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STENDEC: Airliner 'Star Dust' Lost In the Andes (1947)

EnolaGaia said:
Yes - differences among operators would have been a potential source of performance or operational breakdowns or miscommunications in wartime (just as in peacetime).
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It was. It was also used to infer alterations to troop deployments. My father was RAF i WWII and mentioned it several times.
 
Another thing that's bugged me about the standard account of that night's events - especially in light of the Colwell theory (see above) ...

We know now that the airplane was not where its crew thought it was - it was farther east than the crew presumed, still on the eastern side of the Andes.

The standard account claims the mystery 'STENDEC' string ending the last substantive message was followed by two subsequent transmissions of (what the operator may have simply re-copied as) 'STENDEC' alone.

The standard account presumes these last two transmissions were in response to the Santiago operator's transmitted request for repetition of the substantive message.

What if this presumption is wrong?

What if Harmer never received (either legibly or at all ... ) any transmission(s) back from Santiago? All we know is that the operator in Santiago could hear Harmer loud and clear. We don't know whether Harmer ever heard anything in return from the other side of one of the world's major mountain ranges.

The Colwell hypothesis is that 'STENDEC' was a misinterpretation of 'SCTI AR' (i.e., "Los Cerrillos" - "Over") - precisely what one would expect Harmer to have transmitted to establish communication with his destination airfield.

What if Harmer's last two transmissions weren't repeating the ending portion of a message for which repetition had been requested (and hence "request received"), but rather sending out a call to establish comms with a Los Cerrillos station from which he hadn't yet received a link-up response?

If he'd received a request to repeat his last transmission, why would he re-transmit the last portion in isolation?
 
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EnolaGaia said:
Colwell's theory (also based on radio operator misintepretation) is described on this webpage:

http://www.sartechnology.ca/sartechnology/ST_STENDEC_ColdCase.htm

Bottom Line: In both cases 'STENDEC' has been a mystery because 'STENDEC' wasn't the message that was sent - it was the misinterpreted message the Santiago operator recorded. Under both theories the intended message was notification of approach to the Santiago airfield, sent under the erroneous belief the Star Dust had cleared the Andes.

Colwell in particular blames the misinterpretation on the message having been transmitted at a higher speed than operators were expected and certified to handle.
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That link is very convincing, and states the triple repetition of "stendec" is standard for transmission in bad weather, which the plane was flying in.
 
@EnolaGaia that is an entirely-possible scenario.

It's worth bearing in mind that the Lancastrian/Lancaster used the (then common) approach of having a physically-seperate HF transmitter & receiver (the classic T1154/R1155 combo....so the receiver is the top unit here)


510px-R1155_Receiver_and_T1154_Transmitter_at_RAF_Digby.jpg


Having a seperate transmitter and receiver meant that the operator had to occasionally 'net' his own receiver by listening to his own reduced transmissions, to confirm that he was on frequency. Failure to do this (eg after long periods of operation causing frequency drift and misalignment of eg the ACTUAL receiver frequency) would result in him conceivably being heard on the ground, but not hearing back on receive in the air.
 
EnolaGaia said:
I suspect the 'Stendek' video is BS of the highest order, at least to the extent it tries to link 'STENDEC' to the Bermuda Triangle.
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Well, it's not so much a video but a 1970s radio broadcast by Eliot Mintz, which gained him some notoriety. Hence he named is company "Stendek LLC" - as a bit of a self-deferential joke.

As it is a radio show, he doesn't really name his sources, but I presume you hit the nail on the head with your 1970s book references.
 
oldrover said:
It was. It was also used to infer alterations to troop deployments. My father was RAF i WWII and mentioned it several times.
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how did that not result in frequent huge 8-way clusterfucks during wartime ... surely some kind of leading-zero or similar variant wouldve improved precision ?

re the repetition, would be interesting to see a definitive timeline of exactly what was transmitted, and when, if one has ever been produced
 
henry said:
how did that not result in frequent huge 8-way clusterfucks during wartime ... surely some kind of leading-zero or similar variant wouldve improved precision ?
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I have no doubt such missteps happened. The bottom line is that the operators were trusted.

Secondary technological features intended to avoid such ambiguities and misinterpretations (e.g., streaming paper tapes recording Morse traffic) were introduced soon after the introduction of hard-wired telegraphy (i.e., the early to mid 19th century). These fell into disuse and were discontinued once it became sufficiently apparent the operators could be reasonably trusted.

Similar features were proposed and / or demonstrated when wireless telegraphy arrived. From what I can gather, the same thing happened - i.e., the features were dropped in favor of trusting the operators.


henry said:
re the repetition, would be interesting to see a definitive timeline of exactly what was transmitted, and when, if one has ever been produced
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Agreed ... If nothing else I'd love to know once and for all if the commonly cited 3 messages represent the entire traffic received from Stardust on the fatal night. If they don't, I'd then want to know what was in the additional (and never-mentioned) transmissions.
 
