[Documentary] Lost at Sea - Mystery of the DC-3 Spy Plane [HD]

Video from the channel Dokunation about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 44:40. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

A German documentary on the Swedish Air Force DC-3 that disappeared over the Baltic on 13 June 1952 with eight men on board, and on the private search that located its wreckage in 2003. It combines reconstructions, testimony from relatives and former officials, and coverage of the expedition.

In the early 1950s, officially neutral Sweden was preparing for a possible war with the Soviet Union. The DC-3, loaded with electronic equipment, flew signals-intelligence missions directed by the FRA intelligence service to locate new Soviet radar stations on the Baltic coast, sharing its findings secretly with British intelligence. After the shooting down of an American aircraft in 1950 and another attack in January 1952, American aviation had suspended its flights in the region, and the Swedish aircraft was the only listening aircraft operating there regularly. That day it took off from Bromma (Stockholm) heading for a target north of Gotland and transmitted its last position at 11:08. It was shot down by a MiG-15 that had taken off from Tukums (Latvia), flown by Grigori Osinski. The documentary links the attack to the British overflights of the USSR in 1952, authorized by Churchill. The families received no information; in 1956 Khrushchev secretly promised Erlander there would be no more attacks, and in 1991 the Soviet Union admitted to shooting it down in international airspace.

Pilot Anders Jallai and historian Carl Douglas organized a private expedition aboard the vessel Triad, equipped with side-scan sonar. An initial find turned out to be the propeller of a Russian submarine from the First World War. After reconstructing the attack with an Sk 60 and a retired DC-3, they searched where a raft with bullet holes had turned up in 1952. By April 2003 the government had stopped funding searches; in June that year the expedition found the wreck at a depth of 125 m, about 60 km east of Gotska Sandön. The Navy recovered it with the vessel Belos, and inside were the bodies of pilot Alvar Älmeberg and navigator Gösta Blad. The navigator's flight plan and Soviet radar records allowed the route to be reconstructed, which also included Soviet naval maneuvers. The absence of parachutes and a door open before impact suggest some crew members jumped. The crew was decorated by the Swedish Air Force, and the government apologized to the families.