Talk:1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident

message: Any ideas guys? Probably the solution lies in morse code rather than a textual solution. Anjouli 09:28, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very old comments (originally without a section header) 

message: Despite intensive speculation, few plausible explanations of the word "STENDEC" have emerged. In fact the word does not correspond to any known telegraphic code or 'telegraphese' shorthand in use either at the time or now, and experts at the official enquiry failed to make any sense of it. Its meaning still remains a mystery to this day.
* It is possible that when the "STENDEC" signal was sent, Star Dust had already crashed. It is therefore suggested that the signal was sent by an outside party. It may therefore well be a codeword, used for some completely disconnected purpose. The Santiago Operator maintained that it was repeated twice after a 'not understood' signal from Santiago. "STENDEC" possibly had nothing to do with Star Dust, and was purely a coincidence, according to some peoples' opinion.  But, this would also require another coincidence for the outside party's transmitter to be so precisely 'netted' onto Star Dust's frequency that the Santiago Operator would not notice any difference in the pitch, sending style or speed of the morse, to suggest a different hand on the key.
* As the Santiago operator reported that the message was keyed very fast, a likely explanation is that the operator erred in the spacing of the Morse signals; "STENDEC" with alternate spacing could for example translate into "V END AR".
:"V" (or more accurately "VVV") is either a 'testing' signal, or an 'idling' signal, which a station transmits (usually automatically) during periods when it is not handling traffic, to 'hold' the frequency and let other stations know that it is there and listening for any calls. "AR" is the 'end-of-message' code.
:"STENDEC" in Morse code is:  ... - . -. -.. . -.-.; "V END AR" in Morse code is: ...- / . -. -.. / .- .-. (in the text, a 'space' signifies a pause the length of a 'dit', a 'space-slash-space' a pause the length of a 'dah'). This would mean that "STENDEC" was simply Star Dust notifying the end of Morse transmission, as (having just given an ETA only four minutes away) the crew thought that they were only 12 - 16 miles East of Santiago, and now in range for voice communication. The only problems with this theory are the presence of a 'testing' signal in the middle of a message (which is somewhat unusual) and the code "AR", implying that further transmission would be following (like 'over' as opposed to 'out' in voice communication), thus the phrase "V End AR" is contradictory in itself - the phrase "End VA" ("VA" means 'End of Contact') would still be unusual, but would at least make some sense. The radio operator also insisted the signal was repeated twice. If that actually happened, it would weaken the theory the crew switched to voice communication as someone was clearly listening on the Star Dust frequency.
The 'dit-dah' sequence within "STENDEC" is most likely correct. The Santiago Operator said that he queried it twice, and he described the receiving conditions as 'clear', making it unlikely that dit-dah confusions or omissions occurred. Erroneous lengthening or shortening of pauses within and between letters is more likely than insertion of false extra 'dits' or 'dahs'.
 Lycophron's Theory 
My theory is that people ought to at least give a passing attempt at looking something up, rather than endlessly speculating about it. Acronym Finder has had an entry on STENDEC for years:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?Acronym=stendec&Find=find&string=exact
"Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-Landing (WWII Morse code)"
