The Star Dust's Final Flight

An Avro Lancastrian airliner named the Star Dust mysteriously disappeared minutes before it was set to arrive in Santiago, Chile with 11 passengers on board. Any plane that simply vanishes is sure to peak interest, but the Star Dust had even more reason for attention. Its passengers consisted of a British Queen's messenger, a Palestinian man reported to have a large diamond sewn into his jacket, and a nazi-sympathizer, amongst others. The plane's last radio transmission consisting of an unexplained Morris-code message "STENDEC" further fueled speculation of what actually happened.

The Flight

On August 2, 1947, the British South American Airways flight CS 59, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile was as ordinary as any other. The flight was on a Avro Lancastrian aircraft, the civilian version of the Lancaster World War II bomber. The Lancastrian was capable of flying at 20,000 feet, much more than most planes of its days and higher than the highest of peaks in the Andes Mountains which it would be passing. Its captain was a highly decorated former Royal Air Force pilot named Reginald Cook who could easily handle flying through the challenging mountain ranges.

Flight CS 59 had a unique passenger manifest. On board were travelers from various countries all with their own agendas. One passenger was Paul Simpson, a British Queen's messenger carrying diplomatic documents that may have related to the UK's strained relations with the government of Argentina. At the time, Argentina was allowing war-criminals to enter the country much to the frustration of the British and Americans. A Palestinian man by the name of Casis Said Atalah was also on board. Little is known about Atalah other than he was described as "rich" and reported to be traveling with a large diamond sewn into his jacket. A nazi-sympathizer was also on board, carrying the ashes of her husband from Germany. The rest of the passengers consisted of businessmen for a total of 11 people on board.

Shortly before the flight was scheduled to arrive, Captain Cook sent the Morris-code message "STENDEC" to the radio operator at Santiago airfield. Confused by the meaningless message, the operator asked the captain to repeat the message, to which he did. Again, not understanding the message the operator asked for it to be repeated. Once more, the message "STENDEC" was received at Santiago about four minutes before the flight was scheduled to land. Further attempts to contact the flight were unsuccessful and "STENDEC" was the last communication ever received.

A search was mounted but rescuers could find nothing. The tough terrain, and the sheer amount of area to cover worked against them. The odd assortment of passengers resulted in a series of conspiracy theories, mostly centered on sabotage with various motivations. Some speculated that the Queen's messenger was carrying documents that would further damage Argentinean-British relations and the Argentinean government sabotaged the flight to keep them from arriving. Others suggested the frustration of Argentina being a haven for war criminals forced the British into sabotaging the flight to put fear into the minds of nazi-sympathizers from making the same journey. Theories involving the Palestinian man generally involve the potentially unsavory origins of the diamond he was reported to be carrying. Somewhere along the line it was even suggested that the completely baffling disappearance was the result of an alien abduction. The 1970's Spanish UFO magazine Stendek was named in reference to this theory, albeit misspelled.

The mysterious "STENDEC" message could never be explained. The continued repeating of it seems to rule out transmission error. Some people have suggested it meant "Starting En-Route Descent" or "Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-Landing". Neither of these phrases were commonly associated with the acronym "STENDEC" however.

Discovery of Star Dust's Wreckage

Almost 50 years after the disappearance of the Star dust, in 1998, a mountaineer found parts of a Rolls-Royce engine at the foot of the remote Tupungato glacier about 50 miles east of Santiago. After hearing news of the discovery an Army-led expedition was sent out to investigate a few months later. Due to a vicious snow storm the team was forced to abandon their search. It wasn't until 2000 that another expedition was assembled to investigate the wreckage. Not far from the original find, the team found what they came for: pieces of an Avro Lancastrian and even bodies, still preserved in ice.

The find ignited media interest all over the world and a BBC documentary crew was sent out to investigate. Along with another team from the Argentinean government, a reconstruction of the accident began. Examination of a recovered propeller showed that engines were at cruise speed during impact. The landing gear was still retracted indicating that they weren't making an emergency landing. Investigators determined that most likely the plane hit the near-vertical wall of the glacier killing everyone on impact. The crash happened with enough force that it resulted in an avalanche burying the wreckage from the original searchers.

What Went Wrong

But why did the experienced captain make such a grave mistake? At the time, GPS was still over a decade away. Instead, pilots used a crude method called "Dead reckoning" to navigate. The method involves the use of a magnetic compass, the planes speed, a stop watch, and estimations of wind speeds taken from ground measurements. As basic as it was, experienced pilots like Captain Cook were capable of amazingly accurate calculations with dead reckoning even without ground based landmarks.

The Lancastrian was one of the few planes of the time capable of flying high enough to enter the Jet Stream. Although the Jet Stream was known to exist at it's time, how it worked was still unknown. If the Star Dust strayed into the bottom of the Jet Stream, the wind speed and direction it would have encountered would have been significantly different from those measured on the ground, throwing off the calculations. With the calculations wrong, the final decent for landing would have placed the flight head on with the Tupungato glacier instead of the airstrip. Although we can never know the sure cause, the fate of flight of CS 59 and the Star Dust was most likely sealed by this error.

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