Catalina affair

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Catalina affair
Tp 79 at F 8 Barkarby.jpg

Tp 79 Hugin , one of the downed aircraft, in F8 Barkarby
Accident summary
Accident type Launch
place East of the island of Gotska Sandön
date June 13, 1952
Fatalities 8th
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type Douglas C-47
operator Roundel of Sweden.svg Svenska Flygvapnet
Mark 79001
Surname Flight 27
Departure airport Stockholm / Bromma Airport , Sweden
SwedenSweden 
Destination airport Stockholm / Bromma Airport
Passengers 0
crew 8th
Lists of aviation accidents

The Catalina affair (Swedish Catalina affairs ) triggered a diplomatic crisis between neutral Sweden and the Soviet Union during the Cold War . In June 1952, two Swedish Air Force aircraft were shot down by Soviet fighters over international waters of the Baltic Sea . Eight crew members were killed. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union ( Alma-Ata declaration (1991) ), it publicly denied any involvement in the incident.

The name Catalina affair derives from one of the two downed aircraft - a flying boat type Consolidated PBY Catalina  - and was first used by the press for the events of June 1952nd

Location of Flight 27

procedure

Downing of Flight 27

On the morning of June 13, 1952, Flight 27 took off from Stockholm / Bromma Airport with a type Tp 79 (Swedish name for the Douglas C-47 Skytrain ) with the task of listening to radio signals over the Baltic Sea. The machine should send a message at specified times.

In addition to the pilot , navigator and flight engineer, there were five employees from Försvarets radioanstalt (FRA) on board, who were assigned to carry out radio reconnaissance and who were sitting at appropriately equipped workstations in the hold of the aircraft. The FRA was particularly interested in information on the new Soviet P-20 radar - a system that was new at the time, which was first cleared up by NATO in late summer 1951 and has since strengthened the existing radar systems on the border of the Eastern Bloc . One of the P-20 systems was located near Liepāja (Libau).

There were eight people on board:

  • Alvar Älmeberg (pilot)
  • Gösta Blad ( navigator / radio operator )
  • Herbert Mattson ( flight engineer )
  • Carl-Einar Jonsson (head of the FRA group)
  • Ivar Svensson (FRA employee)
  • Erik Carlsson (FRA employee)
  • Bengt Book (FRA employee)
  • Börje Nilsson (FRA employee)

Except for Nilsson, who was from Malmo , all inmates came from Stockholm .

The machine started at 9:05 a.m. on runway 31 (today 30) in Bromma and then climbed at a course of around 130 degrees to an altitude of 4,000 to 4,500 meters. The crew submitted position reports at 9:26 a.m., 9:47 a.m., 10:08 a.m., 10:25 a.m., 10:46 a.m. and 11:08 a.m. The next radio message should have been made at about 11:25 a.m., but it was never received and probably not sent because of the shooting down.

The crash site is about 40 kilometers northeast of the island of Gotska Sandön and 115 kilometers west of the Estonian coast and thus in international waters.

When there were no further reports, the Swedish military started a search and rescue operation with two Consolidated PBY-5s (Catalina, Swedish designation Tp 47).

crew

The pilot of the aircraft, Alvar Älmeberg, had been in the service of Flygvapnet since 1942 and had almost 2,000 flight hours until the time of the accident. The navigator Gösta Blad had completed his training in 1944 and had had 1,202 flight hours by June 1952. Flight engineer Herbert Mattsson was relatively new to the Tp 79.

Type 79, registration number 79001

The downed machine was a Douglas DC-3A-360 Skytrain (US designation: C-47-DL), which was delivered to the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on January 27, 1943 with the serial number 9001 was. In service with the USAAF, she carried the registration number 42-5694 and belonged to a US transport association that was stationed initially in North Africa and later in Great Britain.

