. 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. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. / -.. / . Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! 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? / -.. / . Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? The Chilean operator remarks that Harmer sends the final transmission very quickly.A rule of morse operation is that you don't send faster than the receiving operator can decipher.It appears Harmer did send too quickly, even while repeating. 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. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. 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. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning 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. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared Something like "We're completely screwed.". 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. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. . . Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. 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. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the . [10] However, Star Dust never arrived, no more radio transmissions were received by the airport, and intensive efforts by both Chilean and Argentine search teams, as well as by other BSAA pilots, failed to uncover any trace of the aircraft or of the people on board. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). 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. 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. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. [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. 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. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. 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. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. The site had been difficult to reach. "[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. on initials. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. 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. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. The Mystery of STENDEC - YouTube Avro Lancastrian (Public domain image)It was a story borne out all too often in the annals of aviation disasters. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before CONCLUSION "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. that Morse transmissions were closing down. 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. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. -, Press J to jump to the feed. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. 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. Possibly because he was finishing Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. 20 passengers and crew were lost. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. 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. / - /. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the attention, and another signing off. Neither men were taken to the jail. /- (ST) Seems very unlikely. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory 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 would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled I was a radio operator aboard an R.A.N. 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. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code Scherer, J. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. STENDEC/STAR DUST Theory 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. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Furthermore, why would they put ATTENTION at the end of the transmission instead of the beginning? It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. 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. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. 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. Already a member? 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. 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. (STENDEC) 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. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never It seems One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. up sign. 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. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. Their discovery revived. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . 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. . losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable even has an entry for STENDEC. Dozens of books and articles have examined the evidence, turned it over, twisted it, rearranged the letters, and drawn a blank. 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. Explanations based in Morse code 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. Then nothing. / - (Descent) Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. 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. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. Discussion attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). [3][pageneeded], Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. 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. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. 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. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. 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. unanswered. The radio operator meant to say Stardust. It was underpowered, unstable in yaw on the ground (pilots of the Tudor got used to feeding in power at different levels from each engine on takeoff to prevent the beast from departing uncontrollably off the side of the runway), unpleasant to handle in the air, prone to leaks of all kinds, and an ergonomic and maintenance nightmare. of Stendec. With the plane supposedly minutes away from the airport, the final word from the Lancastrian became shrouded in mystery when the plane, along with everyone on board, vanished into thin air. between the letters). The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. / -.-. Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. 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. BSAA ran out of money and passengers' confidence in 1949, with the result that it was forcibly incorporated into the state-owned British Overseas Airways Corporation, a component of today's British Airways. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . Voice The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. 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. Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). 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. Was there a connection? 1. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had Four letter ICAO codes for airports had 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. 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. Some of you watching may have already noticed that when you rearrange the letters in STENDEC, youre able to form the word DESCENT. Discussion An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. [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. Discussion 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. 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. Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. / -.. / . 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. 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. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of 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. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. 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. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . Whilst its true that the Lancastrian was unpressurised, the crew The word It was concluded that, being his first Trans-Andean flight in command, and in view of the weather conditions, Cook should not have crossed via the direct route, and despite the absence of a wreckage, the plane likely perished somewhere along the snowy peaks of the Andes Mountains. in other words 'EC' without the space. The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. And why not Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting 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. The official 1947 report into Stardusts disappearance highlighted a number of possibilities as to what likely happened to the ill-fated flight, with multiple factors potentially playing a role in its demise. tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") . Ball lightning doesn't happen very often, so it hasn't been recorded under natural conditions. To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. "Santiago tower even navigator doesnt exactly know" which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. Ball lightning. Before this message a series of entirely routine messages had been Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy [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. The unit had to finish quickly. As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. 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. INITIALS 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"). The site had been difficult to reach. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. [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". Understanding STENDEC has been the quest for many experienced and avid radio operators, with online forums dedicated to deciphering what Dennis Harmer was trying to say. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. Why would the operator say end? For a more detailed explanation STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. Hence we have: In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. / . This theory is an easy one to break apart. In morse code, there are various short-hand acronyms and abbreviations which help convey much longer messages quickly. 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. And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. 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. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. Checklin never married and his immediate family is now dead, so she and her brothers must decide whether to bring the body back to Britain.