the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information Morse '._._.' In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. . Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. But my maternal great . Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given [4], Star Dust's last flight was the final leg of BSAA Flight CS59, which had started in London on an Avro York named Star Mist on 29 July 1947, landing in Buenos Aires on 1 August. 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. Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. 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. 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. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. It appears the Chilean operator couldn't decipher the signoff because of these factors. But there are no old, bold pilots. I couldnt find a source for this, but according to theorists online, this was a known phrase for allied fighter pilots in WWII for if their plane was about to crash land. by John . most of the mysteries surrounding Stardusts disappearance, Their discovery revived interest in solving the mystery of what had happened to Flight CS59 and its 11 passengers and crew. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. SAR Is that the one where they all started eating each other? 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. 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. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? Sign in to continue reading. 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. 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. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Their discovery revived. three times.STENDEC/Stardust Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. 2023 Little Green Footballs NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Jan. 31, 2001) - PBS STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - Reddit 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. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in Their curse was too much sky. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. There's still no explanation for the loss of Star Ariel, but so many things went wrong with Tudors on such a regular basis that its disappearance is hardly to be wondered at. A Pilot's Last Words: "STENDEC" - Plane & Pilot Magazine / / . . An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. / - /. the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. 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. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. 1. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. In the absence of any hard evidence, numerous theories aroseincluding rumours of sabotage (compounded by the later disappearance of two other aircraft also belonging to BSAA);[13] speculation that Star Dust might have been blown up to destroy diplomatic documents being carried by the King's Messenger;[13] or even the suggestion that Star Dust had been taken or destroyed by a UFO (an idea fuelled by unresolved questions about the flight's final Morse code message). Their curse was too much sky. course. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved | HowStuffWorks attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. . More interestingly, the morse code for STENDEC is only one character off from instead spelling VALP, which is almost the call sign for the closest airport to Valparaiso, 110km northwest of Santiago. [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. Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC" By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. - / . 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. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning 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. '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. 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. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. 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. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? (STENDEC). Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. 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.". - - . Neither men were taken to the jail. 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. 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. Thanks SK. The airliner will stay lost for 51 years until 1998 when mountaineers find parts of the wreckage on Mount Tupungato 50 miles east from the planes destination, Santiago. Understanding STENDEC has been the quest for many experienced and avid radio operators, with online forums dedicated to deciphering what Dennis Harmer was trying to say. A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence 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 radio operator meant to say Stardust. [23], "Stendec" redirects here. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based 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. . / -. . Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. Mysteries Each letter in morse code consists of a number of unique dots and dashes, so to scramble a word like descent in such a way is highly unlikely, especially three times in succession. End Credits. / - / . One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! -, Press J to jump to the feed. just confirmed his time of arrival? Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. Discussion "[12], A set of events similar to those that doomed Star Dust also caused the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972 (depicted in the film Alive), although there were survivors from that crash because it involved a glancing blow to a mountainside rather than a head-on collision. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. _.. . In fact, this conspiracy ran for so long that even a Spanish magazine published in the 1970s, which was dedicated to UFOs and the paranormal, named itself after the now infamous morse code. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. The crew of Stardust, including the radio operator Harmer, had all served in the RAF previously during WWII, so if this phrase is true, then it is possible that they were all familiar with the term and used it in a time of crisis. - /. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. 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. STENDEC - Solved?! transmitted by the plane, reporting their position and intended STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - YouTube STENDEC and Stardust have Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. All further calls were The Morse for AR is.- /.-. So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in 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. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. 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. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. It wasnt until 1998 that a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, approximately 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon wreckage from the crash. / -. 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. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. The Disappearance of Flight CS-59. The "STENDEC" Mystery The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. Listener Feedback: Provisos, Addenda, and Quid Pro Quos - Skeptoid 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. 1947 BSAA Star Dust accident - "STENDEC" : UnsolvedMysteries - reddit See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. full message sent at 17.41 hrs was as follows: Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. Another noticeable similarity is that the word STENDEC has some resemblance to the word STARDUST, and perhaps Harmer misspelled the name of the aircraft in morse code. It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. 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. 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. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. 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. At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. . The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. 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. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. close to an understanding of the message. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. [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. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault In 1998, over 50 years after the disappearance of Stardust, a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, one of the highest mountains in the Andes and roughly 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine of the Lancastrian. 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. 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! - / . . Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away / - /. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source 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! 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. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. 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.