On February 5, 1946, the machine was transferred from Paris-Orly Airport via Langendiebach Air Base (Hanau) to Stockholm and on May 18, 1946, it was registered in the Swedish aircraft register as SE-APZ. The machine was used by various airlines, including SAS , until it was adopted by the Swedish Air Force in 1948 as Tp 79 with registration number 79001. A purchase price of 285,000 Swedish kronor had been paid for the 79001 and its sister aircraft 79002 . On January 15, 1951, she was assigned to the association F 8 in Barkarby northwest of Stockholm.

Launch of the Catalina

The downed Tp 47 (Catalina) on June 16, 1952

On the third day of the search for the missing DC-3, June 16, 1952, two Catalina flying boats were west of Estonia over the Baltic Sea looking for the crew of Flight 27 when one of the planes was shot down by Soviet fighters . The seven (in other sources five) crew members were able to escape from the Catalina and were rescued by the West German freighter Münsterland .

consequences

The Soviet Union denied participation in the shooting down, although a few days later the Swedish destroyer Sundsvall found a rubber dinghy with ammunition parts near the crash site that could be clearly assigned to Soviet weapons. In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev admitted to Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander that a Soviet plane had shot down the Tp 79; however, it was agreed not to give this information to the public.

Instead, the Swedish government has long claimed that the aircraft was on a navigation training flight. Only after pressure from relatives was it finally admitted that the aircraft had been equipped with British surveillance equipment in order to carry out reconnaissance for NATO .

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Major General Fyodor Shinkarenko  - at the time of the shooting down, Colonel of the Soviet Air Defense - gave an interview in which he claimed that he had given one of his pilots the order to intercept the DC-3 because it was in Soviet Would have found airspace.

MiG-15 interceptor (picture shows a machine captured by the USA)

On October 30, the Soviet ambassador to Sweden, Fokin, admitted that a Soviet fighter plane shot down Flight 27 over international waters and that it was a violation of international law - contrary to the statement made by Schinkarenko.

The machine was detected by two P-3 radar systems in Ventspils , Latvia , whereupon Flight 27 was shot down by a MiG-15 .

Recovery of the DC-3 (Tp 79) from Flight 27

The wreck of the DC-3 was found on June 10, 2003 by Anders Jallai and the historian Carl Douglas with the help of sonar at a depth of 126 meters. The wreck of the Catalina was also found in the vicinity. Eight searches between 1992 and 1995 were unsuccessful.

After a long preparation period, the aircraft was recovered on March 19, 2004 and examined at the Swedish naval base in Muskö . After the completion of these investigations and the conservation of the wreck, it was brought to Linköping and has been exhibited in the Flygvapenmuseum in its own themed room since May 13, 2009 .

Summary

Exhibited wreck in the Flygvapenmuseum in Linköping

The investigation revealed that the DC-3 had been shot down by a MiG-15; that occupied several bullet holes in the fuselage of the machine. Using an on-board clock, the exact time of the impact on the water surface could also be determined at 11:28:40 a.m. CET.

Based on the remains found in the fuselage, the cockpit crew (Älmeberg, Mattsson, Blad) and the FRA manager Jonsson could be identified. The other four members of the crew are still missing.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 no.001 . 2007, p. 47. Hugin was the FRA's nickname for 79001, 79002 was named Munin , named after the two ravens of the god Odin from Norse mythology .
  2. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 no.001. 2007, p. 21.
  3. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 no 001. 2007, p. 18.
  4. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 nr 001. 2007, p. 19.
  5. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 nr 001. 2007, p. 43.
  6. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 no.001. 2007, pp. 44–46.
  7. ↑ Grisell et al: The DC-3 - A KTH Project. 2007, p. 11.
  8. ↑ a b Grisell et al: The DC-3 - A KTH Project. 2007, p. 13.
  9. ↑ a b Grisell et al: The DC-3 - A KTH Project. 2007, p. 12.
  10. ↑ Grisell et al: The DC-3 - A KTH Project. 2007, p. 23ff.
  11. ↑ Teknisk utredningsrapport över haveri med Tp 79 no 001. 2007, p. 236.

Coordinates: 58 ° 23 ′ 31.3 "  N , 20 ° 17 ′ 27.6"  E