The Plane Which Disappeared and Reappeared 53 Years Later
By: Andrei Tapalaga
Tags: Culture, Investigation, History, Mystery, Airlines

The Plane Which Disappeared and Reappeared 53 Years Later

BSAA Lancastrian 3 G-AGWH also known as Stardust in 1947 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

There are many wonders when it comes to planes disappearing out of the bloom with no sign, however, this was even more predominant back in the day when aviation technology was still quite primitive. There are numerous documentaries out there defining the disappearance of aircraft without a sign or other beliefs such as the Bermuda Triangle also known as the Devil’s triangle because of the number of planes that have disappeared in that part of the Atlantic Ocean.

The story of flight CS59 kind of disapproves all of these believes behind supernatural entities hiding these planes without the use of fancy technology, even if it does prove to be quite useless in most cases.

Disappearing without a sign

It was another normal day for the British airliner known as “Stardust” as it was preparing to head towards Santiago, in Chile. On the 2nd of August, 1947 at around 17:40 the pilots contacted the control tower of the Santiago airport to let them know that they were close. Usually, pilots get in touch with the control tower 10 minutes before landing.

The radio signal received by the tower control was in morse code exclaiming:

“ETA 17:45 STENDEC”

That was the last transmission of flight CS59. At 17:50 the plane was nowhere to be seen, therefore the radio tower had to confirm that something had happened. A special search crew was sent out to look for debris from the plane along the flight route of CS59.

After months of searching the team gave up, placing flight CS59 as just another mystery without any clue nor mention. The media started to get their soapy assumptions of the plane being taken by some divine power or even aliens, although this didn't comfort the families of all the passengers and flight crew from flight CS59.

Discovered 53 years later

Flight CS59 became a relic of planes lost with no clue nor sign, but in the year 2000, a logical explanation came to light. A group of mountain climbers found the wreckage of a plane in the Tupungato mountains of Argentina. A team of experts came down to analyze the wreckage in order to identify the plane.

Stardust didn’t have a black-box as it was invented in 1953, making the identification of the plane much more difficult. What confirmed the identity was the serial number on one of the engines, confirming that this was flight CS59.

It was very curious as the search team from 1947 had looked around this specific area but saw nothing. This was due to a very logical explanation. at the top of the mountains where the wreckage was found, there is always snow, no matter the season.

Climber taking a picture with the wreckage in 2000 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The plane was hit by an instant storm blizzard and due to the lack of vision, it hit the mountain. The distribution of the plane indicated that it crashed directly into the mountain.

From the sound provoked by the crash, a huge avalanche was provoked and it submerged all the wreckage under the snow. This is why the search team from 1947 wasn’t able to find anything as all wreckage was hidden under two meters of snow.

The reasons for the plane crashing into the mountains are only assumptions made by experts because just as mentioned before the plane had no black box, therefore we will never know the exact reason or failure that provoked the crash.