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. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! Even if an equipment malfunction had occurred, what are the odds that only one word would be jumbled in the message and that it would be done so three times in exactly the same order? 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. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based attention, and another signing off. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. just confirmed his time of arrival? Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. Hence we have: 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. communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was A popular one is that STENDEC is an anagram of DESCENT and the letters were re-arranged due to Harmer suffering from the effects of hypoxia. For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. It seems Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes 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. . The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code of Stendec. All further calls were An explanation of STENDEC .. - Fly With The Stars 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 disappearance of Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos Two men (unrelated, who didn't know each other) disappeared from Naples, Florida three months apart under the exact same circumstances. 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. STENDEC and Stardust have Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. The actual 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. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. . - / . Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled. The Disappearance of Flight CS-59. The "STENDEC" Mystery That's also how Carole Lombard died. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. Below we include a An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. Believers of this theory claim it stood for something like, Stardust tank empty, no diesel, expected crash, or, Santiago tower, emergency, now descending, entering cloud. Experts on Morse code are quick to call hogwash on this theory, however, saying that the crew would have never cryptically abbreviated an important message. '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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. 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! [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. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given Once again, no distress signal was received. 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. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never For those who aren't familiar, a flight carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and some of their family members crashed into the Andes in 1972. Just before the plane disappeared, it 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. 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. 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. problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. The unit had to finish quickly. This gives us the very Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. Among the grisly remains scattered over a radius of more than a mile on the glacier were three human torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a hand with fingers outstretched. code. / -.-. name at the end of a routine message. Was there a connection? The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source / - / . It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, But before that, to help understand the 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. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. The Theory Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. 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. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? 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. one mystery still remains. 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. between the letters). the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. In morse code, there are various short-hand acronyms and abbreviations which help convey much longer messages quickly. -, Press J to jump to the feed. to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. SAR Technology - Aviation Cold Case Response Mystery solved. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . Several body parts were also discovered, most of them intact due to being preserved in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA to be the passengers and crew of Stardust. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. 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. 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. [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 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. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! 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. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. [22] Alternatively, the Morse spelling for "STENDEC" is one character off from instead spelling VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, 110 kilometers north of Santiago. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. One of those two people was Nando Parrado and in his book "Miracle in the Andes" he describes that their flight also left in poor, inadvisable conditions. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? End Credits. 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. 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. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. - /. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. / -.. / . Its not even common practice for a plane to transmit its name at the end of a routine message, so this theory also unfortunately falls flat. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. Their discovery revived. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. 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. 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. Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC" The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. CONCLUSION 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. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. 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. 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. The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. 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. close to an understanding of the message. 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 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. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. Many people wrote pointing out that STENDEC is an anagram of descent. [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. 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. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. (STENDEC) 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. in other words 'EC' without the space. 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. 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. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. British . Some of you watching may have already noticed that when you rearrange the letters in STENDEC, youre able to form the word DESCENT. made with the control tower at Santiago. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. 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. (STENDEC) STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code | When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, it's unusual last message leaves the world with a 70 year old mystery still waiting to be solved. that Morse transmissions were closing down. 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. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. What are some SOLVED mysteries? : r/AskReddit Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. The STENDEC mystery, referring to the cryptic message sent by a Lancastrian airliner before it vanished in the Andes, is a staple of the UFO culture. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . 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. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. / - (Descent) Yet one mystery remains:. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. . . People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. Then nothing. The Army unit also discovered that the wheels on the plane were in an upward position, so the crew had not attempted an emergency landing. - / . This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . 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. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. 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 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. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory That was of Stardusts radio operator. were all supplied with oxygen. 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. radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling STENDEC - Solved?! Their curse was too much sky. Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. NOVA Online | Vanished! | 1947 Official Accident Report STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) 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. 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. Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract 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. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . Other explanations for the appearance 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. Something like "We're completely screwed.". Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. 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. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and 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 rights reserved. It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. out, but seems unlikely. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown.
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