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. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. 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. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. The problem? In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie Weird December 2010 Views: 31,881 Tweet 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. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. Both in London and in Buenos Aires, the pilot, Reginald Cook, had been briefed not to take this option if bad weather prevailed, but despite this advice, Cook had chosen to fly Stardust along this central route. - / . - . Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. Then nothing. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never
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. / - (Descent) This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. 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. 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. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. 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. Possibly because he was finishing All Rights Reserved The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. The 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. [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. Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract And if there was any meaning to it, it wasnt in regards to the crash. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. Theories include everything from sabotage to aliens. In 2000 the Argentine Army detachment found the debris scattered over one square kilometer, a relatively small area, so the bomb theory was discarded. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. 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. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. of Stendec. 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. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. _._. Something like "We're completely screwed.". It would have been
the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Below we include a STENDEC - Solved?! Americas owner-flown aircraft enthusiasts and active-pilot resource, delivered to your inbox! It was also, as OP says, unpressurized, so that passengers as well as crew had to breathe supplemental oxygen through masks while above 15,000 feet. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before 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. And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only 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. 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. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. INITIALS 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. / -.-. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. The Morse for AR is.- /.-. . Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. / - /. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name
That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. I couldnt find a source for this, but according to theorists online, this was a known phrase for allied fighter pilots in WWII for if their plane was about to crash land. - / . - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. 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. 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. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? 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. aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts / -. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts. / -. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. - . communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was / -. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in
It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). 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. /- (ST) For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. 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. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? 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. I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. A few years later, more debris was found on the mountain, suggesting that the plane had made a head-on impact with the ground due to the close proximity and condition of the wreckage. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the
1. attention, and another signing off. No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. And why not 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. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. 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 disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. 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. (These individuals ignore the fact that almost any other triangle of a similar size, drawn anywhere else in the North Atlantic, would yield a similar if not greater number of disappearances.). 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. 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. The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. Among the grisly remains scattered over a radius of more than a mile on the glacier were three human torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a hand with fingers outstretched. 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. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. It wasnt until 1998 that a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, approximately 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon wreckage from the crash. 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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. 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. Several people have pointed out that 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? Hence we have: Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of
/ -. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. 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. With the disappearance occurring less than a month after the now infamous Roswell incident, unexplained events such as a vanishing plane were easily connected to the possibility of alien interference. were all supplied with oxygen. of the station they wish to contact. Discussion [15] During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have blocked visibility of the ground. 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. - / . This gives us the very
Martin Colwell's theory on the mystery "STENDEC"
. 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. 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. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had
This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. 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.