aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . 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. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. [8], Star Dust left Buenos Aires at 1:46 pm on 2 August. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, 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. British . While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. 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. [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. 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. STENDEC - Solved?! 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. They hadn't passed Curico. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. But my maternal great . How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. 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. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given 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). 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. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. 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. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. - . See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. STENDEC and Stardust have And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. It was also noted that, despite being a pilot for four years and accruing a total flying time of nearly 2,000 hours for both the RAF and the BSAA, this was Cooks first flight across the Andes as Captain. 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. Something like "We're completely screwed.". 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. This gives us the very 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. (ETA LATE) Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. it as an acronym or an abreviation yields little fruit. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. SCTI is the international airline code for Los Cerrillos Airport, and AR is a commonly used prosign for the word OUT, or End Of Transmission. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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? 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. All rights reserved. operator to scramble the message. 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. 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. 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. Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. attention, and another signing off. 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. Discussion Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. [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. [10] It has also been suggested that World War II pilots used this seemingly obscure abbreviation when an aircraft was in hazardous weather and was likely to crash, meaning "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing". To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. selection of the ideas. Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. 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. [3][pageneeded], Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. 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"). /- (ST) 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. 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. 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. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away / . 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. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") The Theory Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. 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. made with the control tower at Santiago. (STENDEC) [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". 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. 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. 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. 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. 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? Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" 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. Below we include a USGS. Hence we have: 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. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. / - (Descent) - /. message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. of Stendec. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. 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. A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. / -.-. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. Seems very unlikely. name at the end of a routine message. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. / -.-. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name 20 passengers and crew were lost. But in the absence of 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. 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. 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. STENDEC. It would be the last anyone ever heard from Star Dust. [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. STENDECANAGRAMS Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. the ETA. Was there a connection? Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) According to experts, if an additional space had been added between the first two letters, STENDEC would translate to: ATTENTION END END OF MESSAGE. It seems a bit redundant to say END and then END OF MESSAGE, however. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. Their curse was too much sky. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. 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. Yet one mystery remains:. That was 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. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. 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". (STENDEC). 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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. _.. . The flight itself was the last leg of a journey which originated from London, with the trip across the Atlantic taking place in a York aircraft, transferring to the Stardust for the crossing of the Andes Mountains. The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable even has an entry for STENDEC. Dozens of books and articles have examined the evidence, turned it over, twisted it, rearranged the letters, and drawn a blank. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. 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. The Chilean operator wasn't able to read the airport code and prosign sign off as merely procedural.Possibly having English as a second language, he just wasn't sure what he was hearing. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . 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. 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. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. . 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. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. After this, British civil aviation authorities withdrew the Tudor's certification to carry passengers, and the few remaining examples concluded their operational service as cargo and tanker aircraft. 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. / -. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic - / . Why would 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. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. 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. 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. 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! (These individuals ignore the fact that almost any other triangle of a similar size, drawn anywhere else in the North Atlantic, would yield a similar if not greater number of disappearances.). Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. - - . 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 Readers' Theories Set #3 Posted February 8, 2001 previous set The word STENDEC means: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-Landing.". An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared 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. The Theory 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. of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - . The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. [13], A 2000 Argentine Air Force investigation cleared Cook of any blame, concluding that the crash had resulted from "a heavy snowstorm" and "very cloudy weather", as a result of which the crew "were unable to correct their positioning". Americas owner-flown aircraft enthusiasts and active-pilot resource, delivered to your inbox! A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? 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. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. / -.. / . 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. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. Whilst this possibility lends true to the first half of the word, the rest does not match up with this theory, and considering it was sent through and received the exact same three times over, its hard to imagine this error occurring on both ends. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. course. An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. Investigators concluded that the crew, flying in a snowstorm against a powerful jet stream, must have become confused about their location and believed they were closer to their destination then they actually were, with the crash being the result of a controlled descent into terrain. a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final out, but seems unlikely. 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. "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago 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. Very good writeup! some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. 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. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. out very fast. 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. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? 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. 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. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. code. At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. by aliens. 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. 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.