Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. 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. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. The theory Four letter ICAO codes for airports had Their curse was too much sky. 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. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. . The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. Discussion Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) 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. Explanations based in Morse code But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. on initials. 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. Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. Ball lightning doesn't happen very often, so it hasn't been recorded under natural conditions. 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. just confirmed his time of arrival? They hadn't passed Curico. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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. . INITIALS It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. The problem here though is that, even if this was the case, it would be unusual for Harmer to use a phrase which was not internationally recognised, and only specifically known to allied participants of the war. British . (STENDEC). How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. 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. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code Spektator 13K subscribers Subscribe 20K views 1 year ago #Documentary #Mystery When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, its. The Lancastrian's vanishing act happened at a time of considerable political turmoil in South America. The radio operator meant to say Stardust. attention, and another signing off. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish 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? / . 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. 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, STENDEC - The Worlds Most Mysterious Morse Code, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF). 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. code. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. 1. / - (Descent) In January 2000, a 100-man search party from the Argentine Army clambered 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) up Tupungato Mountain, a 6,552-meter (21,490-foot) volcano, where it located parts of the plane, as well as human bones, at the base of a glacier. The theory is the pilot mistakenly plotted their course as if they were leaving from a different airport, and it led to them crashing into a mountain. 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. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. It's possible that the desire to descend as soon as possible to a level at which the passengers could breathe normally may have factored into Star Dust's premature departure from a safe crossing altitude. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. A few years later, more debris was found on the mountain, suggesting that the plane had made a head-on impact with the ground due to the close proximity and condition of the wreckage. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". Thanks SK. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. 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. Something like "We're completely screwed.". (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. 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. But in the absence of The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. STENDECANAGRAMS For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. 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. Once again, no distress signal was received. (STENDEC) The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. the ETA. 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. Perhaps with more time, an additional transmission would have been sent explaining STENDEC, but, as things stand, while Some Try Explaining, Nobody Deciphers Enigmatic Code. [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. 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. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Seems very unlikely. On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. 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. 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. . 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? - - . Five months after the episode described by OP, one of BSAA's Avro Tudor IV aircraft, Star Tiger, with 31 persons on board, vanished on a flight from Lisbon to Bermuda with an intermediate fuel stop in the Azores. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. Background Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. They had been . message from Star Dust -. It was also noted that, despite being a pilot for four years and accruing a total flying time of nearly 2,000 hours for both the RAF and the BSAA, this was Cooks first flight across the Andes as Captain. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. . 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. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with Is that the one where they all started eating each other? Below we include a When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. -, Press J to jump to the feed. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. UFO magazine. A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. Ball lightning. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information So mysterious was / -.. / . An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. 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. / -. 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. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. Discussion (STENDEC) However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. 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. Morse '._._.' Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, / -.-. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? All Rights Reserved 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. of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. 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. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of 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.

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