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. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity?
9 Mysterious Plane Crashes - Listverse [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. I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. 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. just confirmed his time of arrival? . / -.. / . From this time Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. operator to scramble the message. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. It would have been 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. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. 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. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. 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. Americas owner-flown aircraft enthusiasts and active-pilot resource, delivered to your inbox! between the letters). This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. 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. 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. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. Once again, no distress signal was received. (STENDEC) . use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. 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. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. 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. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled [13] Some BSAA pilots, however, expressed scepticism at this theory; convinced that Cook would not have started his descent without a positive indication that he had crossed the mountains; they have suggested that strong winds may have brought down the craft in some other way. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based / -. 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. 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.
NOVA Online | Vanished! | STENDEC Theories - PBS the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. British . It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". / -.-. 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. 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?
NOVA Online | Vanished! | 1947 Official Accident Report It has therefore been suggested that, in the absence of visual sightings of the ground due to the clouds, a navigational error could have been made as the aircraft flew through the jet streama phenomenon not well understood in 1947, in which high-altitude winds can blow at high speed in directions different from those of winds observed at ground level. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. The weather on the day consisted of snowstorms in the Andes Mountains with moderate to intense turbulence, whilst visual contact with the ground would have been extremely low and unfit for flying. 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. [16] If the airliner, which had to cross the Andes mountain range at 24,000 feet (7,300m), had entered the jet-stream zonewhich in this area normally blows from the west and south-west, resulting in the aircraft encountering a headwindthis would have significantly decreased the aircraft's ground speed. Investigators concluded that the crew, flying in a snowstorm against a powerful jet stream, had become confused about their location and believed they were closer to Santiago than they actually were. (ETA LATE) Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] Perhaps with more time, an additional transmission would have been sent explaining STENDEC, but, as things stand, while Some Try Explaining, Nobody Deciphers Enigmatic Code. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC" this method of communication. (STENDEC) 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. And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. 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 operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? / - /. _.. . Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . . That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" / / -.-. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight.
SAR Technology - Aviation Cold Case Response 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. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated The site had been difficult to reach. INITIALS Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy Mystery solved. [10], In 1998, two Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungatoabout 60mi (100km) west-southwest of Mendoza, and about 50mi (80km) east of Santiagofound the wreckage of a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, along with twisted pieces of metal and shreds of clothing, in the Tupungato Glacier at an elevation of 15,000ft (4,600m). To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. 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". Was there a connection? In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. For over fifty years the disappearance ranked as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the aviation world, and a lively and inventive mythology grew up around the incident. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon.
made with the control tower at Santiago. attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. You're right! / -.-. 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! Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. Earlier this week Margaret Coalwood of Nottingham, now 70, was told that DNA extracted from blood samples taken from her last year had identified the remains of her cousin, Donald Checklin. Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. / . up sign. of Stendec. 1 Pan Am Flight 7
What are some SOLVED mysteries? : r/AskReddit Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. 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. 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. Several people have pointed out that 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. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. 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. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. Morse '._._.' [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. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. 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. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. Procedures for sending and receiving messages were and are standardised whether you are services or civilian operators.Regarding the 'mystery' surrounding Harmer's last transmission.Firstly, an operator always has in front of them a written copy of the message being sent. 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. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. _. The 1. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. Don Bennett, its manager, had already been fired by then, partly as a result of his insistence to all and sundry that Star Tiger was a victim of sabotage and that the British Government, for unknown but nefarious reasons of its own, was covering up the crime. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. The actual But there are no old, bold pilots. name at the end of a routine message. transmitted by the plane, reporting their position and intended
The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". 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. / -.
1947 BSAA Star Dust accident - "STENDEC" : UnsolvedMysteries - reddit They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. Despite Stardusts fate now fully resolved, the mystery of STENDEC is still argued to this day, with no definitive conclusion on what Dennis Harmer was intending to communicate that evening. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. They hadn't passed Curico. . out very fast. 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. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic 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. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. 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 - Solved?! enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence 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. As it turns out, STENDEC is an anagram of the word descent. One popular theory is that the crew, flying at 24,000 feet in an unpressurized aircraft, suffered from hypoxia. The unit had to finish quickly. 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. Discussion Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. Full video here breaking down the story -, A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. A If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. / - / . In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. In 1947 the official report into Stardusts disappearance had this Then nothing. Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes 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. The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. in other words 'EC' without the space. attention, and another signing off. 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. 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. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew.
Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. The full. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. / . begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion 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. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. The problem here though is that, even if this was the case, it would be unusual for Harmer to use a phrase which was not internationally recognised, and only specifically known to allied participants of the war. STENDEC is the same Morse as SCTI AR if you don't consider any spacing between characters. /-.-. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago.
DNA clues reveal 55-year-old secrets behind crash of the Star Dust 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. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common 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. Whilst its true that the Lancastrian was unpressurised, the crew 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. 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. The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. Ball lightning doesn't happen very often, so it hasn't been recorded under natural conditions. 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. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. 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. It seems STENDECANAGRAMS It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. - - . So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. 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. Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . 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. / -. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the
NOVA Online | Vanished! | Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. 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) No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found.
NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Jan. 31, 2001) - PBS Possibly because he was finishing problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. between the letters). sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. Explanations based in Morse code - . The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . Bennett, commander of the Royal Air Force's [Pathfinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF) during the Second World War -- it developed an unenviable record for unexplained disappearances of its airliners in flight. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. 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. 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. 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. 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.