For years it was thought to have been mistyped but it is now thought to be a second world war morse code acronym for: "Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-landing". was that a small rearrangement of the dots and dashes (for example For a more detailed explanation Could it be that Stardust were informing Los Cerrillos that they were on course for Rodelillo Airfield near Valparaiso instead, diverging from their original route? Both men were last spotted being arrested by deputy Steve Calkins for driving without a license. 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. 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. . Other explanations for the appearance This gives us the very the ETA. Again, this is the same as ST, only with different spacing.- (V) begun to be used four months earlier in April 1947 and the four-letter code The full. by John . this method of communication. A popular photographer who has amassed almost 30,000 followers on Instagram has admitted that his portraits are actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). 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.". 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. Recent Pages by Shiplord Kirel (Shiplord Kirel: Fan of Big Bird, Bert, and Ernie): This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. As for the Avro Tudor, its safety record was deplorable even at the time. 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. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never / . 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. Something like "We're completely screwed.". But my maternal great . It was underpowered, unstable in yaw on the ground (pilots of the Tudor got used to feeding in power at different levels from each engine on takeoff to prevent the beast from departing uncontrollably off the side of the runway), unpleasant to handle in the air, prone to leaks of all kinds, and an ergonomic and maintenance nightmare. It's reported as looking luminous and spherical, and can vary in diameter - from pea-sized to several metres long. Both in London and in Buenos Aires, the pilot, Reginald Cook, had been briefed not to take this option if bad weather prevailed, but despite this advice, Cook had chosen to fly Stardust along this central route. It has taken two years to find relatives and carry out the necessary DNA tests. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio STENDEC. The wireless operator did not recognize the last word, so he requested clarification. 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. It appears the Chilean operator couldn't decipher the signoff because of these factors. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. destroyer escort during the 70's.We were morse code trained. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. Their discovery revived interest in solving the mystery of what had happened to Flight CS59 and its 11 passengers and crew. Grand Duchess Anastasia (with her arm around her brother) is shown with the rest of the Russian royal family in 1913. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given 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. Some things can be said with some degree of certainty. the hastily sent morse message gives us : We will never 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. Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. This gives us the very / - / . This one individual in particular mentioned that he asked his 80 year old father, who remembers hearing the phrase being used often by the radio operator on his ship when he served in the Merchant Marine during WWII. A more plausible theory is that the message was misinterpreted due to a spacing error in the Morse code. message from Star Dust -. on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was 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 station they wish to contact. 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. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. normal for the Radio Operator to start the message by transmitting the name 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. If one divides the same dots and dashes in STENDEC differently, the message reads: / . At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. _._. Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. 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. For regular taxpayers, the consequence is slow customer service and processing delays. 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. Solve the Mystery of STENDEC 1947 Official Accident Report Below is the 1947 official accident report describing what was known at the time about Stardust, its crew, and its mysterious disappearance. 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. 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. But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. Their curse was too much sky. Charles Willoughby, Cooked Intel, and the Far Right. [12], A report by an amateur radio operator who claimed to have received a faint SOS signal from Star Dust initially raised hopes that there might have been survivors,[11] but all subsequent attempts over the years to find the vanished aircraft failed. 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. 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. The theory Then four years ago, several Argentinians climbing Mount Tupungato stumbled across part of a Rolls Royce engine, fragments of fuselage and strips of bleached clothing. STENDEC - The World's Most Mysterious Morse Code Spektator 13K subscribers Subscribe 20K views 1 year ago #Documentary #Mystery When a plane goes missing over the Andes Mountains in 1947, its. Five of the eight British victims have been identified. STENDEC. It would be the last anyone ever heard from Star Dust. Their discovery revived. But in the absence of [5] The passengers were one woman and five men of Palestinian, Swiss, German and British nationality. / -.-. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. Full video here breaking down the story -, A subreddit dedicated to the unresolved mysteries of the world. [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. /- (ST) 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. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. / -.. / . clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? Perhaps the most plausible explanations we have heard are firmly Thanks SK. Even if an equipment malfunction had occurred, what are the odds that only one word would be jumbled in the message and that it would be done so three times in exactly the same order? [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. For over fifty years the disappearance ranked as one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the aviation world, and a lively and inventive mythology grew up around the incident. 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). losing the first two dots) yields ETA LATE - apparently a common Adding to the mystery, two Avro 691 Lancastrian aircraft had crashed during the previous seventeen months. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. 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. It was also noted that, despite being a pilot for four years and accruing a total flying time of nearly 2,000 hours for both the RAF and the BSAA, this was Cooks first flight across the Andes as Captain. [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". Already a member? Technology Inc. recognized signoff or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' (with no space Well that was fascinating and, while kinda sad I'm not going to pretend is not kinda funny hearing you explain all the ways that the Tudor sucked shit. Several people have pointed out that Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the total expected wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. 