Kingsize Wombat said:
... As it is a radio show, he doesn't really name his sources, but I presume you hit the nail on the head with your 1970s book references.
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Thanks ... I'm not sure his mistaken allusions to 'STENDEC' and the Bermuda Triangle came directly from Allen's woeful publications, but if they didn't I'm pretty confident he adopted them from some similarly conflated earlier source.

I mentioned the Spanish UFO periodical because it illustrates that some degree of unsupported association between 'STENDEC' and UFO's was widely enough recognized to support that choice of title as of the 1970's. Allen is the only pre-1970's source I've found that used the spelling 'STENDEK'.
 
EnolaGaia said:
The bottom line is that the operators were trusted ... sufficiently apparent the operators could be reasonably trusted ... in favor of trusting the operators.
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i think if there were only 30 or so at it i would go along with that ... otherwise i think my system is better
 
plus according to the aviation use of morse page on wikipedia "In the aviation service, Morse is typically sent at a very slow speed of about 5 words per minute."
 
henry said:
plus according to the aviation use of morse page on wikipedia "In the aviation service, Morse is typically sent at a very slow speed of about 5 words per minute."
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That's in the context of automated broadcasts of self-identification codes from radio navigation beacons - the only context in which Morse Code is used in aviation nowadays.

For radio communications certification back in the early / mid 20th century, the approval threshold was typically set around 25 - 30 wpm.
 
Could it have meant Descent, tis an anagram of the Stendec


*ok, I know its sounds stupid
 
Shady said:
*ok, I know its sounds stupid
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Not really!

It's as good an explanation as anything else, even better than some. A really confused and indeed terrified operator might have sent it in that form.
 
Shady said:
Could it have meant Descent, tis an anagram of the Stendec
*ok, I know its sounds stupid
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No, it's not stupid at all. The fact that 'STENDEC' is an anagram for 'DESCENT' is mentioned quite often.

There are two problems with applying this factoid to the 1947 incident:

- Why would a radio operator transmit an anagram in a serious message, unless it was simply a mistaken scrambling of the letters? (It's been suggested Harmer may have been suffering the effects of hypoxia.)

- How likely is it Harmer accidentally scrambled the letters in exactly the same way 3 times in a row?
 
maximus otter said:
l don’t think that a dyslexic Morse operator would have a long career path, especially in a safety-critical line like aviation.

maximus otter
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I was just clutching at straws.
 
A very interesting mystery indeed.

I personally don't hold much stock in the 'confused message' idea - the rest of the message was sent perfectly normally and legibly so it doesn't make sense to me that the radio operator suddenly became unable to 'type' (is that what its called?) the last word correctly. Especially when he repeated it twice. Also; if he was trying to transmit an emergency, that doesn't fit with the 'ETA' part which implies no emergency was taking place as it all seemed 'normal'.


EnolaGaia said:
This undated blog / web page:

http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk/Documents/STENDEC.htm

... offers one possible explanation for the 'STENDEC' message (involving misinterpretation on the part of the Santiago radio operator), but cites an even better (and later-arriving) theory from a Martin Colwell in Canada. Colwell's theory (also based on radio operator misintepretation) is described on this webpage:

http://www.sartechnology.ca/sartechnology/ST_STENDEC_ColdCase.htm

Bottom Line: In both cases 'STENDEC' has been a mystery because 'STENDEC' wasn't the message that was sent - it was the misinterpreted message the Santiago operator recorded. Under both theories the intended message was notification of approach to the Santiago airfield, sent under the erroneous belief the Star Dust had cleared the Andes.

Colwell in particular blames the misinterpretation on the message having been transmitted at a higher speed than operators were expected and certified to handle.
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Having read that second link, I am leaning toward the SCTIAR theory as being at least plausible. It makes a lot of sense.



Cochise said:
I like this 'mystery'. Now we know what happened to the plane - they flew straight in to a mountain - it is of no consequence whatsoever but equally we can never (short of time travel) know the true explanation, mundane though it may be.
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Yes, exactly. Even if we solve the STENDEC part of the mystery, we still will never know why it crashed (did they think they were further



And kudos to all the people here who can understand morse code - I tried out the little audio samples on that link and although I could hear the differences, I don't think I could ever learn to interpret that stuff :hoff:
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
... Even if we solve the STENDEC part of the mystery, we still will never know why it crashed (did they think they were further ...
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There's every reason to believe Star Dust was affected by jet stream winds (hardly recognized, much less understood and planned for at the time). The prevailing jet stream winds from the west / southwest would have served as a headwind impairing the plane's westward progress.

