Background
Star Dust carried six passengers and a crew of five on its final flight. The captain, Reginald Cook, was an experienced Royal Air Force pilot with combat experience during World War II—as were his first officer, Norman Hilton Cook, and second officer, Donald Checklin. Reginald Cook had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). The radio operator, Dennis Harmer, also had a record of wartime as well as civilian service. The crew also included Iris Evans, a flight attendant or "Stargirl", who had previously served in the Women's Royal Naval Service ("Wrens").
The passengers were Casis Said Atalah, a Palestinian returning home to Chile from a visit to his dying mother; Jack Gooderham and Harald Pagh, businessmen; Peter Young, an agent for the British tyre manufacturer Dunlop; Paul Simpson, a British civil servant; and Marta Limpert, a Chilean resident of German origin who had been stranded in Germany during the war along with her husband. Atalah is said to have had a diamond with him (stitched into the lining of his suit), Limpert was bringing her dead husband's ashes with her, and Simpson was functioning as a King's Messenger with diplomatic documents destined for the British embassy in Santiago.
Star Dust's last flight was the final leg of BSAA Flight CS59, which had started in London on an Avro York named Star Mist on 29 July 1947, landing in Buenos Aires on 1 August. Marta Limpert was the only one of the six passengers known for certain to have initially boarded Star Mist in London before changing aircraft in Buenos Aires to continue on to Santiago with the other passengers.
Read more about this topic: BSAA Star Dust Accident
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