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The word End Credits. Presumed to have crash landed somewhere along the route, a five day effort began by both Chilean and Argentine search teams, including fellow BSAA pilots, yet no trace of the aircraft or its passengers were found. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. 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 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. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space [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. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with More interestingly, the morse code for STENDEC is only one character off from instead spelling VALP, which is almost the call sign for the closest airport to Valparaiso, 110km northwest of Santiago. SCTI is the international airline code for Los Cerrillos Airport, and AR is a commonly used prosign for the word OUT, or End Of Transmission. The accident aircraft, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, was built as constructor's number 1280 for the Argentine Ministry of Supply to carry thirteen passengers, and first flew on 27 November 1945. [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". 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. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Thanks SK. Using the When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. - /. This would have explained the suddenness of its disappearance, and the fact that large pieces of wreckage had not been spotted during a wide air and land search. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. When flying at high altitudes, oxygen molecules are harder to inhale, and if a plane is not pressurized, it can lead to hypoxia, a condition which can impair or even completely destroy your ability to function. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. The the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never . Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. 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. A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. 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). 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. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! 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. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' The Theory Perhaps with more time, an additional transmission would have been sent explaining STENDEC, but, as things stand, while Some Try Explaining, Nobody Deciphers Enigmatic Code. However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? 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. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. As one of the pilots was dying he kept repeating, "We passed Curico," still bewildered as to how they had ended up in the peaks. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example (STENDEC). three times.STENDEC/Stardust / - / . The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. This would have explained the suddenness of its disappearance, and the fact that large pieces of wreckage had not been spotted during a wide air and land search. 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. For over fifty years the disappearance ranked as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the aviation world, and a lively and inventive mythology grew up around the incident. between the letters). 1 Pan Am Flight 7 / -. course. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? Before this message a series of entirely routine messages had been One of those two people was Nando Parrado and in his book "Miracle in the Andes" he describes that their flight also left in poor, inadvisable conditions. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) Why would They were flying across the Andes from east to west the pilots thought they were much further west than they were and turned north straight into the mountains and collided with a peak. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. A This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. Possibly because he was finishing know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. The radio operator misheard the signal. 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. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. Background begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code Procedures for sending and receiving messages were and are standardised whether you are services or civilian operators.Regarding the 'mystery' surrounding Harmer's last transmission.Firstly, an operator always has in front of them a written copy of the message being sent. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. (STENDEC) People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. . STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie Weird December 2010 Views: 31,881 Tweet 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. 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. 2023 Little Green Footballs A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. 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. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code | When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, it's unusual last message leaves the world with a 70 year old mystery still waiting to be solved. communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was Their curse was too much sky. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC 1947 Official Accident Report Below is the 1947 official accident report describing what was known at the time about Stardust, its crew, and its mysterious disappearance. . With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. in other words 'EC' without the space. STENDEC is the same Morse as SCTI AR if you don't consider any spacing between characters. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. 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. STENDEC/STAR DUST Theory The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and It has to be this one in my opinion. 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. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. - / . Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. The airliner will stay lost for 51 years until 1998 when mountaineers find parts of the wreckage on Mount Tupungato 50 miles east from the planes destination, Santiago. State Sen. Nathan Dahm (R-OK) has penned several bills loosening gun restrictions, including the nation's first anti-red flag MUNICH (AP) The United States has determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that justice must be served to the perpetrators. . But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. All Rights Reserved To put it simply, Cook chose the worst route possible in consideration of the conditions, which more than likely played a key role in the planes disappearance. up sign. 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. (ETA LATE) Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information / -.-. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. between the letters). Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. of the station they wish to contact. . STENDEC Solved by John L. Scherer. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. - . The fate of the British South American Airways flight, which disappeared in a snowstorm on August 2 1947 en route from Buenos Aires to Chile, was for decades surrounded by rumours of escaping Nazi spies and stolen gold. / - / . On this ill-fated day, a British South American Airways airliner called Star Dust carrying six passengers and five crew members crashed during its journey from Buenos Aires to Santiago. . Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. And why not In 1998, over 50 years after the disappearance of Stardust, a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, one of the highest mountains in the Andes and roughly 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine of the Lancastrian. 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. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. the ETA. Explanations based in Morse code A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). That was Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. In Morse code, determining accurate spacing between characters is vital to properly interpret the message; "STENDEC" uses exactly the same dot/dash sequence as "SCTI AR" (the four-letter code for Los Cerrillos Airport in Santiago, "over"). 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. It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. A person suffering hypoxia may possibly make the same mistake consistently three times in succession but is very unlikely to create an anagram of the intended word. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? [6] Marta Limpert, a German migr, was the only passenger known for certain to have initially boarded Star Mist in London[7] before changing aircraft in Buenos Aires to continue on to Santiago with the other passengers. 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. selection of the ideas. 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. No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. British . Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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! My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. 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. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. . All rights reserved. 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. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. / / -.-. STENDEC and STAR DUST are coded similarly in both English and Morse code, causing some to theorize that Harmer sent one when he actually meant the other. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. Although the larger mystery was finally solved, many still wonder how experienced pilots (there were three on board) lost control of the aircraft in a seemingly manageable situation. Using the Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes. [13], A 2000 Argentine Air Force investigation cleared Cook of any blame, concluding that the crash had resulted from "a heavy snowstorm" and "very cloudy weather", as a result of which the crew "were unable to correct their positioning". 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. 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. 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. For one, call signs for all BSAA flights in the 1940s began with star. Its unlikely that this would have been a point of confusion for Harmer, especially given that STENDEC wasnt a word. / . This gives us the very Discussion Morse '._._.' Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! This one individual in particular mentioned that he asked his 80 year old father, who remembers hearing the phrase being used often by the radio operator on his ship when he served in the Merchant Marine during WWII. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. . The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? in other words 'EC' without the space. They hadn't passed Curico. This theory is an easy one to break apart. STENDEC and Stardust have Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. It has therefore been suggested that, in the absence of visual sightings of the ground due to the clouds, a navigational error could have been made as the aircraft flew through the jet streama phenomenon not well understood in 1947, in which high-altitude winds can blow at high speed in directions different from those of winds observed at ground level. Furthermore, aircraft were usually referred to by their registration, which in Stardusts case was G-AGWH, rather than the more romantic monikers the airline had given them. "STENDEC" in Morse code is: / - / . Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the one mystery still remains. An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. _. / - (Descent) Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. As the compressed snow turned to ice, the wreckage would have been incorporated into the body of the glacier, with fragments emerging many years later and much further down the mountain. Thanks SK. by John . Imagine your last communication with someone being the equivalent of covfefe and it turning into a mystery that people puzzle over for decades, I still have no clue what covfefe means and suspect people will puzzle over it for decades, British South American Airways (BSAA), the operator of the doomed aircraft, was a particularly unfortunate air carrier. Mystery solved. Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. But there are no old, bold pilots. The actual Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. 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). the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely The theory is the pilot mistakenly plotted their course as if they were leaving from a different airport, and it led to them crashing into a mountain.