The Swedish Air Force pays tribute to the spy plane’s crew who were shot down by Russia 70 years ago
Seventy years ago, to the day when Soviet fighter jets shot down a C-47 Dakota from the Swedish Air Force on a reconnaissance mission across the Baltic Sea, the country’s military conducted a memorial flight in the same area. As early as 1952, the loss of the C-47 and all eight crews on board began a confrontation between the Soviet Union and Sweden that would also see a Swedish air force. Catalina an airboat was shot down while it was on a search and rescue mission for possible Dakota survivors.
Earlier today, the Swedish Air Force gathered a formation of a Gulfstream S 102B Corps intelligence gathering aircraft and two JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets that flew together to honor the eight men killed when the C-47 was shot down on June 13, 1952. The formation flight was organized in collaboration with the Swedish Armed Forces Radio, also known as. as the Swedish Armed Forces Radio Institute, or FROM. Roughly analogous to the US National Security Agency (NSA), this arm of the Swedish Ministry is primarily responsible for collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and supports national cyber security efforts.
Escorted by Gripens, Gulfstream flew in a round over the crash site in the Baltic Sea, as well as overflights of the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration’s buildings in Stockholm, Bromma Stockholm Airport and FRA’s headquarters at nearby Lovön.
The loss of C-47 (or Tp 79 in the Swedish military nomenclature) was one of the most important Cold War incidents involving Sweden and was long shrouded in secrecy on both sides. The twin-engine aircraft, equipped for SIGINT missions, had operated across the Baltic Sea when it was first reported missing. Ahead of the June 13 sortie, ground stations C-47 and FRA had been monitoring a Soviet naval exercise conducted in waters off the coast of Estonia, then known as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).
It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that it was finally confirmed that the Soviet air force had shot down the C-47. For many years, the details of the C-47’s actual mission were not generally known, and the Swedish authorities provided the cover story that the aircraft had fallen during a training flight.
After the Soviet revelation, the official Swedish report now told how the C-47’s intelligence gathering flight had been planned two days in advance and that the aircraft departed from Bromma at 9.00 local time on the morning of the 13th. The adapted transport was equipped with British delivered SIGINT equipment. It is unclear exactly what the SIGINT specialists were targeting, but a Soviet air defense radar known to be on the coast of the Latvian SSR may have been of interest.
At the same time, the Soviet military tracked down the Swedish spy plane and a MiG-15bis fighter jet was launched from the alarm system in Tukums, near Riga, at 10:44.
Every 20 minutes, the C-47 crew sent a coded report via VHF radio indicating the aircraft’s position. This continued until 11.30 when a distorted radio telegraph message was picked up by the Swedish Air Force.
This marked the time when the MiG-15 engaged the C-47 with a combination of 23 mm and 37 mm cannon fire. The pilot, Captain Grigory Osinsky, had been ordered to attack while the Swedish aircraft was in international airspace about 32 to 35 nautical miles east of Gotska Sandön, an uninhabited Swedish island north of Gotland.
The distorted message was the result of the C-47’s navigator being hit by shrapnel, while other rounds pierced the aircraft and engines and started a fire. The MiG pilot claimed to have seen two parachutes, and only two bodies have ever been located on board the wreck, but in which case all eight of Dakota’s crew died during or after the plane crashed into the waves.
A memorial in Stockholm to the dead during the shooting of Tp 79, serial number 79001, on June 13, 1952:
A Tp 47 Catalina flying boat from the Swedish Air Force was on standby, as usual for such assignments, and two of these flying boats were soon involved in the search for the missing C-47. Other aircraft and the Swedish Navy’s ships also took part in the rescue operations, but they did not succeed in finding anything until an unopened rubber dinghy was located at a ship on 15 June.
The following day, a joint air and sea rescue operation was launched, early in the morning, which now focuses on an area northwest of the Estonian island of Hiiumaa. Around 04.00, the crew of a Catalina noticed a pair of MiG-15s flying past. The jet then returned and fired track rounds as a warning. According to the crew of the aircraft carrier, they were definitely outside the 12-nautical-mile limit that indicates Soviet territorial waters.
The Soviet jets then shook their wings, a sign for Catalina to follow, but instead the Swedish pilot dived to escape the area. After Soviet fighter jets had pushed home seven separate attack runs, the aircraft carrier was forced down. The crew of five was able to escape and the men were picked up by a West German freighter. Whether Catalina ever crossed into Soviet territorial waters is unclear, but it seems that it had at least flown very close.
The wreck of the C-47 lay for many years at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, was finally rediscovered in 2003 and then salvaged the following year. Remains of four of the eight crew members were identified and the aircraft’s hulk was then shown on The Air Force Museum in Linköping, Sweden.
The recovery of the C-47 put an end to all continued secrecy over the fact that the aircraft had been shot down during a secret SIGINT mission. While reconnaissance flights were a potentially risky activity at this early stage of the Cold War, the Soviet pilot’s actions were particularly aggressive and have never been sufficiently explained. After all, it was clear that the C-47 was flying over international waters when it was shot down. It may have been the case that the Soviet authorities wanted to give a clear warning to the Swedes that they did not want to tolerate SIGINT flights in the Baltic Sea, especially during exercises there.
Such a high stakes was the “game” of the Cold War intelligence gathering that the air force decided to resume SIGINT flights with another C-47, now equipped with a fighter jet card. The government blocked this move, but in 1953 Swedish aircraft again patrolled the Baltic Sea.
While the goals of SIGINT today are very different, the Baltic theater is strategically important today just as it was 70 years ago. Sweden is now ready to join NATO, which will probably only increase the requirement for intelligence in this area, and potentially increase tensions with Russia. Already now, NATO flights in the area have been the subject of much attention from Russian aircraft, which has sometimes led to complaints about dangerous flights.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Air Force and FRA are still very active in the Baltic Sea, with Gulfstream and other reconnaissance assets continuing the important work that their pioneering ancestors did all these years ago.
Contact the author: [email protected]
Thanks to Robert S Hopkins, III, whose forthcoming book, Crowded Skies: Cold War Reconnaissance over the Baltic Sea, written with Lennart Andersson, will provide many more details on these incidents and other intelligence gathering flights in the region.