Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in / -. 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. These included suggestions that the radio operator, possibly suffering from hypoxia, had scrambled the word "DESCENT" (of which "STENDEC" is an anagram); that "STENDEC" may have been the initials of some obscure phrase or that the airport radio operator had misheard the Morse code transmission despite it reportedly having been repeated multiple times. 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. transmitted by the plane, reporting their position and intended The Star Dust Mystery Damn Interesting A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. 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. in other words 'EC' without the space. NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Feb. 8, 2001) - PBS 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"). 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. STENDEC - Solved?! 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. 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #3 Posted February 8, 2001 previous set The word STENDEC means: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-Landing.". 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. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. 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. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. 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. Then nothing. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Thanks SK. 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. 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. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. 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. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . Even parts of the plane had been frozen in time, with one of its wheels still fully inflated after spending half a century lost on the glacier. . DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. - / . 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. They hadn't passed Curico. The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. between the letters). radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. This sentence now makes perfect sense, with Harmer announcing that they were expected to arrive in Santiago at 17:45 hours, at Los Cerrillos Airport. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. 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. 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. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. 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". (STENDEC) No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. 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. 1947 BSAA Star Dust accident - "STENDEC" : UnsolvedMysteries - reddit 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! simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). "[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. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with . STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) - LGF Pages / -. 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. That's also how Carole Lombard died. '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. A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. 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. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Several people have pointed out that [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. up sign. 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. STENDEC - Solved?! On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. Sign in to continue reading. made with the control tower at Santiago. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport 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. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. 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. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - YouTube As the compressed snow turned to ice, the wreckage would have been incorporated into the body of the glacier, with fragments emerging many years later and much further down the mountain. / -.. / . otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. 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. 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. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. 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. code. Then nothing. [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. The unit had to finish quickly. Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. Here's The 51 Creepiest Mysteries That Remain Unsolved To This Very Day STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. 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. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? 10 of the Strangest Mysteries That Were Solved Later - Unbelievable Facts Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. 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. . Why would 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. 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. [18], Star Dust is likely to have flown into a nearly vertical snowfield near the top of the glacier, causing an avalanche that buried the wreckage within seconds and concealed it from searchers. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. 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. However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. In 1950, one of these, Star Girl, had no fewer than 83 passengers and crew crammed into it on a charter flight from Dublin to Llandow, a low-cost airport near Cardiff in Wales. out, but seems unlikely. / . . At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". The North Texas Skeptic same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces 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. Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. Several body parts were found, mostly intact due to being frozen in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA testing as passengers of Star Dust. three times.STENDEC/Stardust Discussion . To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared Top 10 Intriguing Mysteries Of South America - Listverse