U.S. Navy finds no sign of WWII plane in Baltic Sea
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — U.S. naval experts failed to find any sign of the wreckage of a plane shot down over the Baltic during World War II with an American on board, a senior surveyor said Wednesday.
Naval officials on Wednesday called off the search for the Kaleva, which Finnish and Estonian experts say Soviet fighter-bombers shot down just days before annexing Estonia.
Among the nine people on board was Henry Antheil, a courier for the American embassy in Helsinki, whose death is considered the first U.S. casualty of World War II. He had rushed to Tallinn to evacuate sensitive documents from the American Legation with the Soviet Union moving into occupy Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The Kaleva crashed into the Baltic Sea on June 14, 1940, minutes after taking off from Tallinn, the Estonian capital.
Experts here say two Soviet fighter-bombers shot down the Helsinki-bound Kaleva, a German-made Junkers Ju-52 operated by a Finnish airliner. Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia have acknowledged shooting down the plane. Some believe the Soviet military recovered the Kaleva's wreckage in the years after its disappearance.
Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo asked the U.S. for help in determining what happened to the Kaleva, believed to be lying 300 feet underwater.
For six days, three Navy underwater craft searched the waters around the tiny island of Keri, some 20 miles northeast of Tallinn, but found sign of the plane, said Martin Ammond, senior surveyor aboard the USNS Pathfinder.
"There is no indication of a large human-made object in this area," Ammond said. "I have a high level of confidence that the plane is not there."
U.S. Navy finds no sign of WWII plane in Baltic Sea - USATODAY.com