A contributor to the PBS/Nova site referenced at the bottom of the article elaborates on the meaning and usage (the two sources are independent of each other, by the way):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/sten_010208.html
And the online version of the Guardian comes up with the same definition:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,787181,00.html
At the very least, the sentence in the original article about how STENDEC corresponds to no known telegraph code should be scrapped (it assets a negative in any event).
Lycophron
::Like I say below, 'STENDEC' is totally meaningless.  It is meaningless now, and it was meaningless then, otherwise the enquiry at the time would simply have said "Oh, it's one of those Stendecs again".  'Severe turbulence encountered....' is the result of modern-day backronym inventing, like 'Posh', 'Golf', 'Pommie', 'Chav' etc...none of which were originally acronyms.  The thought that anybody would pre-arrange a code meaning 'Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash Landing' is ludicrous, as you would need literally hundreds of similar acronyms to describe any eventuallity.  You would need acronyms for 'Engine Failure Making Forced Landing Nearest Available Aerodrome', 'Medical Emergency On Board Have Doctor Standing By' and 'Icing Causing Loss of Control Emergency Descent to Warmer Air' etc...none of which ever existed.  Any distress call would have been preceded then (as now) by the well-known 'SOS', which would certainly have made the Santiago op's ears prick up, as well as anybody else who was listening.  The morse code as used to this day has hardly changed at all since 'Titanic' sank, never mind WW2.  The only acronyms in general use were, and are, the three-letter 'Q' codes, which will be familiar to CB enthusiasts etc, and a separate set of similar 'Z' codes used by the military to suit their different needs.  The only 'shorthand' ever used was (fascinatingly) very similar to the language of shortened words used by today's youngsters when texting each other on cellphones.  I am the nearest thing that you will find to a morse 'boffin' in 2006, there aren't that many of us left, but I am afraid that the answer (if there is one) is not to be found in morse code.  The plane was off-course, descending through cloud, and suddenly crashed into the side of a mountain killing all on board instantly.  When the wreck was found, that was the end of the mystery.ChrisRed 17:42, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't take it personally like that.  Wikipedia is supposed to be fun.  Don't forget that my theory is just a theory like any other.  It sounds great to me, but it might be a right load of old bollox, which is why I put it on the 'Talk' page rather than in the 'encyclopedia' :-).ChrisRed 07:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I presume it also says that POSH means 'Port Out Starboard Home'; CHAV means 'Council Housed and Vicious', and GOLF means 'Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden'.  Good old PBS Nova.  It must be true then. So the message means "I am at 24000 feet and I am only now starting my en-route descent.  I will be with you in four minutes".  Go on...fire up MS Flight Simulator and see what a 6000 feet per minute descent looks like. (That's 100 feet per second. At 200kt it is a 1:3 / 33% nosedive - i.e. sooner you than me! :-)  As the plane hit the mountain at around 15,500 feet, it must have already been descending for some considerable time before the message was sent.  "One of the contributors" may insist that these were commonly used acronyms, but I actually KNOW that they were not.  If you want to see my British Radiocommunications Agency Class 'A' Radio Operator's Licence, then I will put an image of it up here if asked. (de G4PDJ) ChrisRed 07:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collection of Theories 

