Spy Plane Shot Down In Baltic Found (1952)

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6-20-2003

[blam]

Spy plane shot down in Baltic found

(Filed: 20/06/2003)

A Swedish spy plane flying a mission on behalf of British intelligence which was shot down by the Russians in 1952 has been found at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, ending one of the enduring mysteries of the Cold War.

After a three-year search by Swedish historians it was confirmed that wreckage discovered in the sea off the country's east coast was of the DC3 shot down with its crew of eight by a Russian fighter. The aircraft was half-buried in sand. The crew's remains were not found.

When the plane was shot down it was claimed that it had been intercepted on its way back from a training flight. But it emerged later that the DC3, equipped with the latest British surveillance gear, had been spying on Soviet radar stations in the Baltic republics at the behest of Britain and America.

A team led by Carl Douglas, an historian, Ola Oskarsso, an entrepreneur and Anders Jallai, flight captain, spent three years searching 270 square miles of sea floor for the plane.

"I cried," Mr Douglas said, as he described the moment the plane's hull, bearing Sweden's national symbol of three crowns, emerged from the sand under 300 feet of murky water east of Gotska Sandon island, 80 miles from Stockholm.

The slow, bulky DC3, nicknamed "Flying Hut" by pilots, was an easy target for a Soviet MiG. Another plane sent to search for the DC3 was also brought down. The Soviet Union admitted shooting down the second plane, saying it had violated Soviet airspace, but kept silent on the DC3 until 1991, when a pilot told a Swedish diplomat that he brought it down.

Marshal Evgeny Shaposhnikov, then Soviet defence minister, visited Sweden in 1991 and apologised to relatives of the plane's crew.

Sweden was officially neutral during the Cold War but co-operated with Nato.

[Arkinsaw]

Wonder if Belgium is going to file war crimes charges against........oh never mind.

[DPB101]

Good for the Swedes. I was unaware they helped that much.

[KellyAdmirer]

The Swedes always have helped us out, and always covertly. Major credit for the sinking of the Bismarck during WWII goes to Swedish naval officers who alerted British intelligence of its passage by Sweden to the Atlantic.

[DPB101]

Thanks. I was unaware of that too.Probably most of us will not be around when all the truth is revealed about the Cold War. I'm amazed that new information is still coming out concerning WWII (a few weeks ago, an RAF pilot was discovered to have been working for the Nazis).