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. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space All rights reserved. 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. 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. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . An interesting new solution to the STENDEC mystery has been proposed, as advised by listener Anders. And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only . aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts . 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. 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. Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. 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. 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. Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. 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. [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". /- (ST) The Morse for AR is.- /.-. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. 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. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. It would have been / / -.-. 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". based in Morse code, and have come from people highly familiar with The Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. 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. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. Many people wrote pointing out that STENDEC is an anagram of descent. Conspiracy Theory Watch: Don't Drink the Kool Aid. 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. case G-AGWH) rather than the romantic names airlines gave them. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) - LGF Pages 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 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. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. use SOS, the internationally accepted distress signal? / -.. / . of the above, please follow the link to Martin Colwell's website here - Thanks SK. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. If they wanted to convey distress, they would have sent an SOS., Misinterpretation Theory [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. Discussion . USGS. close to an understanding of the message. It also seems clear that the message was not anticipating a crash, 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. / -. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. STENDEC/STAR DUST Theory 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. Possibly because he was finishing / - / . 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. . Iris Evans, who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens") as a chief petty officer, was the flight attendant. Improperly loaded, it crashed on landing, killing 80 of the people on board -- at the time, the worst air disaster in world history. - - . 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. Ice crystals accumulated on a probe, causing it to give incorrect speed readings and the autopilot system to disengage. British . After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. 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. 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. Five of the eight British victims have been identified. Whilst many accepted that the fate of Stardust and its crew had been settled, the absence of a wreckage, along with the mysterious circumstances surrounding its final message, lead to widespread speculation, with theories spanning from sabotage to extraterrestrial in nature. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. You can find yourself trying to send quickly between the troughs ,drops and bumps, making your send hard to decipher. So mysterious was A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. Due to the poor visibility caused by the storm, its possible that the crew were unaware that their plane was on course to collide with the mountainside, and unknowingly plummeted the aircraft into the summit before eventually succumbing to the elements. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. What was radio operator Dennis Harmer, a highly trained wartime and civilian operator, trying to say? Why would the operator say end? For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. . This theory is an easy one to break apart. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. by John . some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) operator to scramble the message. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. (STENDEC). 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. "Santiago tower even navigator doesnt exactly know" That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. one mystery still remains. However, the mystery of the final radio message remains. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, STENDEC - The Worlds Most Mysterious Morse Code, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF). 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. 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. STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. / - / . 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. 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. [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. Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. [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". The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. 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. When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears. 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. Over the next 2 years more debris and remains will be found. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. 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. Terms of Use/Privacy Policy. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. Seems very unlikely. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? Several people have pointed out that In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. Something like "We're completely screwed.". I was a radio operator aboard an R.A.N. Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . . Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. [9] This leg of the flight was apparently uneventful until the radio operator (Harmer) sent a routine message in Morse code to the airport in Santiago at 5:41 pm, announcing an expected arrival of 5:45 pm. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. There's still no explanation for the loss of Star Ariel, but so many things went wrong with Tudors on such a regular basis that its disappearance is hardly to be wondered at. "[12], A set of events similar to those that doomed Star Dust also caused the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972 (depicted in the film Alive), although there were survivors from that crash because it involved a glancing blow to a mountainside rather than a head-on collision. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? 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. Though it had as its General Manager a pilot of exceptional distinction -- Air Vice Marshal D.C.T. Weird December 2010 Views: 31,751. The first letter has to be V, and the rest just fall into place-ALP-a perfect match in Morse. 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. 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 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. 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 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. But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. between the letters). Once again, no distress signal was received. The site had been difficult to reach. (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.). 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. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! 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. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. This is fascinating. 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. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport / . But in the absence of French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. [16] If the airliner, which had to cross the Andes mountain range at 24,000 feet (7,300m), had entered the jet-stream zonewhich in this area normally blows from the west and south-west, resulting in the aircraft encountering a headwindthis would have significantly decreased the aircraft's ground speed. that final message from the ill-fated Lancastrian. in other words 'EC' without the space. to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. 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. 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. [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. Anagram Theory It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. 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. 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. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. 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. unanswered. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in attention, and another signing off. otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. For a more detailed explanation this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. 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. End Credits. Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was Solve the Mystery of STENDEC Readers' Theories Set #3 Posted February 8, 2001 previous set The word STENDEC means: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-Landing.". All further calls were The International Civil Aviation Organisation had only recently implemented the airline code for Los Cerrillos just four months prior to the event in April 1947, so its more than possible that the airports radio operator was not yet familiar with the term and failed to recognise it. 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"). Morse '._._.' 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. / . [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. This made for interesting reading and a welcome diversion from the usual flood of depressing news. The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. / - / . One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! / -. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. the sign off for a Morse code message is AR. Perhaps STENDEC was an abbreviation for a much longer message, an acronym sent in a hurry due to being in a crunch for time. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. / - /. Then nothing. For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. The most likely reality is that sending STENDEC was a mistake of some sort by Star Dusts radio operator. 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. 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. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). 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). They may be similar, but it is still hard to imagine an experienced The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. The following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . 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. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. At 5:41 p.m., a Chilean Morse code radio operator for the Los Cerrillos Airport received a message. name at the end of a routine message. That would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting 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. CONCLUSION Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. But there are no old, bold pilots. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. / -.. / . 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.