The most straightforward explanation to date is that Star Dust had not cleared the mountains at the time the plane contacted Santiago tower. They began a descent under the mistaken presumption the Andean peaks were behind them, and then at cruising speed plowed directly into a mountain.

The wreckage was found on the eastern side of the mountains, and this alone pretty clearly indicates the descent was undertaken under this mistaken presumption of having traveled farther than they actually had.
 
Schrodinger's Zebra said:
and although I could hear the differences, I don't think I could ever learn to interpret that stuff
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My morse is very poor, but just functional. I can nearly (after I get my 'ear' back into listening) send/receive at 12wpm gapped at about 7wpm (so, the letters >start< to sound like a sound, and not the individual dots/dashes&dits, but it's gappy-enough to think about what you've received (which you should never do)

People who were truly-proficient key operators (such as those radio officers in the merchant marine, and the maritime coastal radio services) could sit and drink coffee whilst speaking to colleages, yet still be accurately receiving 40+ wpm

(Traditional aeronautical morse operators always tended, both military & civil, to use pencil and paper on receive, unlike naval preference- this was always explained-away to me on the grounds of available space and equipment weight. Handwritten transcription can introduce errors, so may be a factor here)

For broader info: Royal Navy (plus Commonwealth navies) and the USN were particularly-keen on operators receiving by ear and transcribing the content directly onto mechanical or electromech typewriters, which often had no lettering marked on the keys. Transcription Telegraphists were often taught on these so-called "bald typewriters" from Day1. I've seen this being trained for (even in the late 1970s) and also saw the battered 12" rulers being used by the Chief Petty Officers to whack the operators over the knuckles in response to errors. Modern technologies and interpersonal styles are a billion light-years away from the original old-school approach.
 
EnolaGaia said:
There's every reason to believe Star Dust was affected by jet stream winds (hardly recognized, much less understood and planned for at the time). The prevailing jet stream winds from the west / southwest would have served as a headwind impairing the plane's westward progress.

The most straightforward explanation to date is that Star Dust had not cleared the mountains at the time the plane contacted Santiago tower. They began a descent under the mistaken presumption the Andean peaks were behind them, and then at cruising speed plowed directly into a mountain.

The wreckage was found on the eastern side of the mountains, and this alone pretty clearly indicates the descent was undertaken under this mistaken presumption of having traveled farther than they actually had.
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Ah, thank you. That makes a lot of sense. :nods:


Ermintruder said:
My morse is very poor, but just functional. I can nearly (after I get my 'ear' back into listening) send/receive at 12wpm gapped at about 7wpm (so, the letters >start< to sound like a sound, and not the individual dots/dashes&dits, but it's gappy-enough to think about what you've received (which you should never do)

People who were truly-proficient key operators (such as those radio officers in the merchant marine, and the maritime coastal radio services) could sit and drink coffee whilst speaking to colleages, yet still be accurately receiving 40+ wpm

(Traditional aeronautical morse operators always tended, both military & civil, to use pencil and paper on receive, unlike naval preference- this was always explained-away to me on the grounds of available space and equipment weight. Handwritten transcription can introduce errors, so may be a factor here)

For broader info: Royal Navy (plus Commonwealth navies) and the USN were particularly-keen on operators receiving by ear and transcribing the content directly onto mechanical or electromech typewriters, which often had no lettering marked on the keys. Transcription Telegraphists were often taught on these so-called "bald typewriters" from Day1. I've seen this being trained for (even in the late 1970s) and also saw the battered 12" rulers being used by the Chief Petty Officers to whack the operators over the knuckles in response to errors. Modern technologies and interpersonal styles are a billion light-years away from the original old-school approach.
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Thank you; that's very interesting.
 
British 'Geographical' magazine (magazine of the Royal Geographical Society) for June 2019 has an interesting seven page illustrated article describing a February 2019 expedition by British mountaineers Matt Maynard, Jimmy Hyland and Joe Davies which attempted to reach the debris field for the first time in 20 years. They hoped that global warming would have meant the glacier had receded disgorging much more material. The Argentine military refused them permission to go by the most direct route, so they were forced into a long and hazardous detour which they had to abandon without reaching their goal. I hadn't realised the terrain was so wild.
 
Wolstan Dixie said:
And having watched the above Horizon programme, which had photographs purporting to be of the actual aeroplane, the name was NOT 'Stardust' but the two words 'Star Dust' - there is a definite space between the two words on the fuselage.
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Thread title has been changed to reflect the spelling on the actual aircraft. If I'm not mistaken, this reverses a prior title change done for the same basic reason, but in the other direction - i.e., people were searching on "Stardust" (one word), which is the way the name had been more commonly rendered in accounts of the incident.
 
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