of the station they wish to contact. [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. 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. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . Something like "We're completely screwed.". / -.. / . [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. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? 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. attention, and another signing off. 'Star Dust' did, however, broadcast a last, cryptic, Morse message; "STENDEC", which was received by Santiago Airport at 17:41 hrs - just four minutes before it's planned landing time. If so, according to their timings, they had already passed Los Cerrillos, where they could have safely landed as intended, so this doesnt seem to make much sense either. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. between the letters). To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting 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. 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. But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. / - / . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa_EU5_gWrA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Star_Dust_accident#cite_note-SAR_Technology_-_Aviation_Cold_Case_Response-22, https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/a-pilots-last-words-stendec/, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/stendec.html, https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/vanished.shtml, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/02/05/stendec-mystery/, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/sep/06/owenbowcott1v, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/08/2, http://www.sartechnology.ca/sartechnology/ST_STENDEC_ColdCase.htm, http://www.ntskeptics.org/2010/2010december/december2010.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/sep/06/owenbowcott1. / / . Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. / -.-. message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. /-.-. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion 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. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. 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. It is now believed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the (then poorly understood) jet stream. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. 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. 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. So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final . STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . Five of the eight British victims have been identified. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Below we include a Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. 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. The Theory some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting 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. 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). Scherer, J. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. The Morse for AR is.- /.-. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name Several people have pointed out that Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. / -.. / . Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. 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. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. That's also how Carole Lombard died. 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. The were all supplied with oxygen. Their discovery revived interest in solving the mystery of what had happened to Flight CS59 and its 11 passengers and crew. Bennett finished his life as a supporter, and occasional candidate, for a variety of xenophobic and extremist political parties -- a sad end for one of the world's greatest pilots and air navigators of the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory All rights reserved. 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. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. Then nothing. - / . 2023 Little Green Footballs - / . 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. 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 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. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. Both in London and in Buenos Aires, the pilot, Reginald Cook, had been briefed not to take this option if bad weather prevailed, but despite this advice, Cook had chosen to fly Stardust along this central route. When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. [8], Star Dust left Buenos Aires at 1:46 pm on 2 August. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? 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. The radio operator misheard the signal. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. selection of the ideas. The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. 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. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. 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. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. / - /. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. / -.. / . Whilst it's certainly a bizarre coincidence, especially given the circumstances, the theory goes that Harmer was trying to inform the control tower that the plane was going down. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only Why would Using the Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. 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. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. The theory In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. All Rights Reserved Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. 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. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes All Rights Reserved Already a member? The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in - - . Discussion An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. The problem? STENDEC - Solved?! out very fast. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. The names of the victims were known. French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. up sign. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. - / . close to an understanding of the message. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. Whilst its true that the Lancastrian was unpressurised, the crew For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? 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. 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. Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. But my maternal great . Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? (STENDEC). / -. - . There are theories that STENDEC was an abbreviation or acronym of a much larger phrase, and when you break it down you can imagine a whole host of sentences could be constructed using these letters. 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. [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. The Chilean operator wasn't able to read the airport code and prosign sign off as merely procedural.Possibly having English as a second language, he just wasn't sure what he was hearing. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. (ETA LATE) attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling 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. The most widely speculated of these phrases is the following: Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. But in the absence of Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. In January 2000, a 100-man search party from the Argentine Army clambered 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) up Tupungato Mountain, a 6,552-meter (21,490-foot) volcano, where it located parts of the plane, as well as human bones, at the base of a glacier. 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. /- (ST) For a more detailed explanation . 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. Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. 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. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. 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. 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. / -.. / . 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. The last two possible mistranslations both involve an input mistake of some sort, but there is another phrase which uses the exact same morse code sequence as STENDEC but with different spacing. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. 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 is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. 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. [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent.
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