54 years on, a missing air crew is finally written into stone

v2 · 10-18-2006 05:09 PM

1952 June 12: A Swedish DC-3 goes missing over the Baltic sea.

1952 June 15: A Catalina plane involved in the search for the missing 8 man crew was also attacked and shot down by MIG-15 jets.

The catalina suffer 4 waves of attack and had to crash land, but survived as they could be rescued by a German boat.

The DC-3 crew was never found and both the Swedish and Russian military kept quiet. The official line in Sweden was that Russia had unprovoked shot down a DC-3 training plane. The Russians otoh said they never even fired on a DC-3.

1991: The cold war is over, Russia now admit to shooting down the DC-3.

1993: Over 50 years has passed and Swedish documents become declassified since no further reason exists.

The Swedish military now confim rumours that it had flown a SIGINT mission for Sweden, UK and the USA. Packed with the latest electronics.

2003: A civilian search ship finally find the DC-3 on 120m depth. But 25 Km further east than as marked on the military maps. It is believed the 'error' was intentional.

2004: The Plane is lifted from the bottom using the HMS Belos salvage ship and transported to Muskö navalbase.

The plane is full of gun holes.

1. The memorial hall

2.The recovered plane at Muskö base

3.Gun holes in and near the insignia

4.DC-3 and MIG-15 flightscheme. Migs being red of course

5, 6 .The missing names as it looked in the past