message: ::Yes, we will never know for sure, but as a former Royal Navy radio operator and radio ham for 24 years, I don't really see what the big mystery is about 'STENDEC'.  There is nothing mysterious about it at all.
::'STENDEC' in telegraphic terms is totally meaningless.  So it's either a mis-send or a mis-read.
::'STR' (... - .-.) = the callsign for 'Santiago Radio',
::Then 'DE' (-.. .) which has always been everyday 'telegraphese' shorthand for 'from'. No telegraphist worldwide would ever send 'FROM', always 'DE' (a throwback to the early days when French was the international radio language) also 'DE' (-.. .) is much quicker to send than 'FROM' (..-. .-. --- --).   If any operator sent 'FROM' to me instead of 'DE', I would find that very strange.
::'C' (-.-.) is the first letter of the flight number (CS59) (Interrupted presumably by the impact).
::By the way, we can dismiss here and now any fanciful 'back-invented' or silly 'backronym' solution which includes the word 'Stardust'.  The Santiago operator would only be aware of the flight number, he would probably not even be aware of the aircraft's type - let alone any company 'pet name' that might happen to be painted on its nose.
::As the aircraft just suddenly flew into an unseen near-vertical wall of snow, it is unlikely that the call was anything at all to do with the crash, but was instead a mundane bit of radio procedure that was terminated by the sudden impact. (The Radio Operator would be seated well-back in the cockpit, in what we would nowadays think of as the Flight Engineer's position.  He would probably only hear a terrified 'shout' from the pilots, and there would just be no time to send anything).
::Many ex-military operators do have very quirky-sounding 'fists', (take it from me :-) and if the aircraft was bouncing around as it descended through swirling mountain cloud, this could have made Dennis Harmer's morse even more 'interesting'.
::Any radio ham will tell you that 'R' (.-.) is still sent rather sloppily as 'EN' (. -.) literally thousands of times a day (especially when sent on its own, meaning 'Received' - it's a bit of an 'in-joke').
::('R' corresponds to the well-known 'Roger' on voice - a throwback to the old 'Able-Baker-Charlie-Dog' etc. phonetic alphabet...we are talking about British ex-RAF flight-crew in the the 1940's after all).
::So the probable answer is actually 'boring-but-true'.  It's just the two callsigns tagged onto the end of the message as required by everyday normal radio procedure, still used to this day by thousands of people on the Ham bands. i.e.  ...(Message).."ETA SANTIAGO 17.45.. (Callsigns) ..STR DE C(Impact)..............", or if you send (or copy) just one letter badly   "17.45 STEN DE C(Impact).....".
::In the absence of an inconvenient lump of the Andes, the message was probably going to continue something like 'STR DE CS59 AR ('end of message') most likely followed by 'VA' ('end of contact') or 'QSY' 'I am re-tuning (to the control tower's voice frequency').
::The only 'mystery' is: Why did the operator at Santiago insist that he queried the word 'Stendec' twice, when the uncompleted signal could only possibly have been sent once?.  I suggest that we have all been scratching our heads for so long because he thought it was more than his job was worth to stand in front of an enquiry and admit to his (military) superiors that he could possibly have mis-read even one letter.  He did 'prepare his defence' by saying that the signal was sent very quickly. Perhaps Harmer was just a bit too quick for the Santiago op.
::To be fair to the Santiago operator, I would add that 100% solid perfect copy of morse is rare.  I have been on the air for decades, and I still miss the odd letter - an experienced operator's brain will normally just 'back-fill' the missing character subconsciously when it has heard the remainder of the word.  The Santiago op had no idea that he was listening to anything significant.  The plane had reported no 'peril' or anything to lead him to believe that this would turn out to be the historically-significant last transmission of a doomed flight.  It was just 'a normal day at the office' until the moment the plane's transmitter suddenly fell silent.  That said, I believe that if any operator fails to recognise his own callsign - no matter how badly sent - this must point a serious finger of doubt at his ability at the time.  I cannot say too much more, because the gentleman might, of course, still be alive.  
::Some additional info...(According to www.worldaerodata.com) Santiago Los Cerrillos's VOR beacon still to this day sends its identity in morse as 'STI'.  Modern-day callsigns for the old Los Cerrillos (it's closing soon, by the way) airport are all in the 'SCTI' series, but these are a more recent development.  It would be great if some old timer could produce an old navchart, but logic suggests 'STR'-'Radio'; 'STT'-'Tower'; 'STG'-'Ground' etc. Morse buffs will have already spotted that you 'can' make a very drunken-sounding 'STEND' out of the chopped-up bits of 'SCTI', but that would be the morse of a barely-conscious man, and (although Tupungato is a formidable-looking mountain)  it just isn't high enough for oxygen deficiency to be a factor. ChrisRed 08:31, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If nobody objects, I'll delete a few of the more fanciful suggestions from the 'STENDEC' section, but will not add any reference to the above myself (it is, after all, just another theory). I will leave that to somebody else.  I want to delete the last three.  1. 'SKED' is not applicable here, a 'Sked' is a pre-arranged time and frequency for a radio contact. 2. 'STarting ENroute DesCent....' (What? 23000 feet in four minutes?) and 3. 'Severe Turbulence Encountered....' (both products of a boring Sunday's backronym-inventing).   ChrisRed 11:21, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe, but I think it's best if we just mention the puzzle and leave it there.  Let's be honest - none of us were there, and we will never conclusively 'solve' it in a million years.  Everybody has their own pet theory (including me, above) but as we don't have the benefit of modern cockpit recordings or 'black box' evidence, nobody is ever going to produce the one 'master' theory that is going to disprove all the others.  All we know now that we didn't know then is a) The plane hit Tupungato, and b) It wasn't carted-off by little green men. :-) ChrisRed 15:59, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The STENDEC 'Mystery' 

message: The rest of the English-speaking world accepts that Americans spell some words differently to the rest of us.  It doesn't really matter, we can still understand you, and although the result can often appear 'juvenile' to us, we don't let it get on our nerves.  BUT...when an American comes along and CORRECTS standard English spelling into American spelling (as though it is us who can't spell) then that is a different thing altogether.  Sorry, but the language is not called 'American'.  This was a British aircraft, with no Americans on board, which was travelling with two 'L's until it crashed into a lump of Argentina. We don't need English lessons from you... ChrisRed 07:02, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just note that many of us Americans have no clue that Brits spell things differently. It very well could be some perfectly amiable chap who just thought that somebody had made a spelling mistake and was taking the opportunity to fix it. WP:AGF and all that. A mild pointer to the Wikipedia (or should I say Wikipædia?) guidelines on the subject in question is all that's really needed. Cheers. 70.17.196.162 05:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Of Tyres and Tires 

message: The image :Image:Lancastrian-3-G-AGWH-Star-D.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check
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thread_title: Image copyright problem with Image:Lancastrian-3-G-AGWH-Star-D.jpg

message: Why have the names of the aircrew been deleted from the article?  It used to list the pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, radio op and 'stargirl' (stewardess) along with their wartime decorations.  As this was an accident (i.e. the crew didn't 'murder' their passengers) surely they deserve to be listed and remembered as victims of the tragedy too? 86.148.252.237 (talk) 21:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I wondered the same thing and found this explanantion at Talk:Galaxy Airlines Flight 203 - which notes that “Project Aviation seems to have a general consensus not to include names of non-notable people other than flight crew on aviation accident/incident articles…” I have reinstated the name of the flight attendant - she was a member of the crew; Other editors had reinstated the names of other crew members in the interim. Newwhist (talk) 19:09, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Crew and passenger names

message: I just finished a major rewrite of this article.  Hopefully it's better organized now, and with better inline sourcing.  I'm planning to try getting it recognized as a "Good Article".  Please note that it's in British English (that's how it was before my rewrite, and it's only right considering that the topic is definitely British) — but since I'm an American/Canadian, it's quite possible that I slipped up in spots, so any Brit who sees a spelling or turn of phrase from the wrong side of the pond is welcome to jump in and fix it.  Thanks.  Richwales (talk · contribs) 05:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you need to create a better lead section that summarises the article, the lead shouldnt be the largest section. Some of the detail in the lead should be moved down into the article. The article goes from Background to Discovery really needs a section on what happened during the flight, the body of the article makes no real mention of the accident. MilborneOne (talk) 16:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's good to see an improvement to the article, but I agree with MilborneOne that the lead isn't really a WP:LEAD at present, and there are sections missing. There have been several books written about this subject such as Stardust Falling by Jay Rayner and Fly with the Stars, which also has an accompanying website here. I suspect these would provide a lot of the detail that currently might prevent it from passing GA. Bob talk 17:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for these good comments.  I trimmed the lead somewhat just now, and I added some more material to the middle (though I still need to go look up and add citations).  I've ordered a copy of Star Dust Falling, which I should hopefully have within the next week.  I'll also see if I can get my hands on Fly with the Stars, or perhaps find enough useful tidbits from the web site.  Richwales (talk · contribs) 17:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

text: And a few additional pieces of information from a half-hour History International TV program (in the Vanishings! series).  Richwales (talk · contribs) 17:40, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major rewrite 

message: The following was added to the end of the article by an IP editor:  On page 75 of "Can anyone see Bermuda" written by Archie Jackson () he records, as a Captain for BSAA, the efforts he took part in to find the wreckage / survivors. He comments "(Stardust)...was being flown by a Captain on his first command". "We had all been warned not to enter cloud over the mountains as the turbulence and icing posed too great a threat".  This material can't simply be tacked onto the end of the article in its current form, but it may very likely be useful with some augmentation and cleanup.  I'm going to try to find a copy of the book.  — Richwales 16:36, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Finally [ done].  — Richwales 03:05, 28 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can Anyone See Bermuda? 

message: using the term "even alien abduction" implies that alien abduction is implausible or ridiculous, this violates WP:NPOV Zer0n888 (talk) 04:20, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The way the idea is treated in the one currently cited source mentioning it seems, to me, to support the idea that this is a fringe theory, which should not be given undue weight in our attempts to maintain a neutral point of view in the article.  — Richwales 04:38, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "even" alien abduction 

message: (I passed my Morse test for the Australian Ham licence in 1961, callsign VK2AUA for a few years thereafter.)  By far the most plausible solution I've seen is the one posted by Brian (second message) at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/sten_010202.html, which he suggested was ETA SANTIAGO 1745 ST ENDAR with ST meaning "Standard Time" and AR meaning End Communication.  However it was missing the following four quite relevant corroborative details that I think tighten up his argument considerably.
1.  Harmer's prior Andean experience.  According to the official report at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/sten_report3.html Harmer had had his P.M.G. (Post Master General, i.e. civilian) licence for only nine months, but had the benefit of six previous trans-Andean crossings so he was not unfamiliar with the routine in Santiago.  Miscommunications with Chilean operators on previous occasions may have prompted him to creatively vary his routine by way of clarification (item 3).
2.  EC = + = AR.  The End Communication "procode" or logging abbreviation is + ("cross") = •▬•▬• .  It is one of seven punctuation and procode codes, out of 24 listed in the 1986 ARRL Handbook, that are needed to satisfy FCC testing requirements.  It is formed by running together either AR = •▬ / •▬• or EC = • / ▬•▬• , is sometimes written AR with a bar over it, and is sometimes transmitted as AR or EC instead of + (two letters instead of one procode).  An operator accustomed to the AR form but not to + or EC might hear + as EC, or Harmer might have sent EC.
3.  Why both END and +?  The same failure by the Chilean operator to recognize EC as a terminator on this occasion may have happened to Harmer on some of his previous flights into Santiago (see 1 above), possibly even with the same operator, prompting him to add END creatively as clarifying backup this time.
4.  ST = CLT != CLST.   See http://www.horaoficial.cl/cambio.htm for a table of official Chilean time since 1900, and http://www.statoids.com/tcl.html for historical information on names of Chilean time zones.  There are two important takeaways here.
:(a) Chile adopted daylight savings time in 1927, dropped it in 1932, and (except for three oddball two-month deviations) did not resume it until 1968.  In 1947 "standard time" had no meaning to a Chilean operator.
:(b) The names if any of the time zones used during 1927-1932 in Chile would most likely have been CLT and CLST, the latter denoting summer time (what we call daylight savings time).
So ST would make no sense in Chile in August 1947 for three reasons:
:(i) standard time had not been a concept in Chile since 1932;
:(ii) it would have been read as "Summer Time" which is wasn't in August; and
:(iii) CL is missing.
Conclusion  Harmer transmitted the Star Dust's ETA and nothing else, in the format "ETASANTIAGO1745STEND+", with unknown spacing (we don't know which spaces he provided and which were interpolated by the receiving operator).  Harmer likely intended ST to mean Standard Time, which the operator failed to recognize as qualifying the time (detail 4).  Harmer may have spaced + as any of +, AR, or EC, which the Chilean read as EC but failed to recognize as a terminator because he'd only been taught + and/or AR (detail 2).  Harmer may well have run into that problem on some of his six previous trans-Andean crossings (detail 1) and creatively added END by way of clarification (detail 3).  When asked (twice) to say again, Harmer did so exactly the same way each time, and each time it sounded exactly the same to the Chilean operator.  --Vaughan Pratt 17:34, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even if these theories have merit, they're unsuitable for inclusion in the Wikipedia proper, since they constitute original research.  Further, given how much time has passed and how many people fluent in Morse code and familiar with the standards of the day have looked into this and managed to come up empty, the null hypothesis seems to me that this problem is unsolveable. Xihr 22:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree, all the theories currently appearing in the article constitute original research and should be deleted--for one thing they're a heck of a lot less convincing than Brian's theory from February 2001 which for some reason isn't included -- he (same Brian? - surname unknown) reiterated it 19 months later at http://www.network54.com/Forum/213163/thread/1031108758/ .  These Talk pages are a fine place for such discussions even if they don't produce material fit for the article proper.  Incidentally your argument that the problem is unsolvable merely because lots of experts have looked at it would prove that Fermat's Last Theorem and the Four Colour Problem are unsolveable.  Not that I'm claiming any relevant expertise myself other than having passed my code test 46 years ago and the willingness to question the authority of my betters.  --Vaughan Pratt 22:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There's a tremendous difference between trying to find a proof for a mathematical theorem which may or may not exist, and trying to decipher a short, confusing message that has been scrutinized many, many times.  There's only so many valid abbreviations, misinterpretations of Morse code, and reinterprations of what might have been meant in such a message, whereas there are literally an infinite number of ways of approaching a mathematical proof. Xihr 22:41, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

text: What does mathematics have to do with this?  You're assuming that all of the finitely many relevant facts and arguments have by now been exhausted.  Has any previous explanation taken into account Harmer's previous trans-Andean experience, suggesting that he added END because of previous mishaps in Santiago with +/AR/EC the same as the one that seems to have happened again on this occasion, or pointed out that "Standard Time" would be meaningless to a 1947 Chilean operator, or that "ST" would in any event mean "Summer Time" and not "Standard Time".  This is all new stuff.  The fact that EC is sometimes used (in fact even taught) instead of + or AR was pointed out by one person a few years ago, so that's not completely new but no one seems to have noticed it.  If one couldn't do research of this kind archaeologists would be out of a job.  --Vaughan Pratt 23:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Oops, ignore my first sentence about mathematics there, I see your point.  The rest is fine. --Vaughan Pratt 23:05, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Forgot to mention one other feature of Brian's solution that differentiates it from all solutions postulating errors: it explains why STENDEC would have been heard loud and clear all three times.  Most of the non-error-based theories that accepted STENDEC proposed meanings for it as a single entity, none of which are (in my view) remotely as plausible as the parsing ST END EC with ST belonging to 1745.  --Vaughan Pratt 23:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

text: You could very possibly be right.  For Wikipedia purposes, we can include the above in the article if and only if we can find it published in a reliable source that we can cite.  — Richwales 15:40, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

text: Brian's theory as elaborated above by others looks distinctly the most plausible. It's a pity no-one looked at the W/O's earlier signals on his previous trips to see what his message style was and what, if any, variations from normal formats of signal he may have used.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.10.248 (talk) 08:39, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  STENDEC: Four relevant corroborative details for Brian's theory 

message: I have removed a paragraph from the STENDEC section because it was unencyclopedic.  That one single paragraph contained all of the following awful phrases -- "One possibility is.....the message might have..... Santiago might have .....it is possible.....perhaps an emergency.....may be responsible.....may have misunderstood....." Moriori (talk) 03:49, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering that the very next paragraph contains identical language, including the words "misunderstood" and "possibility", and you did not remove that paragraph for being "uncyclopedic", I can't say that I find your reason for removing it justified. I included a citation, the cited material said precisely what my paraphrased paragraph said, and numerous other paragraphs contained the same type of language. Could you clarify this for me?Phobos Anomaly (talk) 07:30, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Consensus so far is that we do not need to speculate or describe the many theories that abound, hence the second paragraph which sums these theories up. MilborneOne (talk) 17:58, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Phobos, the text of the "very next paragraph" you mention clearly attributed its content to Horizons. Your paragraph had numerous speculative maybes which were attributed to no-one. That meant that Wikipedia itself was advancing all of the "One possibility is.....the message might have..... Santiago might have .....it is possible.....perhaps an emergency.....may be responsible.....may have misunderstood....." scenarios. That's why it was removed. Moriori (talk) 21:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: STENDEC, again!

message: Stendal was the site of the Nazi`s elite parachute unit. 86.143.212.15 (talk) 16:55, 1 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stendal 

message: Comparison of hypothises if:
# "Stendec" could be a damaged morse-coded codeword "Valp" (short for city Valparaiso)
# "Stendec" could be a morse-coded "STR DEC" (short for STaRting DEsCent) that was mistyped (three times a row).
* NTSkeptics published a theory that word "STENDEC" resembles a word "VALP" and the plane crash was found relatively close to Valparaiso city and related "VALP" codename.
In American Morse code, following words have such codes:
 STENDEC: ...  -  .  -.  -..  .  .. .
 STENDES: ...  -  .  -.  -..  .  ... (should there be a sixth dot without a gap before the last one)
 STR DEC: ...  -  . .. / -..  .  .. . (a gap and a dot between a line)
 :::VALP: ...-  .-  _ ..... (a double unbroken line instead a dot and line combo; the sixth dot from STENDEC is absent)
In ITU Morse code, following words have such codes (courtesy the same translator found in referenced BBC's archived page):
 
 STENDEC: ... - . -. -.. . -.-.
 STR DEC: ... - .-. / -.. . -.-.
 :::VALP: ...- .- .-.. .--.
 ::VALPA: ...- .- .-.. .--. .-
* Also, ITU Morse coded STENDEIE is identical to "old morse" STENDEC.
* While ITU's "VALP" versus ITU's "STENDEC" discussion happened in "STENDEC's solution" section of this talk, the "American Morse's "VALP" vs American Morse's "STENDEC" issue wasn't mentioned there by anyone before me.
178.215.105.1 (talk) 14:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "VALP ---> STENDEC" versus "STR DEC ≈ STENDEC" hypothesises comparison 

message: Under the STENDEC heading (not going into that barrel of monkeys) one of the paragraphs ends "However, this theory does not match with the rest of the message, which was reporting the flight's estimated arrival time.[citation needed]"
I do not see how this sentence needs a citation. In the same section, just before it, the 9th source "STENDEC' – Stardust's final mysterious message". BBC. 2 November 2000. Archived from the original on 20 January 2012. Retrieved 18 August 2011." is cited with the transmission which clearly states ETA 17.45. So, where are we not getting factual confirmation that the arrival time was transmitted? SnarkyValkyrie (talk) 19:09, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, that sentence does not stipulate which "theory" it is referring to. Zap it. Moriori (talk) 20:21, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation Clarification 

message: The second para of Background contains this: "Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. The captain, Reginald Cook, was an experienced former Royal Air Force pilot with combat experience during the Second World War, as were his first officer, Norman Hilton Cook, and second officer, Donald Checklin. Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)." Reg Cook was the Captain, and Norm Cook was the First Officer ... who had been awarded the DSO and DFC: Reg or Norm? Prisoner of Zenda (talk) 11:37, 2 August 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which Cook?