BSAA Star Dust Accident - Discovery of Wreckage and Reconstruction of The Crash

Discovery of Wreckage and Reconstruction of The Crash

In 1998, two Argentinian mountaineers climbing Mount Tupungato in the Andes—about 60 mi (97 km) west-southwest of Mendoza, Argentina, and about 50 mi (80 km) east of Santiago—found the wreckage of a Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, along with twisted pieces of metal and shreds of clothing, in a glacier at an elevation of 15,000 ft (4,600 m).. In 2000, an Argentinian army expedition found additional wreckage—including a propeller and wheels (one of which had an intact and inflated tyre)—and noted that the wreckage was well localised, a fact which pointed to a head-on impact with the ground, and which also ruled out a mid-air explosion. Human remains were also recovered, including three torsos, a foot in an ankle boot and a manicured hand. By 2002, the bodies of five of the eight British victims had been identified through DNA testing.

A recovered propeller showed that the engine had been running at near-cruising speed at the time of the impact. Additionally, the condition of the wheels proved that the undercarriage was still retracted, suggesting controlled flight into terrain rather than an attempted emergency landing. During the final portion of Star Dust's flight, heavy clouds would have made the ground invisible. It has therefore been suggested that, in the absence of visual sightings of the ground due to the clouds, a large navigational error could have been made as the aircraft flew through the jet stream—a phenomenon not well understood in 1947, in which high-altitude winds can blow at high speed in directions different from those of winds observed at ground level. If the airliner, which had to cross the Andes mountain range at 24,000 ft (7,300 m), had entered the jet-stream zone (which in this area normally blows from the west and south-west, resulting in the aircraft encountering a headwind), this would have significantly decreased the aircraft's ground speed. Mistakenly assuming their ground speed to be faster than it really was, the crew may have deduced that they had already safely crossed the Andes, and so commenced their descent to Santiago, whereas in fact they were still a considerable distance to the east-north-east and were approaching the cloud-shrouded Tupungato Glacier at high speed. Some BSAA pilots, however, have expressed scepticism at this theory; convinced that Cook would not have started his descent without a positive indication that he had crossed the mountains, they have suggested that strong winds may have brought down the craft in some other way. One of the pilots recalled that "we had all been warned not to enter cloud over the mountains as the turbulence and icing posed too great a threat."

A similar set of events to those that doomed Star Dust also caused the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 in 1972 (the crash made famous in the film Alive), though there were survivors from that crash because it involved a glancing blow to a mountainside rather than a head-on collision.

Star Dust is likely to have flown into a nearly vertical snow field near the top of the glacier, causing an avalanche that buried the wreckage within seconds and concealed it from searchers. As the compressed snow turned to ice, the wreckage would have been incorporated into the body of the glacier, with fragments emerging many years later and much farther down the mountain. Between 1998 and 2000, about ten per cent of the wreckage emerged from the glacier, prompting several re-examinations of the accident. More debris is expected to emerge in future, not only as a result of normal glacial motion, but also as the glacier melts.

A 2000 Argentinian air force investigation cleared Captain Cook of any blame, concluding that the crash had resulted from "a heavy snowstorm" and "very cloudy weather", as a result of which the crew "were unable to correct their positioning".