Divers Find Remains of Finnish WWII Plane That Was Shot Down by Moscow With a US Diplomat Aboard
The Junkers Ju 52 aircraft "Kaleva" by the Finnish airline Aero is parked at the Katajanokka seaplane harbor in Helsinki equipped with floating bottom skis. Photo dated July 14, 1936. With U.S. and French diplomatic couriers aboard, the civilian plane was shot down over the Baltic Sea by Soviet bombers on June 14, 1940 just days before Moscow annexed the three Baltic states. The mysterious case which claimed the lives of nine people is being solved after 84 years as an Estonian diving group has located the aircraft's wreckage off a tiny island close to Tallinn. Finnish Aviation Museum via AP
HELSINKI—The World War II mystery of what happened to a Finnish passenger plane after it was shot down over the Baltic Sea by Soviet bombers appears to finally be solved more than eight decades later.
The plane was carrying American and French diplomatic couriers in June 1940 when it was downed just days before Moscow annexed the Baltic states. All nine people on board the plane were killed, including the two-member Finnish crew and the seven passengers—an American diplomat, two French, two Germans, a Swede and a dual Estonian-Finnish national.
