they had already safely crossed the Andes, and so commenced their descent to Santiago, whereas in fact they were still a considerable distance to the east-north-east and were approaching the cloud-enshrouded Tupungato Glacier at high speed. As might be inferred from that lineage, it was uncomfortable, noisy, and cramped. The Chilean operator did mention how Harmers messages came through unusually fast, so there is every chance that some letters were incorrectly spaced and caused confusion to the control tower. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". So mysterious was The For example, if you lose the first two dots in the word STENDEC, and rearrange the spacing of the letters, the word could instead be interpreted as ETA LA(E)TE, albeit with a rogue E thrown into the mix. were all supplied with oxygen. / / . With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. ETA LATE sounds like a reasonable message a plane would communicate to a control tower, although in the context of the whole sentence, it contradicts the first part completely, as they were only four minutes away from their destination. [10], In 1998, two Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungatoabout 60mi (100km) west-southwest of Mendoza, and about 50mi (80km) east of Santiagofound the wreckage of a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, along with twisted pieces of metal and shreds of clothing, in the Tupungato Glacier at an elevation of 15,000ft (4,600m). Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information . 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. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, Other explanations for the appearance Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. The names of the victims were known. Among the grisly remains scattered over a radius of more than a mile on the glacier were three human torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a hand with fingers outstretched. Discussion In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. Operating as Flight CS-59, aka Star Dust, the four-engine aircraft was en route from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, with 11 people on board. makes clear, modern science has answered most of the questions surrounding the 1947 crash of the civilian aircraft Stardust in the Andes east of Santiago, Chile. Already a member? a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. I was a radio operator aboard an R.A.N. 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 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. 2023 Little Green Footballs / -.-. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. 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. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. . [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. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. Thanks SK. / -. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. most of the mysteries surrounding Stardusts disappearance, But before that, to help understand the This gives us the very Discussion It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. three times.STENDEC/Stardust The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. Using the In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. 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. Whilst its possible that STENDEC could mean any one of these phrases, theres nothing definitive I can find which suggests that this phrase ever meant anything previously, making it more unlikely that this word was used intentionally at all. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. Mystery solved. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. full message sent at 17.41 hrs was as follows: Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. . [11], In 2000, an Argentine Army expedition found additional wreckageincluding a propeller and wheels (one of which had an intact and inflated tyre)and noted that the wreckage was well localised, a fact which pointed to a head-on impact with the ground, and which also ruled out a mid-air explosion. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. The Army unit also discovered that the wheels on the plane were in an upward position, so the crew had not attempted an emergency landing. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] 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. [1][2], The last Morse code message sent by Star Dust was "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 HRS STENDEC". / - /. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Ball lightning doesn't happen very often, so it hasn't been recorded under natural conditions. The site had been difficult to reach. 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. Background (STENDEC) Why would the operator say end? So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. Believers of this theory claim it stood for something like, Stardust tank empty, no diesel, expected crash, or, Santiago tower, emergency, now descending, entering cloud. Experts on Morse code are quick to call hogwash on this theory, however, saying that the crew would have never cryptically abbreviated an important message. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. Each letter in morse code consists of a number of unique dots and dashes, so to scramble a word like descent in such a way is highly unlikely, especially three times in succession. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the STENDEC - Solved?! Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled. 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. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. A few years later, more debris was found on the mountain, suggesting that the plane had made a head-on impact with the ground due to the close proximity and condition of the wreckage. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. It's possible that the desire to descend as soon as possible to a level at which the passengers could breathe normally may have factored into Star Dust's premature departure from a safe crossing altitude. . For a more detailed explanation SAR But my maternal great . Her sisters, boyfriend and sons knew nothing of her illness until suddenly, during a family gathering in October 2018 at a diner in Reading The Online Photographer lead me to this article. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved 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. - . The Lancastrian was an unpressurized aircraft, meaning that the crew and passengers could have been subject to hypoxia had their oxygen system failed, and so some suggest that this may have led to Harmer sending parts of his final message in a confused state. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. 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. In morse code, there are various short-hand acronyms and abbreviations which help convey much longer messages quickly. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. "[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. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Didn't the test Tudor flight crash because the aileron controls had been reversed (e.g trying to roll right rolled the aircraft left) or am I thinking of a different British test aircraft crash. / -.-. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, STENDEC - The Worlds Most Mysterious Morse Code, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF). Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? [10], The staff of the BBC television series Horizonwhich presented an episode in 2000 on the Star Dust disappearancereceived hundreds of messages from viewers proposing explanations of "STENDEC". . Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. 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. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. Discussion . No distress transmission was received; the last broadcast from the aircraft was a routine position check, about two hours before it should have reached its destination. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. / -.. / . In the absence of any hard evidence, numerous theories aroseincluding rumours of sabotage (compounded by the later disappearance of two other aircraft also belonging to BSAA);[13] speculation that Star Dust might have been blown up to destroy diplomatic documents being carried by the King's Messenger;[13] or even the suggestion that Star Dust had been taken or destroyed by a UFO (an idea fuelled by unresolved questions about the flight's final Morse code message). All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. Ball lightning. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. Then four years ago, several Argentinians climbing Mount Tupungato stumbled across part of a Rolls Royce engine, fragments of fuselage and strips of bleached clothing. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common / -.-. 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. Sign in to continue reading. On board the British South American Airways flight were five crew members and six passengers, including the Captain, Commander Reginald J. Cook, an experienced and former RAF pilot during World War II. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the /- (ST) Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. 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 more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. Any explanation for STENDEC depends on an understanding of Morse Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. between the letters). The weather on the day consisted of snowstorms in the Andes Mountains with moderate to intense turbulence, whilst visual contact with the ground would have been extremely low and unfit for flying.
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