On June 13, 1952 a Swedish military DC-3 flying over the Baltic Sea, clandestinely carrying out signals intelligence operations for the USA, disappeared east of Gotland. Three days later two Swedish military Catalina flying boats searched for the DC-3 north of Estonia. One of the planes was shot down by the Soviet airforce but the crew ditched near the West German cargo ship "Munsterland" and were rescued. June 13 is the 164th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (165th in leap years), with 201 days remaining. ... 1952 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Douglas DC-3 VH-AES at Avalon in 2003. ... The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Eastern Europe and Central Europe, and the Danish islands. ... SIGINT stands for SIGnals INTelligence, which is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether by radio interception or other means. ... Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic Sea. ... The PBY Catalina was the definitive air-sea rescue aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s. ... Boeing 314 A flying boat is an aircraft that is designed to take off and land on water, in particular a type of seaplane which uses its fuselage as a floating hull (instead of pontoons mounted below the fuselage). ...

Aftermath

The USSR denied shooting down the DC-3, but a few days later a liferaft with Soviet shell shrapnel was found. In 1956 while meeting the Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted that the Soviet Union had shot down the DC-3. This information was not released to public at the time. Shrapnel, in the strict sense, is shot deliberately included in a landmine or shell intended to be scattered by the explosion. ... The Prime Minister or Statsminister is the head of Government in Sweden. ... Tage Erlander  listen (June 13, 1901 - June 21, 1985) was a Swedish politician. ... Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchyov (Khrushchev) (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв  listen, April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin. ...

In 1991 the Soviet airforce admitted it had shot down the DC-3. In the summer of 2003 a Swedish company found the DC-3 by using sonar. A time later the Catalina was also found, but the Catalina was found 22 kilometers east of the official splash down point. The F70 type frigates (here, La Motte-Picquet) are fitted with VDS (Variable Depth Sonar) type DUBV43 or DUBV43C tugged sonars Sonar (sound navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation under water to navigate or to detect other watercraft. ...

Conclusion

Bullet holes showed that the DC-3 was shot down by a MiG-15 fighter. The exact splash down time was also determined, as one of the clocks in the cockpit had stopped at 11:28:40 (Swedish time). To this date the bodies of 5 of the 8 man crew have been found. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (NATO reporting name Fagot) was a jet fighter developed for the USSR. A two-seat MiG-15 (MiG-15UB) History When Soviet forces overran Berlin in 1945 they were able to confiscate plans for the Focke-Wulf Ta 183 jet fighter. ...