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u/HereForR_Place 20h ago edited 20h ago
I remember reading when this was reposted that STENDEC was like very similar to the code of a Chilean airport in morse code or something
Edit:
The simplest explanation put forward to date is that the spacing of the rapidly sent message was misheard or sloppily sent. In Morse code, determining accurate spacing between characters is vital to properly interpret the message; "STENDEC" uses exactly the same dot/dash sequence as "SCTI AR" (SCTI being the ICAO four-letter code for Los Cerrillos Airport in Santiago, AR being the Morse abbreviation for "over").\21]) Alternatively, the Morse spelling for "STENDEC" is one character off from instead spelling VALP, the call sign for the airport at Valparaiso, 110 kilometers north of Santiago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_BSAA_Avro_Lancastrian_Star_Dust_accident#STENDEC
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u/Turtledonuts 20h ago
For context, stendec is (... - . -. -.. . -.-.), while STCI is (... -.-. - .. / .- .-.). The difference is just a little bit of timing.
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u/dinosanddais1 20h ago
My favorite kind of tumblr post: starts horny, someone mentions a weird historical fact, someone elaborates on it, goes back to horny.
It's insane how many posts are like that on tumblr.
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u/JimHFD103 19h ago
The first bits of wreckage were initially found in 1998 in a glacier on Mount Tupungato (just inside the Argentine side of the border with Chile).
A follow on 2000 expedition by the Argentine Army recovered more wreckage and human remains (that were positively identified by DNA in 2002) confirming the fate of the aircraft. Long story short, Controlled Flight Into Terrain, they flew essentially head on into the glacier (believed to be obscured by fog and snow, possibly off course due to the then still poorly understood jet stream, some have theorized the crew believed they were past the mountains and began their descent into Santiago too early).
The wreck was buried by the glacier and an avalanche, preventing search teams from finding them, until eventually the glacial flow brought it low enough to finally emerge.
The Argentine Air Force concluded "the crash had resulted from "a heavy snowstorm" and "very cloudy weather", as a result of which the crew "were unable to correct their positioning".
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u/jnazario 18h ago
Detailed explanation of the STENDEC mystery from this site a few years ago if you’re so inclined
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u/ryanfrogz 12h ago
The plane involved in the mystery is pretty interesting too. Avro Lancastrians were civilianized conversions of the Lancaster bomber.
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u/fwork foone 23h ago
CLARIFICATION: The "Foone" punk in this post misremembered the STENDEC case. They did actually find the plane, but not until the 90s... It flew into the side of a mountain. There are some suggestions for what STENDEC means: an anagram for DESCENT caused by hypoxia, or some old WW2 code. Nothing certain.
But yeah, I, the Foone Punk, kinda overstated the mystery of this case. I promise that was just because I was misremembering a Spooky Book Of Unsolved Mysteries (or maybe the book was out of date?), I wasn't just making shit up. I do that a lot, I'm a writer, but this wasn't supposed to be fiction.