Horizon

Vanished: The Plane that Disappeared (2000x14)

Uitzenddatum: Nov 02, 2000

On August 2nd 1947, a British civilian version of the wartime Lancaster bomber took off from Buenos Aires airport on a scheduled flight to Santiago. There were 5 crew and 6 passengers on board the plane - named "Stardust". But Stardust never made it to Santiago. Instead it vanished when it was apparently just a few minutes from touchdown. One final strange Morse code radio message - "STENDEC" - was sent, but after that nothing more was heard from the plane. Despite a massive search of the Andes mountains no trace of the plane was ever found. For 53 years the families of those who disappeared have not known what happened to their loved ones. But earlier this year the plane suddenly reappeared on a glacier high up in the Andes, more than 50 km’s from the area where the plane was last reported. In February this year the Argentine army arranged a major expedition to visit the crash site beneath the massive Tupangato peak (6800m). Their aim was to bring back the human remains which had been found at the site, so that an attempt could be made at identifying them. The expedition also offered a unique opportunity for crash investigators to see if they could finally explain what happened to the ill-fated plane. Horizon gained exclusive access to this expedition, and now for the first time the full story of what happened to "Stardust" can be told. Why did the plane crash without warning? Why was it so far from its planned route across the mountains? What was the meaning of the last mysterious message - "STENDEC" - sent by the plane’s radio operator? Would it be possible more than 50 years after the crash to identify the remaining fragments of human remains that so graphically testified to the horrific destructive forces involved in the crash? And perhaps most mysteriously, why did the wreckage elude discovery for so long, despite regular mountaineering trips to Tupangato over the years? The expedition was joined at an army base in the Andes foothills. The thre