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. Mystery solved. Since the programme transmitted we have received literally hundreds 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. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. 1 Dec. 2010, Volume 24, Number 12: 1-5. / / . The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name [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 following is a similar list of strange mysteries that were solved later with the help of science, history, research, archaeology, coincidences, etc. [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. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . between the letters). 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. The North Texas Skeptic Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. 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. This theory is an easy one to break apart. of Stardusts radio operator. 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. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. Mrs Coalwood said: "He was my older cousin, who I idolised hopelessly. Their discovery revived. 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. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. One final mystery lay in the last message sent out by the Star Dust. The last word in Star Dust's final Morse code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes before its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained. in other words 'EC' without the space. They hadn't passed Curico. The public, still reeling from the now-famous flying saucer incident in Roswell, New Mexico, a few weeks earlier, went wild with theories, speculating everything from sabotage to alien abduction. The Mystery of STENDEC - Skeptoid For many years, people wondered if she'd survived the massacre that killed the rest of her family. Firstly, despite it being easy to rearrange STENDEC quickly in English text, doing the same in morse code is much more complex and highly implausible due to the nature of the language. [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. INITIALS 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. some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) Was there a connection? "Systems to the end navigation depends entirely on circle" (although Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. Is that the one where they all started eating each other? Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) - LGF Pages As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. 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. 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. Its certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. 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 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. 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. The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. 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. STENDEC is the same Morse as SCTI AR if you don't consider any spacing between characters. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. As mentioned in a previous theory, morse code can be easily misinterpreted if incorrectly spaced or misheard by the receiver. The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 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. / . 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. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. 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. 2023 Little Green Footballs Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place in 1998, when mountain climbers in the Andes found the planes Rolls-Royce engine. STENDEC Solved (Mystery message from 1947 Andes plane crash) Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. 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. Yet one mystery remains:. The radio operator misheard the signal. Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. Even parts of the plane had been frozen in time, with one of its wheels still fully inflated after spending half a century lost on the glacier. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. [3][pageneeded], Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. 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. Ball lightning. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely in other words 'EC' without the space. [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. STENDEC/STAR DUST Theory Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). Whilst its true that the Lancastrian was unpressurised, the crew 1947 an British South American Airways aircraft named Star Dust disappeared, it's last message was simply "STENDEC". The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting From this time 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. 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. Then nothing. aircraft were usually referred to by their registration (in Stardusts 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. / . The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . Discussion STENDEC - Solved?! That was 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. [14] Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. / - / . - / . 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. / - /. 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. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use 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. / -. 'ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC' 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. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! 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. [22] Alternatively, the Morse spelling for "STENDEC" is one character off from instead spelling VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, 110 kilometers north of Santiago. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning Very good writeup! hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and name at the end of a routine message. With the word not existing in international morse code, or any spoken language at the time, interpreting STENDEC has led to many varying theories. The Horizon staff concluded that, with the possible exception of some misunderstanding based on Morse code, none of these proposed solutions was plausible. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. operator to scramble the message. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . made with the control tower at Santiago. Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? [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. In 1950, one of these, Star Girl, had no fewer than 83 passengers and crew crammed into it on a charter flight from Dublin to Llandow, a low-cost airport near Cardiff in Wales. 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. 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. The site had been difficult to reach. 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. 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. 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. Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. "Santiago tower even navigator doesnt exactly know" 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. It is now believed that the crew became confused as to their exact location while flying at high altitudes through the (then poorly understood) jet stream. 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. This is, in my opinion, the most plausible theory of what STENDEC was supposed to be. 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". Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. 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. End Credits. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. [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. 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. As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. three times.STENDEC/Stardust Furthermore, The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. . 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. The flight was conducted in zero-visibility conditions, so its unlikely the crew had any idea their plane was about to impact a mountainside. 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. Read on these 10 strange mysteries that were solved later. The letter was not C. Nor were the first two letters of this strange message ST: / . - . 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. The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. / -.-. of the station they wish to contact. . How police solved the mystery of a VHS tape depicting sexual assault NOVA Online | Vanished! | STENDEC Theories - PBS The Star Dust Mystery Damn Interesting You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. "STENDEC" in Morse code is: / - / . It seems 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. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved Solve the Mystery of STENDEC STENDEC Theories On August 2, 1947, Stardust 's radio operator sent a final message in Morse code to the Chilean radio operator then on duty in Santiago. 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. By Plane and Pilot Updated December 12, 2019 Save Article. 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. Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident - Wikipedia It is understood that Iris Evans's sister was found and gave a blood sample after a BBC Horizon programme about the crash. Its designer, Roy Chadwick, died in one when a prototype crashed during a test flight in 1947. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. 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. close to an understanding of the message. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. Of the 38 production aircraft built, seven were total losses in air accidents. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. In 1947 the official report into Stardusts disappearance had this Star Dust, registration G-AGWH, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, departed Buenos Aires for Santiago at 13.46 on 2 August 1947. 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. [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. 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. Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract selection of the ideas. begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. Imaginative souls speculated that aliens had snatched the large Lancastrian along with its passengers and crew. But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. Sometimes These Enigmas Never Decipher. [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. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. 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! 1947 BSAA Star Dust accident - "STENDEC" : UnsolvedMysteries - reddit Discussion This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. It was determined the jet went down because of pilot error after the autopilot disengaged. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. -, Press J to jump to the feed. What are some SOLVED mysteries? : r/AskReddit The word STENDEC was corrupted into Stendek and became. 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. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. 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. / - / . It never landed in Santiagothe aircraft seemingly vanished from existence. [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. 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. Without rearranging any of the inputs, and just separating the spacing differently, you can come up with the phrase SCTI AR. Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common STENDEC" That wasthe last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. 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. In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . Full video here breaking down the story -, A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. Five of the eight British victims have been identified. It even inspired a new name for a UFO magazineSTENDEK. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. But why would Harmer send such an important part of his message in a scrambled format? The Theory The message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. to imagine STENDEC being scrambled into descent in English, it is STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. . A FINAL WORDHorizon regrets that - due to the sheer volume of correspondence It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. 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. Are you an aviation enthusiast or pilot? 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. 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. And similarly why would an operator say ETA LATE when he had only 20 passengers and crew were lost. 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. So mysterious was the disappearance of the plane - coupled with it's final strange message - that Stardust became entwined in UFO theories. by aliens. . It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. 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 Morse for AR is.- /.-. know for certain, but I believe this is by far the most likely meaning of When you try to send too quickly that rythm disappears.
California Senate Race 2024, Daniel Louisy Married, Ward Maracle Obituary, Articles S