Star Dust was a British South American Airways(BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner which crashed into
Mount Tupungato in the Argentine Andes on 2nd of August 1947, during a flight from Buenos Aires
to Santiago, Chile. A comprehensive search of a wide area (including what is now known to have
been the crash site) was fruitless, and the fate of the aircraft and occupants remained unknown
for 50 years.
Am investigation in 2000 after wreckage of G-AGWH had found determined the crash was caused
by weather related factors, but until then speculation had included theories of international,
inter corporate sabotage and even abduction by aliens.
In the late 1990's, pieces of wreckage from the missing aircraft began to emerge from the glacial ice.
It is now assumed that the crew became confused as th their exact location while flying at high altitudes
through the (then poorly understood) jet steam. Mistakenly believing that had already cleared the
mountain tops, they started their descent when they were in fact still behind cloud-covered peaks,
and 'Star Dust' crashed into Mount Tupungato, killing all aboard and burying itself in snow and ice.
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 satisfactory explained.
E.T.A Santiago 17:45 the last message from Star Dust, sent by Radio Officer Dennis Harmer on 2nd
August 1947.
The Chilean radio operator in Santiago said the reception was clear, but the message was sent rather
quickly, so she asked for it to be repeated...twice. The message was believed to be the same on all
occasions.
Clearly the crew believed they were only minutes away from Santiago, the radio officer would
have been keen to complete that final morse code message so he 'could" make voice contact with
the controller at Los Cerrillos airport. Therefore it is no surprise that the message was sent rather
quickly.
There have been many suggestions over the years as to what was meant by Dennis Harmer's message
that day, as it clearly was not intended to be STENDEC, some of the theories are totally implausible.
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. A person suffering from hypoxia may possibly make
the same mistake consistently three times in succession but very unlikely to create an anagram of
the intended word. Furthermore a normal message would not be expected to consist of the single
word 'descent''.
A recognised sign off or 'end of message' signal was 'AR' therefore a standard sign off would be sent
as Morse, 'EC' without a space. If the messages from the Star Dust were sent quickly it is conceivable
that spaces were misinterpreted, a common message at that time was 'Standard Arrival' followed by
the direction from which the aircraft was arriving, so in this case if we simply shift a couple of spaces
from STENDEC we are left with S T A R E A R or STandard/ARrival/East/signoff:
S T A R E AR
It is impossible not to know for sure what Dennis Harmer intended his final message to be.
It was almost certainly not STENDEC.
Even though the discovery of the wreckage of Star Dust helped us to understand the events of that
day in 1947, the word STENDEC will always be a subject for debate.
STENDEC
19-20-5-14-4-5-3
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BS ... t_accident
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/amp.histor ... of-roanoke