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. Now the plane has been found we know that it wasnt spirited away 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. / -.-. 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. - - . Could there be more to the story of Star Dusts crash? In morse code, there are various short-hand acronyms and abbreviations which help convey much longer messages quickly. - / . What was experienced radio operator Dennis Harmer trying to say? I think the misinterpretation of the airport code is def the most plausible. 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. [11], In 2000, an Argentine Army expedition found additional wreckageincluding a propeller and wheels (one of which had an intact and inflated tyre)and noted that the wreckage was well localised, a fact which pointed to a head-on impact with the ground, and which also ruled out a mid-air explosion. 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. 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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. which is identical - although with different spacings - to EC. The Avro Lancastrian was a civilian version of the wartime Lancaster heavy bomber. [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. reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given 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. British Overseas Airways G-AGLX (the registration number) went down on March 23, 1946, and British Overseas Airways G-AGMF crashed on August 20. After an exhausting search, no trace of the aircraft was found. [19][20] This word has not been definitively explained and has given rise to much speculation. / - / . Their curse was too much sky. In Mendoza, one startling picture published in the city's newspapers aroused particular curiosity. much harder in Morse code.-.. / . 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. Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from Actually, the With so many people packing heat the country must be safer, right? But what was Jon Stewart asks when we will have enough guns -- watch to the end to watch him absolutely stick the landing. Morse code experts we have consulted believe that it is highly unlikely 2023 Little Green Footballs Something about how the pilots were originally British Airways pilots and that Stendec actually meant something in British Airways terminology. 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. Was there a connection? Possibly because he was finishing It would have been . to say on the subject:The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before On BSAA's Transatlantic services, moreover, it was operating at the ragged edge of its range when flying westbound. 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. [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. The crash was a result of controlled descent into terrain. The theory about it being a code for the airport makes a lot more sense. However, while the aircraft was unpressurized, its crew had been supplied with oxygen. 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. All rights reserved. They were finally grounded in 1959, unsurprisingly after yet another ex-BSAA Tudor flew into a Turkish mountain, for reasons that remain unclear, killing all on board. 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. this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled"). 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. attention it is common to use the dots and dash for V as a calling By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). name at the end of a routine message. - - . / - / . Morse '._._.' This is a personal family mystery that got solved a few years ago, so nothing exciting that would have gotten media attention, haha. 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. The problem here though is that, even if this was the case, it would be unusual for Harmer to use a phrase which was not internationally recognised, and only specifically known to allied participants of the war. clear that STENDEC is not what the message was meant to say. 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. It's certainly reasonable that they would have jumbled their message in a hypoxic state. Hence we have: Its fate became one of the most puzzling aviation mysteries of its time. Just before the plane disappeared, it Morse allows a maximum of four dots and dashes in any letter, narrowing the possibility for mistakes. 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. One of those two people was Nando Parrado and in his book "Miracle in the Andes" he describes that their flight also left in poor, inadvisable conditions. (ETA LATE) /, which is VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, some 110 kilometers north of Santiago. Dennis Harmer at 17:41 on 2nd August 1947. Once again, no distress signal was received. The chances of all of these failing are extremely low, so the theory of hypoxia and the anagram has been ruled out by many. . The Avro Lancastrian began its life as a British Lancaster bomber in World War II. All Rights Reserved Their curse was too much sky. It would be like ending a story with once upon a time., Conclusion Any explanation for STENDEC depends on an understanding of Morse As mentioned previously, the standard morse code for a distress signal is SOS, which is much easier and quicker to communicate than STENDEC. /-.-. 1 "The Bloop" is an underwater mystery that took nearly 10 years to solve. The accident aircraft, an Avro 691 Lancastrian 3, was built as constructor's number 1280 for the Argentine Ministry of Supply to carry thirteen passengers, and first flew on 27 November 1945. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. that a radio operator would resort to convoluted messages based [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. So apparently the mystery hasn't been solved, because I don't see anything in the article suggesting anyone understands what Stendec meant. the operator use a calling up sign in the middle of his message? 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. At 17.41 a Chilean Air Force Morse operator in Santiago picked up a message: ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs. method of signalling a late arrival amongst RAF radio operators.. / - / .- / .-.. / .- / - / . "Systems to the end navigation depends entirely on circle" (although 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. 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. The message was repeated-STENDEC, then transmitted a third time. The problem? Some politicians have irresponsibly suggested that every new IRS employee will be a gun-toting enforcement agent. In 1997, an ultra-low frequency, weird but loud noise . Part of the problem was that BSAA was operating types of aircraft that were at the extreme limits of their capabilities. With a diplomat on board, the press freely speculated that a bomb had exploded in mid-flight. The central route via Mendoza was considered to be the quickest of the three, yet potentially the most dangerous depending on weather conditions. - /. "[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. Five months after the episode described by OP, one of BSAA's Avro Tudor IV aircraft, Star Tiger, with 31 persons on board, vanished on a flight from Lisbon to Bermuda with an intermediate fuel stop in the Azores. Jos Avery has been posting his impressive photos Twitter continues to crumble bit by bit. / . The Lancastrian aircraft, with eleven people on board, never did arrive at Santiago Airport and its location remained unsolved for over fifty years. After the third time, communications ceased, and the aircraft disappeared, never reaching its final destination. I thought this had been solved in a documentary I watched. Whilst a reasonable theory on the surface, its unfortunately also quite reasonable to discredit. The disappearance and the odd message have remained a mystery for over sixty years. 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. Really neat, I hadn't heard of this before. 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. In either case, they attempted to contact what they thought was the nearest airport, Valparaiso, not Santiago.

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