stendec mystery solved stendec mystery solved

After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. 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. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. - /. USGS. It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of 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. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". 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. The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. Was there a connection? - . In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. (STENDEC) 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. It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. 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. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. 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. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. Then nothing. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Ball lightning. just confirmed his time of arrival? I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. STENDECANAGRAMS By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. . communication was only possible at this time when the aircraft was As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. STENDEC - Solved?! 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. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. 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. in other words 'EC' without the space. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. / . It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. - /. 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 investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. Miracle in the Andes is an excellent book by the way. 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. This gives us the very reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given [10] It has also been suggested that World War II pilots used this seemingly obscure abbreviation when an aircraft was in hazardous weather and was likely to crash, meaning "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing". 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! This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. 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. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. STENDEC and Stardust have All Rights Reserved 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. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. / -. 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. Almost a year after the loss of Star Tiger, her sister aircraft, Star Ariel, also vanished in good weather while on a flight from Bermuda to Jamaica. 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. 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. . -, Press J to jump to the feed. 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. 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. But my maternal great . I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. 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 Theory 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. . Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. For a more detailed explanation by John . Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away Very good writeup! In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. The problem? Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? The problem here though is that, even if this was the case, it would be unusual for Harmer to use a phrase which was not internationally recognised, and only specifically known to allied participants of the war. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. 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. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. But there are no old, bold pilots. 5 STENDEC Another mystery involving a plane played out on August 2, 1947. 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. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. on initials. 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. The theory is the pilot mistakenly plotted their course as if they were leaving from a different airport, and it led to them crashing into a mountain. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. 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. 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. / -. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! 1. 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. [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. / -.. / . The Theory In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . 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. 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. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code between the letters). 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. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . Just before the plane disappeared, it between the letters). losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. From this time (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was [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. this method of communication. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. They had been . But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. [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. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code 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. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. 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. INITIALS 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. In 1947 the official report into Stardusts disappearance had this Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely 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. 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. Also, in the 1947 report, the oxygen system was noted as being fully charged, along with nine emergency bottles before leaving Buenos Aires. [21], The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. . 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 Army unit also discovered that the wheels on the plane were in an upward position, so the crew had not attempted an emergency landing. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. 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. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never _.. . 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. Many people wrote pointing out that STENDEC is an anagram of descent. 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. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. "Why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth of 10km?" Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! Below we include a of the station they wish to contact. The unit had to finish quickly. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had It was underpowered, unstable in yaw on the ground (pilots of the Tudor got used to feeding in power at different levels from each engine on takeoff to prevent the beast from departing uncontrollably off the side of the runway), unpleasant to handle in the air, prone to leaks of all kinds, and an ergonomic and maintenance nightmare. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. 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. As only one young woman was on board, it was assumed to have been that of Iris Moreen Evans, a 26-year-old from the Rhondda valley. The Lancastrian's vanishing act happened at a time of considerable political turmoil in South America. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). (STENDEC) "Santiago tower even navigator doesnt exactly know" Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. 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. 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. A The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. [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". Before this message a series of entirely routine messages had been All rights reserved. Morse '._._.' The word simply has no meaning in any language, not even in Morse code. 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? of Stendec. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. Furthermore, It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. out very fast. 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. A quality comment reply on reddit my mind truly is blown. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. of Stardusts radio operator. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions.