/ - / . aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. The unit had to finish quickly. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. 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. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is 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. The Disappearance of Flight CS-59. The "STENDEC" Mystery Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. this method of communication. A mix of misinterpretation and a lack of recent knowledge led to the operator instead hearing the term STENDEC, which, combined with the disappearance of the plane, led to one of South Americas greatest aviation mysteries. 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. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. Below we include a 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 is now believed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the (then poorly understood) jet stream. 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. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. 9 Mysterious Plane Crashes - Listverse 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. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. 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. Morse '._._.' With morse code being a binary combination of dots and dashes, something as simple as one or two incorrect inputs can make a drastic difference to how a word is interpreted. in other words 'EC' without the space. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. . At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? Other explanations for the appearance [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport 20 passengers and crew were lost. But in the absence of The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Discussion The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. All Rights Reserved / -.-. Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with 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. 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. radio operator and/or receiver in Santiago, and playfulness on behalf End Credits. / -.. / . 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. 10 Unsolved Airplane Mysteries | HowStuffWorks The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . / - / . According to experts, if an additional space had been added between the first two letters, STENDEC would translate to: ATTENTION END END OF MESSAGE. It seems a bit redundant to say END and then END OF MESSAGE, however. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. The Theory This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Jan. 31, 2001) - PBS That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. Background With the disappearance occurring less than a month after the now infamous Roswell incident, unexplained events such as a vanishing plane were easily connected to the possibility of alien interference. Whilst its possible that STENDEC could mean any one of these phrases, theres nothing definitive I can find which suggests that this phrase ever meant anything previously, making it more unlikely that this word was used intentionally at all. After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. 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. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. Using the 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. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? The Mystery of STENDEC - YouTube Avro Lancastrian (Public domain image)It was a story borne out all too often in the annals of aviation disasters. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. it as an acronym or an abreviation yields little fruit. The actual [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. 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. Full video here breaking down the story -, A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. 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 code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. The site had been difficult to reach. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. [10], The staff of the BBC television series Horizonwhich presented an episode in 2000 on the Star Dust disappearancereceived hundreds of messages from viewers proposing explanations of "STENDEC". - / . case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Bennett, commander of the Royal Air Force's [Pathfinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF) during the Second World War -- it developed an unenviable record for unexplained disappearances of its airliners in flight. In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. 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! To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . 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. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. All Rights Reserved No distress transmission was received; the last broadcast from the aircraft was a routine position check, about two hours before it should have reached its destination. Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it It would have been CONCLUSION [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. 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. Here's The 51 Creepiest Mysteries That Remain Unsolved To This Very Day NOVA Online | Vanished! | 1947 Official Accident Report operator to scramble the message. The Theory / / -.-. 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. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. full message sent at 17.41 hrs was as follows: / . The radio operator misheard the signal. The radio operator meant to say Stardust. 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. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved | HowStuffWorks 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". They may be similar, but it is still hard to imagine an experienced What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. 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". It was delivered to BSAA on 12 January 1946, was registered on 16 January as G-AGWH and given the individual aircraft name "Star Dust". . 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. In morse code, there are various short-hand acronyms and abbreviations which help convey much longer messages quickly. . problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. Their curse was too much sky. But there are no old, bold pilots. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) Their curse was too much sky. 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. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Feb. 8, 2001) - PBS This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. From this time 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. [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. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion (STENDEC) It was concluded that, being his first Trans-Andean flight in command, and in view of the weather conditions, Cook should not have crossed via the direct route, and despite the absence of a wreckage, the plane likely perished somewhere along the snowy peaks of the Andes Mountains. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: . I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. These included suggestions that the radio operator, possibly suffering from hypoxia, had scrambled the word "DESCENT" (of which "STENDEC" is an anagram); that "STENDEC" may have been the initials of some obscure phrase or that the airport radio operator had misheard the Morse code transmission despite it reportedly having been repeated multiple times. 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. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. Already a member? / -. . When Harmer and his crew sent their final message to Los Cerrillos, they had no idea that they were seconds away from a fatal impact. The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C just confirmed his time of arrival? The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. It was firstly noted that the Trans-Andean journey from Buenos Aires to Santiago can be taken via three routes: The Central (and most direct) via Mendoza, The Southern via Planchon and The Northern via San Juan. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). unanswered. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". 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. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of It would have been 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. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' 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. 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. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . So mysterious was know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. of messages offering explanations of STENDEC. This is fascinating. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" One of those two people was Nando Parrado and in his book "Miracle in the Andes" he describes that their flight also left in poor, inadvisable conditions. 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. 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. - . Explanations based in Morse code The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . . 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. made with the control tower at Santiago. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. of the station they wish to contact. STENDEC and Stardust have Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. 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. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. up sign. 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. / -.-. So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. 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.
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