The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC 1947 Official Accident Report Below is the 1947 official accident report describing what was known at the time about Stardust, its crew, and its mysterious disappearance. End Credits. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved [1][2], The last Morse code message sent by Star Dust was "ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 HRS STENDEC". But before that, to help understand the to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before most of the mysteries surrounding Stardusts disappearance, They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. 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. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! [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. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. by aliens. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? /- (ST) It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. by John . [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. STENDEC and STAR DUST are coded similarly in both English and Morse code, causing some to theorize that Harmer sent one when he actually meant the other. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. / -. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. 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. 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. . and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in 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. 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident - Wikipedia The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C The Chilean operator remarks that Harmer sends the final transmission very quickly.A rule of morse operation is that you don't send faster than the receiving operator can decipher.It appears Harmer did send too quickly, even while repeating. [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. The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. 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. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. (STENDEC) Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. (ETA LATE) After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. Explanations based in Morse code "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. 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. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? 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. 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. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code For years it was thought to have been mistyped but it is now thought to be a second world war morse code acronym for: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-landing". Thanks SK. 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. The theory between the letters). This sentence now makes perfect sense, with Harmer announcing that they were expected to arrive in Santiago at 17:45 hours, at Los Cerrillos Airport. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. (STENDEC) simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. - /. . 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. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. 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. of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. This would have explained the suddenness of its disappearance, and the fact that large pieces of wreckage had not been spotted during a wide air and land search. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. Morse '._._.' Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC STENDEC Theories On August 2, 1947, Stardust 's radio operator sent a final message in Morse code to the Chilean radio operator then on duty in Santiago. message from Star Dust -. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. 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. 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. The word Their curse was too much sky. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. . (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Discussion 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. 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. After getting the boot from BSAA, he launched his own fly-by-night airline, Airflight Ltd., using two Tudors he'd picked up cheaply and one of which he flew himself. selection of the ideas. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? / -.-. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. / -.-. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. / . Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? This would have explained the suddenness of its disappearance, and the fact that large pieces of wreckage had not been spotted during a wide air and land search. The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). 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. 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. 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. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. Due to the poor visibility caused by the storm, its possible that the crew were unaware that their plane was on course to collide with the mountainside, and unknowingly plummeted the aircraft into the summit before eventually succumbing to the elements. 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He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". 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. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. 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. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based 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. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. 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. 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. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. 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. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. Mysteries 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. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes 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. This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. 10 Unsolved Airplane Mysteries | HowStuffWorks Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. 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. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. STENDEC is the same Morse as SCTI AR if you don't consider any spacing between characters. 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.