stendec mystery solved

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. All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. 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. This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. 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. _._. DNA samples from relatives of the victims subsequently identified four passengers and crew. was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example Very good writeup! some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) / - (Descent) name at the end of a routine message. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. 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. Below we include a It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. 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. 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. 20 passengers and crew were lost. Operating as Flight CS-59, aka Star Dust, the four-engine aircraft was en route from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, with 11 people on board. to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is 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. 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. So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. 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. . normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name 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. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. - - . One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! between the letters). In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. Believers of this theory claim it stood for something like, Stardust tank empty, no diesel, expected crash, or, Santiago tower, emergency, now descending, entering cloud. Experts on Morse code are quick to call hogwash on this theory, however, saying that the crew would have never cryptically abbreviated an important message. Background 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. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. . by aliens. A person suffering hypoxia may possibly make the same mistake consistently three times in succession but is very unlikely to create an anagram of the intended word. Why would the operator say end? He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". Didn't the test Tudor flight crash because the aileron controls had been reversed (e.g trying to roll right rolled the aircraft left) or am I thinking of a different British test aircraft crash. 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. But my maternal great . 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. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. 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. A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown. 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. The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. The accident aircraft, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, was built as constructor's number 1280 for the Argentine Ministry of Supply to carry thirteen passengers, and first flew on 27 November 1945. 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. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. 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. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. 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. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. Their discovery revived. 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 was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. The radio operator misheard the signal. /- (ST) Furthermore, problem, here is a website which translates English into Morse code. 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. From this time [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 Morse for AR is.- /.-. The 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. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never 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. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion 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. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. Morse '._._.' This is fascinating. 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. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. 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. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting 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. / -. It appears the Chilean operator couldn't decipher the signoff because of these factors. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? 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. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common 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. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. 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. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. 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. The most widely speculated of these phrases is the following: Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing. The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. 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. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. code. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. . The Theory All Rights Reserved The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in For a more detailed explanation (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 Several people have pointed out that Why would It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, 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. of the station they wish to contact. in other words 'EC' without the space. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. 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. I was a radio operator aboard an R.A.N. 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. Procedures for sending and receiving messages were and are standardised whether you are services or civilian operators.Regarding the 'mystery' surrounding Harmer's last transmission.Firstly, an operator always has in front of them a written copy of the message being sent. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. 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. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. 10 'Unsolved' Mysteries That Have Been Solved. of messages offering explanations of STENDEC. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. 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. 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 Army unit also discovered that the wheels on the plane were in an upward position, so the crew had not attempted an emergency landing. 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. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. on initials. Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC" Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away The site had been difficult to reach. 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. . three times.STENDEC/Stardust / -. 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. radio operator getting his planes name wrong on 3 occasions. Just before the plane disappeared, it British . 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. 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. Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). They hadn't passed Curico. sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the And why not 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. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. INITIALS - - . The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. / -.-. of Stardusts radio operator. communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was 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. This theory is an easy one to break apart. . Already a member? Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, were all supplied with oxygen. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! Four letter ICAO codes for airports had [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. The STENDEC Puzzle Ever since BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust vanished on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago, the ending of its final transmission - STENDEC - has continued to puzzle experts and amateurs alike. up sign. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based 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. 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? By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. 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. 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. Neither men were taken to the jail. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved 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. Many people wrote pointing out that STENDEC is an anagram of descent. [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. makes clear, modern science has answered most of the questions surrounding the 1947 crash of the civilian aircraft Stardust in the Andes east of Santiago, Chile. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. STENDEC Solved by John L. Scherer. The theory The Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. That's also how Carole Lombard died. It seems For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. 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. / -.. / . / - /. Their curse was too much sky. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. Voice begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space 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. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. Hence we have: You're right! When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. / -.-. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting [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. . Ball lightning doesn't happen very often, so it hasn't been recorded under natural conditions. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. Furthermore, why would they put ATTENTION at the end of the transmission instead of the beginning? The Lancastrian's vanishing act happened at a time of considerable political turmoil in South America. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. 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 first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks.