1 Pan Am Flight 7 some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. 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. 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. attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from There are theories that STENDEC was an abbreviation or acronym of a much larger phrase, and when you break it down you can imagine a whole host of sentences could be constructed using these letters. 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. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. 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? Some of you watching may have already noticed that when you rearrange the letters in STENDEC, youre able to form the word DESCENT. / -.. / . 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. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. made with the control tower at Santiago. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. out very fast. Don Bennett, its manager, had already been fired by then, partly as a result of his insistence to all and sundry that Star Tiger was a victim of sabotage and that the British Government, for unknown but nefarious reasons of its own, was covering up the crime. - / . tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") this method of communication. 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. 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. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie Weird December 2010 Views: 31,837 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. The actual With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. / - (Descent) 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. Any explanation for STENDEC depends on an understanding of Morse 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. - /. Voice 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. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). Four letter ICAO codes for airports had 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. 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 theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. 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. [citation needed], Mistakenly assuming their ground speed to be faster than it really was, the crew might have deduced that they had already safely crossed the Andes, and so commenced their descent to Santiago, whereas in fact they were still a considerable distance to the east-north-east and were approaching the cloud-enshrouded Tupungato Glacier at high speed. . 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. After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. Already a member? Five of the eight British victims have been identified. / / . 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 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. one mystery still remains. 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. 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. The site had been difficult to reach. Was there a connection? The word 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. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish A faulty oxygen system cant be ruled [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. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? / -.-. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' 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. 2023 Little Green Footballs 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. Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. And why not 20 passengers and crew were lost. 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. [13] Some BSAA pilots, however, expressed scepticism at this theory; convinced that Cook would not have started his descent without a positive indication that he had crossed the mountains; they have suggested that strong winds may have brought down the craft in some other way. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. 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. clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. Their discovery revived. All Rights Reserved In 1998, over 50 years after the disappearance of Stardust, a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, one of the highest mountains in the Andes and roughly 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine of the Lancastrian. Was there a connection? 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. They had been . STENDEC - Solved?! (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. /-.-. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. 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). 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. After this, British civil aviation authorities withdrew the Tudor's certification to carry passengers, and the few remaining examples concluded their operational service as cargo and tanker aircraft. When flying at high altitudes, oxygen molecules are harder to inhale, and if a plane is not pressurized, it can lead to hypoxia, a condition which can impair or even completely destroy your ability to function. Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. 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. 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. radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. 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"). which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. / -.-. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" between the letters). All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. The most widely speculated of these phrases is the following: Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing. The radio operator misheard the signal. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. 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. 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. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. The unit had to finish quickly. 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 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. 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. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). 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". three times.STENDEC/Stardust In 1947 the official report into Stardusts disappearance had this The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . 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When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . / -.. / . . destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. / -.-. 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. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. - - . / -.. / . of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - 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. '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. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the The Discussion 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 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. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is. 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. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. 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. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given / -. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . Is that the one where they all started eating each other? The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. 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. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. a new clue the truth is we will never know for sure what that final just confirmed his time of arrival? 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. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. 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 Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. 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. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. - / . of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. / -.. / . by John . Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. (STENDEC) The 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. 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. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning 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. Several people have pointed out that That was French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. / . It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. by aliens. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence INITIALS 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. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, . Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. . The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. STENDEC and STAR DUST are coded similarly in both English and Morse code, causing some to theorize that Harmer sent one when he actually meant the other. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. 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? The unit had to finish quickly. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. 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. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. 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. unanswered. Yet one mystery remains:. / -. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . 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. on initials. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with 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. . [12], A report by an amateur radio operator who claimed to have received a faint SOS signal from Star Dust initially raised hopes that there might have been survivors,[11] but all subsequent attempts over the years to find the vanished aircraft failed. 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. Furthermore, why would they put ATTENTION at the end of the transmission instead of the beginning? Just before the plane disappeared, it A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? 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. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. / . that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based The official 1947 report into Stardusts disappearance highlighted a number of possibilities as to what likely happened to the ill-fated flight, with multiple factors potentially playing a role in its demise. (STENDEC) message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. [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. This gives us the very 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. Another noticeable similarity is that the word STENDEC has some resemblance to the word STARDUST, and perhaps Harmer misspelled the name of the aircraft in morse code. "Santiago tower even navigator doesnt exactly know" 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. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". The weather on the day consisted of snowstorms in the Andes Mountains with moderate to intense turbulence, whilst visual contact with the ground would have been extremely low and unfit for flying. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites, Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. . - . [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.