I had never heard the Star Dust story before yesterday. The author implied that very little was known about the Jet Stream in 1947. Is that true.? I thought it was pretty well documented...especially by the B-29 Pilots who attempted the High Altitude bombing of Japan. I thought that was one of the reasons (what was that colonels name who ran the B-29's.?) they put the planes at much lower atmosphere...because the jet stream was killing them on time...fuel...and accuracy. So the Star Dust crew had no way of knowing they faced a 100 MPH head wind.? Thank You
I can't answer your question, Denny, but does anybody know why Stardust/Stendec has bubbled up recently? All over my Interweb feeds.
I did not realize it was a recent topic. I was watching videos about commercial air crashes...and just fell into Star Dust by "accident" I have not seen it on Yahoo...or any other area on my computer screen. Now we have two mysteries...I guess..
First a British aircrew would have limited access to the experience of a relatively modest number of US pilots other than in general terms. Yes they might know of them in general (jet streams), but not where all of them existed and in which direction they went. Use of such aircraft (speed and size) was fairly new to 1947 so you are now operating in a new frontier somewhat. Saw a program this week on ship disasters prompted on the Costa Concordia which pointed out that simulator training today for ship captains is at least a generation behind that of airline captains, so one must expect that there is always a learning curve that is affected by the introduction of new types of aircraft (or any other type of craft). Adam as for your query I suspect it has something to do with the program denny watched and stimulated interest in others elsewhere on the web.
Your info on the Jet Stream all make sense. I was probably expecting Way Too Much advance at the beginning of such a new discovery in the relatively new field of Flight/Avionics. Thanks
The cause for aircraft loss can often take years to determine, and that when you have survivors or a wreck site to explore, for one the is missing for 50 years...
There was a lot of interest about this a few years ago when parts of the aircraft ( and, sadly, the crew ) suddenly re-emerged from a glacier. A very good book about the tragedy was published just after ( I have it somewhere but can't find it right now ). This was just one of a number of awful disasters to befall AVM Don 'Pathfinder' Bennett's British South American Airways just after WWII.
Boy...the UK did not waste anytime getting into commercial air routes did they. Or was it more of a way to sustain what was left of The Empire....?
Don't forget, there was a gigantic aircraft construction industry which suddenly had nothing to do ( except, of course, to design and build the World's first jet airliner.... :FUallplz: )
Back to the original post, I came across this discussion on PBS. It's from Nova. Read more here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vanished/sten_theories.html