The Avro Lancastrian, Nene, mid take-off in Conventry 1954
STENDEC was the final transmission from the doomed Avro Lancastrian aircraft “Stardust”. A tough craft redesigned from Avro Lancaster heavy bombers, it crashed in 1947 into an Andean glacier on Tupungato Mountain in Argentina, immediately becoming buried under an avalanche and only emerging 51 years later.
While the passenger list reads like a Graham Greene cast, the crew were composed of ex-Royal Air Force and would have been familiar with military acronyms. A 2000 BBC documentary, “Vanished”, suggested two possible interpretations for this message:
However, neither of these were widely understood interpretations of the transmitted letters. Equally so, acronyms were standardised, and individual shorthand broadcasts were frowned upon.
This article was posted on
Friday, August 6th, 2010 at
11:40.
It is archived in Mysterious, Short Post, Travel and tagged acronym, air disaster, argentina, crash, death, emigre, post-war, radio, transmission.
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