"Systems to the end navigation depends entirely on circle" (although It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. of Stendec. Morse '._._.' Any explanation for STENDEC depends on an understanding of Morse . 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 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. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. (STENDEC) The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, - / . For over fifty years the disappearance ranked as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the aviation world, and a lively and inventive mythology grew up around the incident. 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. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. 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. 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. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago As it turns out, STENDEC is an anagram of the word descent. One popular theory is that the crew, flying at 24,000 feet in an unpressurized aircraft, suffered from hypoxia. 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. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . The radio operator meant to say Stardust. . British . 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. Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . Discussion Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. 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. on initials. 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. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. At around 5:41pm, after transmitting routine communications to the plane as usual, the control tower at Los Cerrillos Airport in Santiago received this morse code message from Stardust: Perplexed by the final word in the telegram, the Chilean operator requested Stardusts radio officer, Dennis Harmer, to relay the message back to him, only to hear the same word, STENDEC, repeated loud and clearly twice in succession. [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". Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. It has to be this one in my opinion. SCTI is the international airline code for Los Cerrillos Airport, and AR is a commonly used prosign for the word OUT, or End Of Transmission. Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. / - / . And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only Discussion The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. The names of the victims were known. / -. Just before the plane disappeared, it 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. 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. 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 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. 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. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. _._. "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" The unit had to finish quickly. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. The Theory (STENDEC) . [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. The most widely speculated of these phrases is the following: Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . / -.. / . -, Press J to jump to the feed. 2023 Little Green Footballs / -.. / . 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. Without an explanation the case remains a mystery. 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. 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. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. [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. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. 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"). Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #3 Posted February 8, 2001 previous set The word STENDEC means: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-Landing.". destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? 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. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the 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). normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. They may be similar, but it is still hard to imagine an experienced 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. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. Seems very unlikely. Hence we have: This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. In fact, this conspiracy ran for so long that even a Spanish magazine published in the 1970s, which was dedicated to UFOs and the paranormal, named itself after the now infamous morse code. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). between the letters). 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. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. [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. . Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. 20 passengers and crew were lost. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. 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. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. 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. that Morse transmissions were closing down. / -.. / . The last word in Star Dust's final Morse code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes before its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained. 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 plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio 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. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts . He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). Was there a connection? Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. 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! The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. 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. Their discovery revived. All rights reserved. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. the ETA. made with the control tower at Santiago. 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. 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 Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. Although the larger mystery was finally solved, many still wonder how experienced pilots (there were three on board) lost control of the aircraft in a seemingly manageable situation. 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. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. 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. [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. This is fascinating. 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. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code | When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, it's unusual last message leaves the world with a 70 year old mystery still waiting to be solved. 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. The 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' Ball lightning. The actual Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory of Stardusts radio operator. 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. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. in other words 'EC' without the space. If spacing between letters is hard to distinguish, its clear to see how some characters can be accidentally mistaken for others, leading to incorrect words or phrases. 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. UFO magazine. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Why would the operator say end? This gives us the very 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. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. 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. That's also how Carole Lombard died. 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. Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. With the plane supposedly minutes away from the airport, the final word from the Lancastrian became shrouded in mystery when the plane, along with everyone on board, vanished into thin air. Something like "We're completely screwed.". That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. They included Palestinian, Swiss, German and British passengers, a diplomatic courier and the crew: the pilot Reginald Cooke, 44; first officer Norman Hilton Cooke, 39; radiotelegraph operator Dennis Harmer, 27; second officer Donald Checklin, 27; and Iris Evans. of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - For those who aren't familiar, a flight carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and some of their family members crashed into the Andes in 1972. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. 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. [3][pageneeded], Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. 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 crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. were all supplied with oxygen. All Rights Reserved 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. 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. . In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. Sign in to continue reading. I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. 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. This theory is an easy one to break apart. 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. amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. Many people wrote pointing out that STENDEC is an anagram of descent. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. 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). Whilst its true that the Lancastrian was unpressurised, the crew Pages Sign In Register Forgot password? Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. End Credits. While the fate of Star Dust had finally been solved, remaining in its wake was still the mystery of the crews final messageSTENDEC. Whilst this possibility lends true to the first half of the word, the rest does not match up with this theory, and considering it was sent through and received the exact same three times over, its hard to imagine this error occurring on both ends. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. It would have been Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. [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. . Was there a connection? As one of the pilots was dying he kept repeating, "We passed Curico," still bewildered as to how they had ended up in the peaks. Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. The Morse for AR is.- /.-. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 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. . People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology.