Stardust’s Disappearance on Tupungato in August 1947

The British passenger airplane known as “Stardust” disappeared on August 2, 1947 while flying from London to Santiago de Chile, with 11 persons aboard. It had taken of from its stopover in Buenos Aires, and just moments before losing contact, it announced its imminent arrival to the control tower in Santiago, but then it issued its enigmatic message – the word "stendec"- and disappeared from the face of the earth.

In spite of an intensive search, no traces of the airplane were found nor were there any clues as to what may have happened. Due to the lack of information, some myths began to be told: since a diplomatic courier was aboard, it was said that the “king’s messenger” was carrying gold or confidential documents.

Furthermore, the airplane belonged to British South American Airways, founded by a war hero pilot from the British air force, and in fact the plane was a Avro-Lancaster 691, a war plane adapted to commercial flights. The airline had suffered other accidents and rumors of sabotage were heard, though there was never any proof of this.

In 1998, the Argentine mountain guide, Pablo Reguera, from Bahía Blanca, together with a climbing companion, bumped into the incongruent scene of an enormous Rolls Royce on a moraine, at the foot of the Tupungato glacier. The two climbers were attempting this route in memory of the great mountaineer, Guillermo Vieiro, who disappeared on Tupungato.

The climbers told an officer about the find, at the military regiment located at the access to the Argentine route to Tupungato. The officer told the story to two other mountaineers and experts in airline accidents, José Moiso and his son, Alejo.

Early in the year 2000, an expedition organized by the Moiso team and the Argentine Army, found and recognized the remains of the airplane scattered over the moraine and the glacier.

A rescue expedition was then organized to try to recover the remains of the persons that had crashed in the airplane in order to deliver them to the relatives. The press coverage around the world transformed the rescue into a difficult mission, but finally the remains were recovered of at least three persons. Later DNA analysis determined that they had recovered the remains of at least six of the eleven passengers.

An official study carried out by the Argentine Air Force’s Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Group, determined that StarDust had crashed against the formidable wall of Tupungato, at 6,800 m of altitude in the Central Andes, due to poor calculation of the wind strength. According to the official report, discarding the pilot’s responsibility, the accident was caused by a “generalized lack of knowledge about the true strength of the wind inside a jet stream",. The jet stream is a "habitual and seasonal" meteorological phenomena, unknown at that time, with "strong winds of approximately 180 knots (334 km/hour), that is extremely dangerous and causes the loss of control of an airplane", according to Major Luis Estrella, in charge of the investigation.

According to the investigation, the "high speed" impact of the airplane occurred at 4,724m of altitude (15,500 pies) against the west face of Cerro Tupungato (6,800m), in the province of Mendoza (1,000 km west of Buenos Aires). The airplane was found 64 km from where the crew thought it was crossing the border between Chile and Argentina, when it made radio contact five minutes before it crashed, even though it hadn’t crossed the Andes yet.

The British writer, Jay Raynier, who wrote the book StarDust Falling about the airline’s history and the accident of the Lancaster, coincides with the idea that the accident was caused by a jet stream. It also denies a bunch of myths surrounding the airplane, especially the existence of gold.

In any case there are two incognitos: the meaning of the word "stendec", transmitted from StarDust before disappearing, and if anyone found the remains of the airplane and pillaged them before the rescue. Evidence such as finding a completely empty wallet- without papers or documents- allow to infer that at least someone had passed by there.

The crew of the British Airplane was made up by Captain Reginald Cook, first mate Norman Hilton Cook (31), second mate Donald Cheklin (27), radiotelegraph operator Dennis Harmer (27), and hostess Iris Moreen Evans (26). The passengers were Peter Young (41), Eric Gooderham (43) and diplomat courier of King George VI, Paul Simpson (44) – all British; Harold Pagh (41) - Swiss, Casis Said Atallah (47) - a Palestinian businessman, and Martha Limppert (67) - German.