The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. [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". The Lancastrian was an unpressurized aircraft, meaning that the crew and passengers could have been subject to hypoxia had their oxygen system failed, and so some suggest that this may have led to Harmer sending parts of his final message in a confused state. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. [10] However, Star Dust never arrived, no more radio transmissions were received by the airport, and intensive efforts by both Chilean and Argentine search teams, as well as by other BSAA pilots, failed to uncover any trace of the aircraft or of the people on board. It seems 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. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. SAR Technology - Aviation Cold Case Response [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. 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. 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. [6] Marta Limpert, a German migr, was the only passenger known for certain to have initially boarded Star Mist in London[7] before changing aircraft in Buenos Aires to continue on to Santiago with the other passengers. STENDEC. It would be the last anyone ever heard from Star Dust. 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. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. / -. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! It has to be this one in my opinion. were all supplied with oxygen. 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. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. 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 allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. More Mysterious Disappearances That Were Later Solved Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it 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. Yet one mystery remains:. Full video here breaking down the story -, A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. . (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Voice 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! The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. DNA clues reveal 55-year-old secrets behind crash of the Star Dust It is thought that the plane may have caused an avalanche upon impact, resulting in the snowy burial of the aircraft, concealing it from searchers whilst at the same time preserving it for its eventual discovery years later. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Whilst many accepted that the fate of Stardust and its crew had been settled, the absence of a wreckage, along with the mysterious circumstances surrounding its final message, lead to widespread speculation, with theories spanning from sabotage to extraterrestrial in nature. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). SAR Ball lightning. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. of messages offering explanations of STENDEC. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the - / . Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved . Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. 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 also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. 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. But there are no old, bold pilots. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. 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. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. 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. / -.. / . 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. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? [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. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. 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. The unit had to finish quickly. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] . A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never selection of the ideas. 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 was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. 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. 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. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. Morse '._._.' '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. that Morse transmissions were closing down. 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. / . Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? The Chilean operator did mention how Harmers messages came through unusually fast, so there is every chance that some letters were incorrectly spaced and caused confusion to the control tower. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. 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. On this ill-fated day, a British South American Airways airliner called Star Dust carrying six passengers and five crew members crashed during its journey from Buenos Aires to Santiago. Relatives of the crew and passengers aboard a British plane which plunged into an Argentinian glacier 55 years ago have been told this week their DNA samples match human remains recovered from a crash site 15,000ft up in the Andes. / - / . From this time Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. - - . Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. up sign. [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. 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. of Stardusts radio operator. 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. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio 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. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. Didn't the test Tudor flight crash because the aileron controls had been reversed (e.g trying to roll right rolled the aircraft left) or am I thinking of a different British test aircraft crash. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space out, but seems unlikely. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. 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. . CONCLUSION 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. 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. 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. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. _. Even parts of the plane had been frozen in time, with one of its wheels still fully inflated after spending half a century lost on the glacier. - /. 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. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting out very fast. 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. Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, in other words 'EC' without the space. Using the 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. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling Here's The 51 Creepiest Mysteries That Remain Unsolved To This Very Day 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. Seems very unlikely. 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. 20 passengers and crew were lost. They were flying across the Andes from east to west the pilots thought they were much further west than they were and turned north straight into the mountains and collided with a peak. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. NOVA Online | Vanished! | STENDEC Theories - PBS But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. 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. 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. 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". Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. (STENDEC). The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . 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. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. 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]. / / . 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. With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting Their curse was too much sky. Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. 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. This theory is an easy one to break apart. 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. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. one mystery still remains. So mysterious was The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. makes clear, modern science has answered most of the questions surrounding the 1947 crash of the civilian aircraft Stardust in the Andes east of Santiago, Chile. Discussion normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name A Pilot's Last Words: "STENDEC" - Plane & Pilot Magazine It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. 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? ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag.