The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. 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. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. Perhaps the most plausible explanations we have heard are firmly The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. 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. - / . Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. It seems by John . otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. . In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. Something like "We're completely screwed.". in other words 'EC' without the space. Furthermore, The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C unanswered. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. 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. Submissions should outline a mystery and provide a link to a more detailed review of the case such as a Wiki article or news report. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. 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. / / -.-. Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away But before that, to help understand the All Rights Reserved 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). message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? 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. 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. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago Could it be that Stardust were informing Los Cerrillos that they were on course for Rodelillo Airfield near Valparaiso instead, diverging from their original route? CONCLUSION British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. 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. [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. The names of the victims were known. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio 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. The Theory Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? 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. 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. . All rights reserved. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. 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. radio operator and/or receiver in Santiago, and playfulness on behalf Below we include a Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. / - /. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. They included Palestinian, Swiss, German and British passengers, a diplomatic courier and the crew: the pilot Reginald Cooke, 44; first officer Norman Hilton Cooke, 39; radiotelegraph operator Dennis Harmer, 27; second officer Donald Checklin, 27; and Iris Evans. The captain, Reginald Cook, was an experienced former Royal Air Force pilot with combat experience during the Second World War, as were his first officer, Norman Hilton Cook, and second officer, Donald Checklin. As might be inferred from that lineage, it was uncomfortable, noisy, and cramped. 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. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. 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"). So mysterious was It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. 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. 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. This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. 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. 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. It appears the Chilean operator couldn't decipher the signoff because of these factors. The - /. / - / . Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. 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. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. transmitted by the plane, reporting their position and intended 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. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. 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. of the station they wish to contact. 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. All further calls were Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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). A /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. [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". This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. 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. Was there a connection? method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. 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. INITIALS In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. Even if exchanges between two operators become conversational, the operator writes the reply before sending it.From this, and from standard morse procedure, Harmer's transmission would be to inform Stardust's ETA, destination city, airport code SCTI ( Los Cerillos), and conclude with prosign AR (dit dah, dit dah dit) to end transmission. out very fast. 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. Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. 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. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code 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. Thanks SK. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source [8], Star Dust left Buenos Aires at 1:46 pm on 2 August. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. The Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. It was delivered to BSAA on 12 January 1946, was registered on 16 January as G-AGWH and given the individual aircraft name "Star Dust". Sign in to continue reading. 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. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. 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. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. The radio operator misheard the signal. 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. 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 mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. 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. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. The theory It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. 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. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. USGS. And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely 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. 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. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. 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. /- (ST) Explanations based in Morse code Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the Once again, no distress signal was received. . 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. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, operator to scramble the message. 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. 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. 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. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. 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. Seems very unlikely. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. British . The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. If spacing between letters is hard to distinguish, its clear to see how some characters can be accidentally mistaken for others, leading to incorrect words or phrases. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never 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. Five of the eight British victims have been identified. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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. - . The radio operator meant to say Stardust. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based / -.. / . Furthermore, why would they put ATTENTION at the end of the transmission instead of the beginning? I personally believe that the word was a misinterpretation of the code, but theories span far and wide on what the now notorious phrase stood for. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated radio operator getting his planes name wrong on 3 occasions. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. Using the selection of the ideas. 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. I was a radio operator aboard an R.A.N. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of 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. Then four years ago, several Argentinians climbing Mount Tupungato stumbled across part of a Rolls Royce engine, fragments of fuselage and strips of bleached clothing. Voice 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example Anagram Theory Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final This would mean the message he was trying to send Los Cerrillos was instead: When you look at the beginning of the words, you can notice some similarities, which shows how easy it can sometimes be to mistranslate morse code. Yet one mystery remains:. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) - LGF Pages 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. made with the control tower at Santiago. [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory Then nothing. 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. The problem? 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. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. three times.STENDEC/Stardust For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. 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. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. 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. 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? much harder in Morse code.-.. / . The unit had to finish quickly. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. 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. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. 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 Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials:
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