[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. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. STENDECANAGRAMS I personally believe that the word was a misinterpretation of the code, but theories span far and wide on what the now notorious phrase stood for. / - / . In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. of the station they wish to contact. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. 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. The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. between the letters). But before that, to help understand the The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. The fate of the British South American Airways flight, which disappeared in a snowstorm on August 2 1947 en route from Buenos Aires to Chile, was for decades surrounded by rumours of escaping Nazi spies and stolen gold. [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. - - . Before this message a series of entirely routine messages had been The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. 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. 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. Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. 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 flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. . message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. Sign in to continue reading. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. Mystery solved. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use / - / . It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. Whilst it's certainly a bizarre coincidence, especially given the circumstances, the theory goes that Harmer was trying to inform the control tower that the plane was going down. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . Checklin never married and his immediate family is now dead, so she and her brothers must decide whether to bring the body back to Britain. 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. 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 never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. on initials. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? The site had been difficult to reach. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. STENDEC/STAR DUST Theory The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. by aliens. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. All Rights Reserved 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. 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. . Why would the operator say end? the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . 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. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? out very fast. / . The public, still reeling from the now-famous flying saucer incident in Roswell, New Mexico, a few weeks earlier, went wild with theories, speculating everything from sabotage to alien abduction. Why would From this time STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish 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. Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. They had been . losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. out, but seems unlikely. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. 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. 1. / -.-. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of The Morse for AR is.- /.-. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. Something like "We're completely screwed.". 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). 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. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. End Credits. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. / -. The Theory Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. 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. The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. 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. a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. 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. The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C This theory is an easy one to break apart. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. - . . Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. 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. The to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. made with the control tower at Santiago. / -.. / . The theory about it meaning emergency crash landing is interesting but given a lack of sources outside of a few people telling anecdotes I don't know how believable it is. The captain, Reginald Cook, was an experienced former Royal Air Force pilot with combat experience during the Second World War, as were his first officer, Norman Hilton Cook, and second officer, Donald Checklin. 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. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. Something like "We're completely screwed.". STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds 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. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved . "[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. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based 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. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. 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. 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. that final message from the ill-fated 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. / . / -.-. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] close to an understanding of the message. French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. 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? So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. 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. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). 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. . 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. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. CONCLUSION Even if an equipment malfunction had occurred, what are the odds that only one word would be jumbled in the message and that it would be done so three times in exactly the same order? 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. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens.
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