Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site. . Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy course. [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. attention, and another signing off. . Five of the eight British victims have been identified. 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. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. Its not even common practice for a plane to transmit its name at the end of a routine message, so this theory also unfortunately falls flat. / -.. / . A popular one is that STENDEC is an anagram of DESCENT and the letters were re-arranged due to Harmer suffering from the effects of hypoxia. When Harmer and his crew sent their final message to Los Cerrillos, they had no idea that they were seconds away from a fatal impact. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. 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. 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. - . A few days after Christmas in 2015, a woman in Sydney's south-west was contacted by police with shocking news. This theory is an easy one to break apart. STENDEC Solved by John L. Scherer. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. The Lancastrian was an unpressurized aircraft, meaning that the crew and passengers could have been subject to hypoxia had their oxygen system failed, and so some suggest that this may have led to Harmer sending parts of his final message in a confused state. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. The actual recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. Discussion . Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. The Chilean operator did mention how Harmers messages came through unusually fast, so there is every chance that some letters were incorrectly spaced and caused confusion to the control tower. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space 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. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source The unit had to finish quickly. unanswered. The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. [17] One of the pilots recalled that "we had all been warned not to enter cloud over the mountains as the turbulence and icing posed too great a threat. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely sent one final message in Morse code which was picked up by the A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . 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 Army unit also discovered that the wheels on the plane were in an upward position, so the crew had not attempted an emergency landing. They hadn't passed Curico. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. The fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over fifty years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. To put it simply, Cook chose the worst route possible in consideration of the conditions, which more than likely played a key role in the planes disappearance. 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. 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. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). just confirmed his time of arrival? Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? /- (ST) Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. The full. 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. [10], The staff of the BBC television series Horizonwhich presented an episode in 2000 on the Star Dust disappearancereceived hundreds of messages from viewers proposing explanations of "STENDEC". - / . _.. . that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based Ice crystals accumulated on a probe, causing it to give incorrect speed readings and the autopilot system to disengage. 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. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and STENDEC. It would be the last anyone ever heard from Star Dust. 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. 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. After this, British civil aviation authorities withdrew the Tudor's certification to carry passengers, and the few remaining examples concluded their operational service as cargo and tanker aircraft. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme pageTranscriptFurther information Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. STENDECANAGRAMS 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. And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. An aircraft finds itself off-course and in .. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. 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. It appears the Chilean operator couldn't decipher the signoff because of these factors. 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. Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. Neither men were taken to the jail. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. 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. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. Morse transmissions prior to picking up voice communication. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never 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. Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. . The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. by aliens. Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared 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 letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . (STENDEC) Yet one mystery remains:. / . I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. Thanks SK. [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". The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. 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. They may be similar, but it is still hard to imagine an experienced It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. [18], Star Dust is likely to have flown into a nearly vertical snowfield near the top of the glacier, causing an avalanche that buried the wreckage within seconds and concealed it from searchers. 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. The site had been difficult to reach. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code Then nothing. Hence we have: 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. Blast From the Past: The North Texas Skeptic, May 1999, Republican Senator Claims 'The Left' Will Start a Civil War Unless Federal Highway System Abolished, A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline, Popular Instagram Photographer Revealed as AI Fraud, Cutting IRS Funding Is a Gift to Americas Wealthiest Tax Evaders, Record 6,542 Guns Intercepted at US Airport Security in 22, Interview With Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm, US: Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine, Joel Cummins Umphreys McGee Keyboard Rig - January 2023 [VIDEO], Oklahoma Judge Transfers Lesbian Moms Parental Rights to Her Sons Sperm Donor. Something like "We're completely screwed.". . The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. SAR Ball lightning. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? Subscribe now for ad-free access!Register and sign in to a free LGF account before subscribing, and your ad-free access will be automatically enabled. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. 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. The site had been difficult to reach. 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. Sign in to continue reading. of messages offering explanations of STENDEC. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . / / -.-. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. The Theory / - /. However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. 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 the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. 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. This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. 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. 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. 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. In 1947 the official report into Stardusts disappearance had this It was delivered to BSAA on 12 January 1946, was registered on 16 January as G-AGWH and given the individual aircraft name "Star Dust". - . On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. 2023 Little Green Footballs Their curse was too much sky. In 1998, over 50 years after the disappearance of Stardust, a group of Argentine mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato, one of the highest mountains in the Andes and roughly 50 miles east of Santiago, stumbled upon the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine of the Lancastrian. Therefore a standard signoff would be sent as the To my mind, STENDEC was the misheard signoff by Harmer. [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. Their curse was too much sky. 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. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? [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. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. Moreover, operators at the time only referred to aircraft by their registration code, which in Star Dusts case was G-AGWH., Acronym Theory It has to be this one in my opinion. Blast From the Past: The North Texas Skeptic, May 1999, Republican Senator Claims 'The Left' Will Start a Civil War Unless Federal Highway System Abolished, A Christian Health Nonprofit Saddled Thousands With Debt as It Built a Family Empire Including a Pot Farm, a Bank and an Airline, Popular Instagram Photographer Revealed as AI Fraud, Cutting IRS Funding Is a Gift to Americas Wealthiest Tax Evaders, Record 6,542 Guns Intercepted at US Airport Security in 22, Interview With Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm, US: Russia Has Committed Crimes Against Humanity in Ukraine, Joel Cummins Umphreys McGee Keyboard Rig - January 2023 [VIDEO], Oklahoma Judge Transfers Lesbian Moms Parental Rights to Her Sons Sperm Donor. The disappearance of Terrance Williams and Felipe Santos Two men (unrelated, who didn't know each other) disappeared from Naples, Florida three months apart under the exact same circumstances. The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. Perhaps the most plausible explanations we have heard are firmly this method of communication. 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. It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? It seems 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. 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. The Chilean operator wasn't able to read the airport code and prosign sign off as merely procedural.Possibly having English as a second language, he just wasn't sure what he was hearing. 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. Full video here breaking down the story - STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code [Transcript From Video Below] / . / -. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. 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. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. -, Press J to jump to the feed. Anagram Theory See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. From this time The radio operator misheard the signal. The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. Plane and Pilot expands upon the vast base of knowledge and experience from aviations most reputable influencers to inspire, educate, entertain and inform. in other words 'EC' without the space. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: You're right! 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. enigmatic radio message was meant to mean. 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). made with the control tower at Santiago. 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! It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in It makes me want to write out the Morse code and play with the spacing. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! Once again, no distress signal was received. message from Star Dust -. 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. Morse '._._.' by John . Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. 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. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #1 Posted January 31, 2001 next set. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract . the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. But would they repeat AR too, not just the airport code, for clarity? 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. 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 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. A 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. Possibly because he was finishing 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. clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. 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 last two possible mistranslations both involve an input mistake of some sort, but there is another phrase which uses the exact same morse code sequence as STENDEC but with different spacing.
Nrl Rugby League Field Positions Kick Off, Former Wxii Reporters, Articles S