People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with Hence we have: The North Texas Skeptic Already a member? They had been . Scherer, J. Then nothing. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. The site had been difficult to reach. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. 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. / -.-. - / . 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. 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. tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") The Theory What are some SOLVED mysteries? : r/AskReddit / - (Descent) Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. [13], A 2000 Argentine Air Force investigation cleared Cook of any blame, concluding that the crash had resulted from "a heavy snowstorm" and "very cloudy weather", as a result of which the crew "were unable to correct their positioning". But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - Reddit As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. 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. But before that, to help understand the Its not even common practice for a plane to transmit its name at the end of a routine message, so this theory also unfortunately falls flat. Discussion in other words 'EC' without the space. 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. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . They were in a remarkable state of preservation; freeze-dried by icy winds, the remains had not suffered bacteriological decay. / - / . The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. 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. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given The airliner will stay lost for 51 years until 1998 when mountaineers find parts of the wreckage on Mount Tupungato 50 miles east from the planes destination, Santiago. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. Background the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never 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. / -.-. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. 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. The radio operator misheard the signal. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting NOVA Online | Vanished! | Theories (Jan. 31, 2001) - PBS Possibly because he was finishing 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. code. [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. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). close to an understanding of the message. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. [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. The flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. NOVA Online | Vanished! | STENDEC Theories - PBS [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. Yet one mystery remains:. / . Is that the one where they all started eating each other? 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. In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. It would have been Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. [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. 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. And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes 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 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. 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. / -.. / . / -.. / . / -.-. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. An explanation of STENDEC .. - Fly With The Stars 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. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. Submissions should outline a mystery and provide a link to a more detailed review of the case such as a Wiki article or news report. Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. Their curse was too much sky. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. that Morse transmissions were closing down. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. The unit had to finish quickly. An explanation of STENDEC .. - Fly With The Stars One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. Something like "We're completely screwed.". flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) The site had been difficult to reach. 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. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. 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. 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 would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion 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. Five of the eight British victims have been identified. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . Their discovery revived interest in solving the mystery of what had happened to Flight CS59 and its 11 passengers and crew. 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. The Theory of the station they wish to contact. SAR the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer [11] The head of BSAA, Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett, personally directed an unsuccessful five-day search. _. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. The word British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. most of the mysteries surrounding Stardusts disappearance, Blast From the Past: The North Texas Skeptic, May 1999, Republican Senator Claims 'The Left' Will Start a Civil War Unless Federal Highway System Abolished, A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline, Popular Instagram Photographer Revealed as AI Fraud, Cutting IRS Funding Is a Gift to Americas Wealthiest Tax Evaders, Record 6,542 Guns Intercepted at US Airport Security in 22, Interview With Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm, US: Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine, Joel Cummins Umphreys McGee Keyboard Rig - January 2023 [VIDEO], Oklahoma Judge Transfers Lesbian Moms Parental Rights to Her Sons Sperm Donor. Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. . 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. They hadn't passed Curico. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name 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. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. The Theory Perhaps the most plausible explanations we have heard are firmly begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code (STENDEC). This is fascinating. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic 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. [6], A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. 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. 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. / - / . clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. 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. 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. "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). 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. 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. 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. (STENDEC) Very good writeup! 9 Mysterious Plane Crashes - Listverse this method of communication. For example, if you lose the first two dots in the word STENDEC, and rearrange the spacing of the letters, the word could instead be interpreted as ETA LA(E)TE, albeit with a rogue E thrown into the mix. 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! 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. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. That was Some of you watching may have already noticed that when you rearrange the letters in STENDEC, youre able to form the word DESCENT. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. My god, I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by how good and informative this post is.