[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. INITIALS 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. It is thought that the plane may have caused an avalanche upon impact, resulting in the snowy burial of the aircraft, concealing it from searchers whilst at the same time preserving it for its eventual discovery years later. 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. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. 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. Yet one mystery remains:. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never The site had been difficult to reach. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. Then nothing. As it turns out, STENDEC is an anagram of the word "descent." One popular theory is that the crew, flying at 24,000 feet in an unpressurized aircraft, suffered from hypoxia. The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. / - / . On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. It was firstly noted that the Trans-Andean journey from Buenos Aires to Santiago can be taken via three routes: The Central (and most direct) via Mendoza, The Southern via Planchon and The Northern via San Juan. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? [3][pageneeded], Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! 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. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of A popular one is that STENDEC is an anagram of DESCENT and the letters were re-arranged due to Harmer suffering from the effects of hypoxia. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. / - / . Don Bennett, its manager, had already been fired by then, partly as a result of his insistence to all and sundry that Star Tiger was a victim of sabotage and that the British Government, for unknown but nefarious reasons of its own, was covering up the crime. Several body parts were also discovered, most of them intact due to being preserved in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA to be the passengers and crew of Stardust. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code . 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. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who in other words 'EC' without the space. Any explanation for STENDEC depends on an understanding of Morse In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. UFO magazine. Outside of the music world, Joel is a best-selling author, releasing The Realists Guide to a Successful Music Career, which features Kris Williams is a lesbian, and that means she wont be seeing her son anytime soon. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. The flight itself was the last leg of a journey which originated from London, with the trip across the Atlantic taking place in a York aircraft, transferring to the Stardust for the crossing of the Andes Mountains. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. / -.. / . The Theory 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 Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" 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. (ETA LATE) End Credits. And why not The theory The Theory / / . this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. Blast From the Past: The North Texas Skeptic, May 1999, Republican Senator Claims 'The Left' Will Start a Civil War Unless Federal Highway System Abolished, A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline, Popular Instagram Photographer Revealed as AI Fraud, Cutting IRS Funding Is a Gift to Americas Wealthiest Tax Evaders, Record 6,542 Guns Intercepted at US Airport Security in 22, Interview With Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm, US: Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine, Joel Cummins Umphreys McGee Keyboard Rig - January 2023 [VIDEO], Oklahoma Judge Transfers Lesbian Moms Parental Rights to Her Sons Sperm Donor. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? 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. 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. was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. [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. However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. 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. Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it Hence we have: - . STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. radio operator and/or receiver in Santiago, and playfulness on behalf Using the They may be similar, but it is still hard to imagine an experienced Background It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. the ETA. Very good writeup! aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the 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. Their discovery revived. Earlier this week Margaret Coalwood of Nottingham, now 70, was told that DNA extracted from blood samples taken from her last year had identified the remains of her cousin, Donald Checklin. The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. [10] The Chilean Air Force radio operator at Santiago airport described this transmission as coming in "loud and clear" but very fast; as he did not recognise the last word, he requested clarification and heard "STENDEC" repeated twice in succession before contact with the aircraft was lost. In fact, this conspiracy ran for so long that even a Spanish magazine published in the 1970s, which was dedicated to UFOs and the paranormal, named itself after the now infamous morse code. The site had been difficult to reach. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. The experienced crew of the "Stardust" apparently realized the plane was off course in a northerly direction (it was found eighty kilometers off its flight path), or they purposely departed from the charted route to avoid bad weather. It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. A 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. - . As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. 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. / - (Descent) All Rights Reserved At around 5:41pm, after transmitting routine communications to the plane as usual, the control tower at Los Cerrillos Airport in Santiago received this morse code message from Stardust: Perplexed by the final word in the telegram, the Chilean operator requested Stardusts radio officer, Dennis Harmer, to relay the message back to him, only to hear the same word, STENDEC, repeated loud and clearly twice in succession. It would have been know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of of the station they wish to contact. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. Neither men were taken to the jail. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. STENDEC and Stardust have Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. The In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. 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. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds 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 page has been archived and is no longer updated. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. The flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. Due to the poor visibility caused by the storm, its possible that the crew were unaware that their plane was on course to collide with the mountainside, and unknowingly plummeted the aircraft into the summit before eventually succumbing to the elements. . Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. operator to scramble the message. STENDEC. It would be the last anyone ever heard from Star Dust. 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! (STENDEC) The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. They were finally grounded in 1959, unsurprisingly after yet another ex-BSAA Tudor flew into a Turkish mountain, for reasons that remain unclear, killing all on board. The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! [10] It has also been suggested that World War II pilots used this seemingly obscure abbreviation when an aircraft was in hazardous weather and was likely to crash, meaning "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing". 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. The names of the victims were known. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was Its not even common practice for a plane to transmit its name at the end of a routine message, so this theory also unfortunately falls flat. 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. It has to be this one in my opinion. Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. (These individuals ignore the fact that almost any other triangle of a similar size, drawn anywhere else in the North Atlantic, would yield a similar if not greater number of disappearances.). Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. [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). Scherer, J. All further calls were Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. 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. 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. Firstly, despite it being easy to rearrange STENDEC quickly in English text, doing the same in morse code is much more complex and highly implausible due to the nature of the language. / -.. / . An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. code. [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. 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. The problem here though is that, even if this was the case, it would be unusual for Harmer to use a phrase which was not internationally recognised, and only specifically known to allied participants of the war. 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). This gives us the very Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport 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. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. [16] If the airliner, which had to cross the Andes mountain range at 24,000 feet (7,300m), had entered the jet-stream zonewhich in this area normally blows from the west and south-west, resulting in the aircraft encountering a headwindthis would have significantly decreased the aircraft's ground speed. Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). (STENDEC) attention, and another signing off. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. 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. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, - / . 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. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. 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. On Saturday 2nd August 1947, at around 1:45pm, an Avro Lancastrian Mk.III passenger plane known as Stardust departed from Buenos Aires, Argentina to make a roughly 3 hour 45 minute trip to Santiago, Chile. Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared 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. 2023 Little Green Footballs losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. 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. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. on initials. The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. 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. 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. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. 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. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? name at the end of a routine message. Morse '._._.' Explanations based in Morse code An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. 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. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated They were so far off course they were trapped in the mountains struggling to survive for 72 days before they were rescued, and then only because of an incredible hike out of the mountains by two of the severely weakened survivors with no climbing gear or experience or any idea where they really were. 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. However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. - / . I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. _. 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. message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. 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. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! / -. 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. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? [9] This leg of the flight was apparently uneventful until the radio operator (Harmer) sent a routine message in Morse code to the airport in Santiago at 5:41 pm, announcing an expected arrival of 5:45 pm. For years it was thought to have been mistyped but it is now thought to be a second world war morse code acronym for: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-landing". simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). . But my maternal great . 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. [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. That was As only one young woman was on board, it was assumed to have been that of Iris Moreen Evans, a 26-year-old from the Rhondda valley.