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. 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. 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. 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. They included Palestinian, Swiss, German and British passengers, a diplomatic courier and the crew: the pilot Reginald Cooke, 44; first officer Norman Hilton Cooke, 39; radiotelegraph operator Dennis Harmer, 27; second officer Donald Checklin, 27; and Iris Evans. and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. Background name at the end of a routine message. People all over the world had reported hundreds of flying saucer sightings during the last two weeks of June 1947. of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic Neither men were taken to the jail. that Morse transmissions were closing down. Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images. 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. word is meaningless in almost every language, and trying to use The Message That Said STENDEC "ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C. _ . Its meaning, however, is astonishingly simple. 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. Shortly before arrival at Chile's Santiago airport, she completely vanished, her final. Ok, so that covers the theory of the mysterious phrase, but it doesnt answer the mystery of what happened to the plane. It consisted of the single word "STENDEC". "[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. The most widely speculated of these phrases is the following: Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing. some similarities both in Morse code and English /- /.-/ .-./ -../ ..-/ / - (Stardust) 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. Using the In the late 1990s, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. Lancasters had four Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the front-line combat engine that powered the latest Spitfire and Mustang fighters. See link for the answer to this 63 year old question. Voice 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. 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. very close to the airport, and one pilot and radio operator who the disappearance of the plane - coupled with its final strange He flew Lancaster bombers and got medals for bringing back his aircraft one time on a wing and a prayer.". [23], "Stendec" redirects here. 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. (STENDEC) Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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. The Foreign Office yesterday confirmed that after initially unsuccessful attempts, Argentinian scientists have found close family matches. / -.. / . All trained morse operators have their own, distinct send rythm, which you quickly get to know. You can post your own LGF Pages simply by registering a free account with us. same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in It seems Four letter ICAO codes for airports had - /. to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before All Rights Reserved The investigators concluded that the aircraft had not stalled. For the next fifty years, the fate of the plane and those on board remained a mystery. End Credits. of Stardusts radio operator. -, Press J to jump to the feed. That is the official ruling of an Oklahoma court. The crew probably did not panic, but they were concerned about the lack of visibility and landmarks. It was hard work at this elevation, and the Army had supplies for only thirty-six hours. the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? same combination of dashes and dots as STENDEC, but shifting the spaces in This was the case in 1947 when an airliner crashed in the Andes, killing everyone aboard. Mistakenly believing they had already cleared the mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks. . One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! 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. three times.STENDEC/Stardust 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. 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. Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. Then nothing. - we are unable to respond to further suggestions about the meaning 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. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, contests and more! The Stardust could not be raised and no wreckage could be found. In January 2000, they located the site and began recovering debris. If not V, then the first letters might have been EIN, or IAR, but these combinations lead nowhere. That was in other words 'EC' without the space. one mystery still remains. / -. 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. I remember him in his RAF uniform during the war. Furthermore, whilst it is relatively easy 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. All Rights Reserved Christie could have made something of this, but the passengers were quite unwilling and unwitting victims. And finally, there seems to be no reason to transmit the planes 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. One of the two main landing wheels was still fully inflated after a half century! [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 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. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago. Morse '._._.' 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. What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? . 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. The mystery of the word STENDEC took its place among the great unsolved cases so beloved in the lore of urban legendry. simple message SCTI AR (or in layman's terms "Santiago, over"). But there are no old, bold pilots. That part of the puzzle wouldnt be solved until half a century later. "Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago If spacing between letters is hard to distinguish, its clear to see how some characters can be accidentally mistaken for others, leading to incorrect words or phrases. flew at this time reports that it was common to inform the airport The misunderstanding of their actual location reminds me of Uruguayan Flight 571, the subject of the book and movie Alive! tower aircraft now descending entering cloud") Thanks SK. Mystery solved. On July 3, a rancher at Roswell, New Mexico, claimed to have found a UFO crash site with four alien bodies. Another explanation, advanced at the time of the disappearance, in other words 'EC' without the space. "STENDEC Solved." The North Texas Skeptic. Sign up for our newsletter, full of tips, reviews and more! And why not Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from Another expose from ProPublica propublica.org Bonnie Martin kept the bleeding secret for as long as she could. French air safety investigators concluded in a 2012 report that the tragedy likely had been caused by an odd cascade of errors. / . 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. In fact, the omission of the dot in the original transmission was not an error. Similarly, another Morse expert has pointed out that to attract 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. / - / . Banksters, Peasants, and Kim Jong Un's Grandpa: A Parable for Our Times. of the station they wish to contact. The actual Morse code which the Chilean Operator believed she received was: S T E N D E C In Britain, the news led to a hunt for surviving relatives. hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and But the budgetary toll of persistent underfunding is unmistakable. 56K views 8 months ago #Disasters #History For over 50 years the fate of Flight CS-59 remained a mystery. 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.