It was the manicured hand of a young woman lying among the ice and rocks. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. . In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. between the letters). Los Cerrillos airport Santiago was given was SCTI. unanswered. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. Back to 'Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared' programme page. Very good writeup! 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. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. But my maternal great . Vanished: The Plane That Disappeared What did the crew of BSAA Flight CS-59 mean when they sent and repeated the cryptic message STENDEC via Morse code seconds before crashing? 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. Thanks SK. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. 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. was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. 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. this method of communication. / / -.-. Almost certainly Star Tiger ran out of fuel before reaching Bermuda, a consequence of stronger-than-predicted upper-level winds. 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. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. This button leads to the main index of LGF Pages, our user-submitted articles. radio operator in Santiago, where the plane was due to land. 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. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was The Stardust incident involved British South American Airways G-AGWH. The out, but seems unlikely. operator to scramble the message. 1 Pan Am Flight 7 . The final apparently unintelligible word "STENDEC" has been a source All these variations seem implausible to a greater or lesser extent. Four letter ICAO codes for airports had / -.. / . / -. [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. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. the ETA. / - /. BBC2 9:00pm Thursday 2nd November 2000, Although science has solved Replies analysing and speculating over the mystery and possible explanations are encouraged. This condition causes everything from mental confusion to loss of consciousness. And why not 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. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. of mystery, confusion and intrigue ever since. From this time reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given 1. A mix of misinterpretation and a lack of recent knowledge led to the operator instead hearing the term STENDEC, which, combined with the disappearance of the plane, led to one of South Americas greatest aviation mysteries. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. Anagram Theory Understanding STENDEC has been the quest for many experienced and avid radio operators, with online forums dedicated to deciphering what Dennis Harmer was trying to say. message from Star Dust - "E.T.A. 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. 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. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . "Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash" Something like "We're completely screwed.". Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? 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. attention, and another signing off. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. 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. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. that Morse transmissions were closing down. it as an acronym or an abreviation yields little fruit. ATLANTA (AP) The woman flying out of Philadelphias airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. One was a British diplomatic courier, a King's Messenger. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? by John . 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. 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. Explanations based in Morse code The trekkers had abandoned their pack mules lower down, and ascended with what they could carry. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code The actual All Rights Reserved (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. No trace of the missing Lancastrian aircraft, named Star Dust, could be found. 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. 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. 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. Dear NOVA, I am a radio amateur who actively uses the Morse Code. They had nothing to do with the crash, other than being present. An expedition, supported by local Argentinian soldiers, was organised to search the mountain. the last message received from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer [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". 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. Fiddling with Morse code seems to offer the best chance of getting message from Star Dust -. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). up sign. of the station they wish to contact. 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. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic between the letters). /-.-. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. [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 would leave just "END", sandwiched between a signal attracting The operator understood that Star Dust intended to land in four minutes, but the final word, STENDEC, confused him. Its civil certificate of airworthiness (CofA) number 7282 was issued on 1 January 1946. 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. As might be inferred from that lineage, it was uncomfortable, noisy, and cramped. (STENDEC) Mystery solved. (0), By Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie. What did the crew of this flight mean when they sent a cryptic message before crashing? Star Dust crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.[1][2]. . / - (Descent) same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in And even less likely that the same morse dyslexia would be repeated otherwise it would not have been repeated three times. 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! What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? 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. 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. The dots and dash formed one letter, V: / . Ball lightning is a potentially dangerous atmospheric electrical phenomenon. 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. It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. 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". I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. Tragically, that wasn't the last disaster in which Bennett and the Tudor were involved. Possibly because he was finishing the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio 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. STENDEC is the same Morse as SCTI AR if you don't consider any spacing between characters. 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. Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. Things like air turbulance (in my case, rough seas) also affect that rythm. A common example of this would be SOS, which is the internationally recognised distress signal in morse code to call for help. - /. 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.