British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. of messages offering explanations of STENDEC. (STENDEC) The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC" / -. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. Voice However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. 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. The Lancastrian's vanishing act happened at a time of considerable political turmoil in South America. This gives us the very "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" [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". 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. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with 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. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. 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. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . 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. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. up sign. message from Star Dust -. Was there a connection? In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. -, Press J to jump to the feed. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. _._. It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. Their discovery revived interest in solving the mystery of what had happened to Flight CS59 and its 11 passengers and crew. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name 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. They were finally grounded in 1959, unsurprisingly after yet another ex-BSAA Tudor flew into a Turkish mountain, for reasons that remain unclear, killing all on board. The last two possible mistranslations both involve an input mistake of some sort, but there is another phrase which uses the exact same morse code sequence as STENDEC but with different spacing. 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. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. The radio operator misheard the signal. With the plane supposedly minutes away from the airport, the final word from the Lancastrian became shrouded in mystery when the plane, along with everyone on board, vanished into thin air. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. - /. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. The unit had to finish quickly. Yet one mystery remains:. 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. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. 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. problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. 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. They were so far off course they were trapped in the mountains struggling to survive for 72 days before they were rescued, and then only because of an incredible hike out of the mountains by two of the severely weakened survivors with no climbing gear or experience or any idea where they really were. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? 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. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. unanswered. / - / . Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. / -. The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the As only one young woman was on board, it was assumed to have been that of Iris Moreen Evans, a 26-year-old from the Rhondda valley. Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? 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. / -.-. Americas owner-flown aircraft enthusiasts and active-pilot resource, delivered to your inbox! It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. name at the end of a routine message. The 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". He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". 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. 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. When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes. 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. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. Why would the operator say end? 1. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. 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. - . 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . / / -.-. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was You're right! same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in 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. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. 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. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. Mystery solved. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. 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. Scherer, J. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). . The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . It would have been Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. it as an acronym or an abreviation yields little fruit. this method of communication. full message sent at 17.41 hrs was as follows: DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. 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.