A "Hot" Incident During The Cold War...



On the morning of June 13, 1952, this aircraft of the type "Tp 79" (Swedish name of the Douglas C-47 "Skytrain") of the Svenska Flygvapnet, the Swedish Air Force, takes off from Stockholm/Bromma airport...:



The captain of the plane, Alvar Älmeberg...



... has strict orders to radio coded messages to his home base at set times.

The Swedish plane is on a spy mission that shouldn't actually exist:

In collusion with NATO officials, the Swedes have agreed to spot a brand-new mobile Soviet air reconnaissance radar, designated "P-20 Перископ" ("Periscope"), that NATO military had previously located near Soviet Liepāja (Libau ) had located.

NATO only has a few drawings and blurred photos of the new device...:





Here's one in the National Military Museum at Bucharest...:


For this espionage purpose, the Swedish "Tp 79" is packed with the latest NATO spy technology for radio reconnaissance, which the British have made available!

Except for the pilot, the navigator Gösta Blad...



... and flight engineer Herbert Mattson...



...there are five employees of the Svenska Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA) on board, the code name for the Swedish secret radio reconnaissance service:

Carl-Einar Jonsson (Head of FRA Group)...



... as well as the radio scouts Ivar Svensson, Erik Carlsson, Bengt Book and Börje Nilsson. All have previously received NATO training, which is also top secret.

The whole thing is of course absolutely illegal and under no circumstances compatible with Swedish neutrality!

The allegedly "neutral" Swedish plane (they deliberately chose an old type from the Second World War), so it makes itself "completely harmless" and flies towards Liepāja - at 9:26, 9:47, 10:08, 10:25, At 10:46 a.m. and 11:08 a.m. Captain Älmeberg sends the ordered short signals - the next signal, which should have been at 11:25 a.m., never comes!

The plane and its crew initially disappeared without a trace!

The Swedes start a large-scale search operation over the Baltic Sea - but initially find nothing!

Two days after the plane's mysterious disappearance, two searching "Catalina" flying boat of the Svenska Flygvapnet searching "Catalina" come too close to the coast of Soviet Estonia - and are immediately attacked by Soviet MiG-15 interceptors...:



The Soviets shoot down one of the "Catalinas" - the seven crew members can save themselves...



... and are recovered from the Baltic Sea by the accidentally passing West German freighter "Münsterland"...:



And then one finds a trace of the missing spy plane:

The Swedish destroyer "Sundsvall"...



... a few days later, near the suspected crash site, he finds a rubber dinghy containing ammunition parts that can be unequivocally assigned to Soviet weapons.

For the Swedes this is the decisive proof that the Soviets shot down the "Tp 79" too!

The discovery of the "Sundsvall" comes at the worst possible time for the Swedish government:

Until now, she had lied to the public that the spy plane had no malicious intentions and was on a completely harmless navigation training flight.

This legend is now bursting! Now you have to admit that you spied for NATO with specially supplied NATO equipment.

That by this time the Soviets had already formed their own opinion about Swedes' "neutrality" shows that their hunters took the spy machine out of the sky without any warning!



Because this is what four years later, in 1956, the head of state and party leader Nikita Khrushchev told the Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander...



... admit without beating about the bush; however, it will be agreed not to disclose this information to the public.

The full truth will only become apparent in 1991 - after the collapse of the Soviet Union: That is when Major General Fyodor Ivanovich Shinkarenko - at the time of the shooting down - that time colonel of the Soviet air defense of the region...



... admit in a newspaper interview that he ordered one of his pilots to shoot down the "Tp 79" because it was in Soviet airspace.



In the meantime, the wreck has been found and salvaged on the bottom of the Baltic Sea...