Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. USGS. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. The Mystery of STENDEC - YouTube You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. 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. Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and Something like "We're completely screwed.". 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 few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. The Theory [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. You're right! If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . 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. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. The word In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. The unit had to finish quickly. 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. In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. The site had been difficult to reach. 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. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). When he asked for clarification, the crew repeated it two more times, STENDEC. Morse '._._.' 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. radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved of Stardusts radio operator. While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. "Systems to the end navigation depends entirely on circle" (although between the letters). _._. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only 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. 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. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. 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. the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. It seems 1 Pan Am Flight 7 It has therefore been suggested that, in the absence of visual sightings of the ground due to the clouds, a navigational error could have been made as the aircraft flew through the jet streama phenomenon not well understood in 1947, in which high-altitude winds can blow at high speed in directions different from those of winds observed at ground level. 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 actual attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident - Wikipedia The radio operator misheard the signal. 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. in other words 'EC' without the space. Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". The Disappearance of Flight CS-59. The "STENDEC" Mystery How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault 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. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. 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. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. . . 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. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. 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. - /. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. 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. On August 2, 1947, the crew of a British South American Airways (BSAA) Lancastrian, an airliner version of the Avro Lancaster WWII bomber, sent a cryptic message. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space [17] One of the pilots recalled that "we had all been warned not to enter cloud over the mountains as the turbulence and icing posed too great a threat. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. 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. The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. The Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. / . The site had been difficult to reach. made with the control tower at Santiago. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. . DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final 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. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. - / . [16] If the airliner, which had to cross the Andes mountain range at 24,000 feet (7,300m), had entered the jet-stream zonewhich in this area normally blows from the west and south-west, resulting in the aircraft encountering a headwindthis would have significantly decreased the aircraft's ground speed. Possibly because he was finishing The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. 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. 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. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. In Morse code, determining accurate spacing between characters is vital to properly interpret the message; "STENDEC" uses exactly the same dot/dash sequence as "SCTI AR" (the four-letter code for Los Cerrillos Airport in Santiago, "over"). 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! NOVA Online | Vanished! | 1947 Official Accident Report 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. out very fast. An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" So mysterious was On board the British South American Airways flight were five crew members and six passengers, including the Captain, Commander Reginald J. Cook, an experienced and former RAF pilot during World War II. 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. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. The Mystery of STENDEC - Skeptoid 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. 1947 BSAA Star Dust accident - "STENDEC" : UnsolvedMysteries - reddit [22] Alternatively, the Morse spelling for "STENDEC" is one character off from instead spelling VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, 110 kilometers north of Santiago. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. by aliens. 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. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. 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? One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! 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. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. 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. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information STENDECANAGRAMS More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. Several body parts were found, mostly intact due to being frozen in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA testing as passengers of Star Dust. close to an understanding of the message. / -. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. / -.. / . But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. transmitted by the plane, reporting their position and intended A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - YouTube So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) All rights reserved. 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. of the station they wish to contact. 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. It has to be this one in my opinion. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space It was underpowered, unstable in yaw on the ground (pilots of the Tudor got used to feeding in power at different levels from each engine on takeoff to prevent the beast from departing uncontrollably off the side of the runway), unpleasant to handle in the air, prone to leaks of all kinds, and an ergonomic and maintenance nightmare. 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. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence 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. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] on initials. that Morse transmissions were closing down. 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. Once again, no distress signal was received. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) 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. 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. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Thanks SK. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. 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. The International Civil Aviation Organisation had only recently implemented the airline code for Los Cerrillos just four months prior to the event in April 1947, so its more than possible that the airports radio operator was not yet familiar with the term and failed to recognise it. 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. 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. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? / - (Descent) This is fascinating. The STENDEC Puzzle | Science 2.0 . 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. 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. Below we include a 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. / - / . . A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Something like "We're completely screwed.". Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved | HowStuffWorks Furthermore, Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message.