Stardust (airplane)
|
|
| Contents |
The Stardust (Avro Lancastrian III G-AGWH)
The Stardust was a British South American Airways airliner that crashed in 1947.
"STENDEC" was the last morse code radio transmission received from the airliner at 17:45 standard time, probably just before it crashed.
Stardust was a Lancastrian airliner, a civilian design based on the famous Avro Lancaster bomber of World War II. On flight CS 59 from Buenos Aires to Santiago, Chile via Mendoza in 1947, the airliner vanished. Just prior to the infamous stendec transmission, the aircraft reported its expected arrival in Santiago in four minutes.
A comprehensive search of a wide area, including what is now known to have been the crash site, revealed not the slightest trace of a crash. There was speculation as to the cause and nature of the Stardust disappearing, probably including the unlikely possibility of an extraterrestrial UFO having taken the airplane.
The flight crew of the aircraft were highly experienced RAF veterans with many thousands of hours on type. The passengers included a King's Messenger carrying diplomatic documents that may have related to the UK's strained relations with the Perón government, a German emigré of suspected Nazi sympathies and a rich Palestinian, said to have been carrying a large diamond sewn into the lining of his jacket.
Discovery of wreckage, reconstruction of the crash
In 1998 traces of the aircraft were discovered on the surface of the Tupangato glacier in the Andes, about 80 km from Santiago.
Wreckage was well-localised, the located propeller showed that its engine was running at near-cruise speed at time of impact and the undercarriage was retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain. Forensic techniques including DNA fingerprinting is applied to the human remains found at the site to determine their identities; remains from 9 of the 11 victims have been found, but not identified due to lack of identifiable features and DNA degradation.
In 1947 the actions of the jet stream were not widely understood, and the Lancastrian was one of the few airliners capable of flying that high. Navigation would have been by dead reckoning. If the airliner had entered the jetstream, it is possible the crew thought they were descending through cloud towards Santiago, when in fact the were over the Tupangato glacier.
It is likely the airliner flew into a near-vertical snow field at the top of the glacier, thereby starting an avalanche that concealed the wreckage from searchers.
The wreckage became incorporated into the body of the glacier, only for fragments to emerge years later, much further down the mountain. From 1998 to 2000, about 10% of the wreckage - including engine and propeller parts and the wheels (one still inflated) - emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. Further debris is likely to turn up as it reaches the melting zone of the glacier.
However, no plausible explanation of the word stendec has yet emerged and it remains a mystery to this day.
"STENDEC"
- It is possible that when the STENDEC signal was sent, the airliner Stardust had already crashed. It is therefore probable that the signal was sent by an outside agency. It may well be a codeword, used for some completely disconnected purpose. It was repeated twice after a 'not understood' signal from Santiago. STENDEC probably had nothing to do with Stardust, it was purely a coincidence. (This is merely an opinion (and impossible to corroborate) but it is supposedly a well supported hypothesis. (J. O'Donel)).
However, STENDEC was reported by the radio operator at Santiago airport to be the end of "loud and clear" but keyed "very fast" received message from Stardust ("ETA Santiago 17.45 [standard time] STENDEC").
- As the Santiago operator reported that the message was keyed very fast, a likely explanation is that the operator erred in the spacing of the Morse signals; STENDEC with alternate spacing could for example translate into V End AR, "V" being a calling-up or attention signal and "AR" being the end-of-message code: STENDEC in Morse code: ... - . -. -.. . -.-.; V End AR in Morse code: ...- / . -. -.. / .- .-. (a 'space' signifies a pause the length of a 'dot', a 'space-slash-space' a pause the length of a 'dash'). This would mean that "STENDEC" was simply the Stardust notifying the end of Morse transmission, as according to its assumed position at the time of sending the last message (17.41 hrs), the plane would be closing into range for voice communication. The only problem with the theory is the presence of a calling-up sign in the middle of a message, which is somewhat unusual, and that the code AR implies that further transmission would be following (like 'over' as opposed to 'over and out' in voice communication), thus the phrase "V End AR" is contradictory in itself - the phrase "V SK" or "V VA" would be used.
- The Morse dot-dash sequence for STENDEC is the same as for SKED AR, meaning in this context 'on schedule, end of message': SKED AR in Morse code: ... -.- . -.. / .-.-.
- Supposedly, STENDEC was a WWII-era British Morse acronym synonymous with the American BOD, standing for 'STarting ENroute DEsCent'. To D. B. Harmer, the Stardust's radio operator, with his 4 years RAF experience, it would be obvious, to a Chilean operator much less so. However, the British official report on the disappearance of Flight CS 59 failed to make any sense of the term. Harmer had flown on 6 trans-Andean crossings; thus, it seems doubtful but not impossible that he would use unfamiliar terminology.
The dot-dash sequence of STENDEC is most likely correct. It was queried and repeated twice. The Santiago operator describes the receiving conditions as 'clear', making it unlikely that dot-dash confusions or omissions occurred. Erroneous deletion or shortening of pauses is more likely than insertion of pauses into letters (a problem of both the V End AR and the SKED AR theories).
External link
- PBS NOVA site about crash (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/)