But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. . 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. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. 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. 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. 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. 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"). The word End Credits. 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. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. 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. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. _. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" close to an understanding of the message. (STENDEC) But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? The Chilean operator remarks that Harmer sends the final transmission very quickly.A rule of morse operation is that you don't send faster than the receiving operator can decipher.It appears Harmer did send too quickly, even while repeating. [10] However, Star Dust never arrived, no more radio transmissions were received by the airport, and intensive efforts by both Chilean and Argentine search teams, as well as by other BSAA pilots, failed to uncover any trace of the aircraft or of the people on board. Was there a connection? Plane and Pilot builds on more than 50 years of serving pilots and owners of aircraft with the goal of empowering our readers to improve their knowledge and enthusiasm for aviation. one mystery still remains. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code - YouTube The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. The Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. most of the mysteries surrounding Stardusts disappearance, STENDECANAGRAMS You're right! [23], "Stendec" redirects here. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). They hadn't passed Curico. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. / - /. Explaining the unexplained: 10 famous mysteries solved Several body parts were found, mostly intact due to being frozen in ice, and were later confirmed through DNA testing as passengers of Star Dust. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name Very good writeup! With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. 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! Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. selection of the ideas. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? Americas owner-flown aircraft enthusiasts and active-pilot resource, delivered to your inbox! 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. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. 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. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. 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. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. . The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. As might be inferred from that lineage, it was uncomfortable, noisy, and cramped. . Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. 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. - /. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. / -. Their curse was too much sky. [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. Other explanations for the appearance A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). What did the crew of BSAA Flight CS-59 mean when they sent and repeated the cryptic message STENDEC via Morse code seconds before crashing? All Rights Reserved 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. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. 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! STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code Spektator 13K subscribers Subscribe 20K views 1 year ago #Documentary #Mystery When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, its. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa_EU5_gWrA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Star_Dust_accident#cite_note-SAR_Technology_-_Aviation_Cold_Case_Response-22, https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/a-pilots-last-words-stendec/, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/stendec.html, https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2000/vanished.shtml, https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/02/05/stendec-mystery/, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/sep/06/owenbowcott1v, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jul/08/2, http://www.sartechnology.ca/sartechnology/ST_STENDEC_ColdCase.htm, http://www.ntskeptics.org/2010/2010december/december2010.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/sep/06/owenbowcott1. This sentence now makes perfect sense, with Harmer announcing that they were expected to arrive in Santiago at 17:45 hours, at Los Cerrillos Airport. Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, out, but seems unlikely. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. Earlier this week Margaret Coalwood of Nottingham, now 70, was told that DNA extracted from blood samples taken from her last year had identified the remains of her cousin, Donald Checklin. 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. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. 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. An explanation of STENDEC .. - Fly With The Stars of the station they wish to contact. STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became the name of a Spanish / . the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never The radio operator misheard the signal. / -.. / . . 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. 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. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: 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. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. USGS. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved | HowStuffWorks A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). (STENDEC) Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never Yet one mystery remains:. Discussion Possibly because he was finishing The flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. in other words 'EC' without the space. 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. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' 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. The actual For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with 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". The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. [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. Bennett finished his life as a supporter, and occasional candidate, for a variety of xenophobic and extremist political parties -- a sad end for one of the world's greatest pilots and air navigators of the 1930s and 1940s. The unit had to finish quickly. Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" 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. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. 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.