The Mystery of the Missing Spy Plane
Finally on its way home Now available in an international version (45 or 60 minutes). SD. This is the story of a Swedish Air Force DC-3 that disappeared somewhere over the Baltic Sea on 13 June 1952. It was claimed it was on a simple training flight. A few days later the only trace of the missing plane was found – a shot-up liferaft. On 16 June one of the many planes looking for the missing DC-3 – an unarmed Catalina – was shot down by two Soviet Mig-15’s. Fortunately the crew survived – but the eight crew of the DC-3 remained unacounted for. What followed was one of the most tense periods of the Cold War history of Sweden, one that fundamentally affected Swedish policy. All the searches were to no avail. The plane remained missing. The eight widows received meagre pensions – although the government refused to give any further information in the affair. The anguish of the families can only be imagined. None of the widows remarried. Only in the eighties was it revealed by the son of the pilot that the plane was actually on a highly classified mission gathering signals intelligence (SIGINT). Finally in the early 1990’s the Russian government acknowledged that its Soviet predecessor was responsible for shooting down the plane. Again, many official and private parties searched for the plane without result. In 1998 former Swedish Air Force fighter-pilot and SAS Captain Anders Jallai decided to look into the mystery. His attraction was heightened by the seeming impossiblity of the mission. He had only just co-led the successful project to locate the missing Soviet WW2 submarine S7 – so his confidence was high. In fact, so high was his confidence that he immediately started writing a diary and filming his activities in order that a book and film could be made about the story. Anders assembled a team of historians and search experts, the latter from Swedens leading marine survey company MMT AB. Amazingly the group succeeded, where so many had failed before. On 10 june 2003 the wreck of a plane was located in 125m of water almost in the middle of the Baltic. A week later an ROV underwater robot allowed the group to make the final identification. The wreck was later salvaged by the Navy in an epic operation fraught with difficulties and setbacks. The filmteam was allowed exclusive access to this as well. Four of the crew have now been accounted for, while the remaining four are still missing. For further information in Swedish:
