Destruction of the Kaleva aircraft

The three-engine Junkers Ju 52 / 3mge with the serial number 5494 was released on July 3, 1936 and entered the national Finnish airline Aero O / Y , where it received the OH-ALL flight number and the name Kaleva ( Russian Kaleva ); for Aero O / Y itself, it was already the second Yu-52, after OH-ALK ^[1] . Kaleva was originally delivered in a variant with a float chassis , but in December 1936, the most modern Malmi airport was opened near Helsinki, which had a hard-coated runway, so at the end of that year the OH-ALL was sent to Germany to replace the float chassis with a conventional wheeled one; February 25, 1937 converted aircraft returned to the owner.

On November 10, 1937, an incident occurred that almost ended in an accident - during the passenger flight, the central engine detached from the aircraft, while the crew was unable to maintain control and make an emergency landing in Turku . During the Soviet-Finnish War, the airliner was first operated on civilian lines, but on February 25, 1940 it was handed over to the Finnish Air Force , where it managed to fly 134 hours until March 19 of the same year, after which it returned to passenger transportation. According to some reports, the total operating time of "Kaleva" was 4393 hours of flight.

In the fateful departure, only 2 pilots and 7 passengers were on board the aircraft:

•   Bo Hermansson von Willebrand ( Fin. Bo Hermansson von Willebrand ) - commander (FAC) , chief pilot Aero O / Y ;
•   Tauno Launis ( Fin. Tauno Launis ) - co-pilot - radio operator ;
•   Henry William Antheil Jr. ( Henry William Antheil Jr. ) - American diplomat (baggage weight - 35 kg );
•   Rudolf Kellen ( German: Rudolf Cöllen ) - German businessman (luggage weight - 15 kg ) ;;
•   Friedrich-Wilhelm Offermann ( German: Friedrich-Wilhelm Offermann ) - German businessman (baggage weight - 18 kg );
•   Frederic Marty ( French Frederic Marty ) - French diplomatic courier (baggage weight - 38 kg );
•   Paul Longuet ( French Paul Longuet ) - French diplomatic courier (baggage weight - 154 kg );
•   Max Hettinger ( Swedish Max Hettinger ) (no luggage) ;;
•   Gunvor Maria Luts ( Fin. Gunvor Maria Luts ) (luggage weight - 9 kg ).

Earlier that day, Kaleva completed a regular passenger flight on the route Stockholm - Turku - Tallinn , after which the crew changed in Tallinn and now Bo Hermansson von Willebrand ( Fin. Bo Hermansson von Willebrand ) - the chief pilot of the Finnish airline; in the right seat was the pilot Tauno Launis ( Fin. Tauno Launis ), he also performed the duties of a radio operator. Then preparations for flight 1631 Tallinn – Helsinki began , with only 7 people boarding, including one American diplomat and two French diplomatic couriers. According to the plan, the route to Helsinki was only 104 km long, and in duration it should take 32-36 minutes. At 13:54, with 9 people on board, the OH-ALL flew from Lasnamägi Airport .

According to the memoirs of the future lieutenant general Pyotr Khokhlov , that day two high-speed bombers DB-3T from the 1st mine torpedo regiment (1-MTAP) of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet , which was seen a passenger plane a few kilometers from Tallinn, patrolled off the coast of Estonia that day. heading towards Finland, to which the commander of the leading aircraft, Shio Bidzinashvili, ordered: “To intercept! Surely uncontrolled, we must wrap it back . " Estonian fishermen who were at sea who witnessed subsequent events claimed to have seen the Finnish flag on the vertical stabilizer of a passenger aircraft, but in the reports of Soviet pilots it was indicated that the aircraft did not have any identification marks.

Military aircraft came very close to the passenger, almost 50 meters, which is confirmed by the testimony of an eyewitness from Keri Island, after which the Soviet pilots gestured to the crew to return, but there was no reaction, as well as to the double intersection of its course. Then Bidzinashvili gave instructions to warn the unidentified plane with fire, after which the shooter of one of the bombers gave two tracer lines in front of the Junkers nose, but this did not change the course of the latter. According to the claims of Soviet crews, they flew so close to the airliner that they could see passengers teasing with their fists and threatening with pistols. Then, on the second bomber, the radio operator gunner also switched to a machine gun, after which fire was opened to kill. The left engine stopped at Kalev, then smoke appeared, giving way to fire, after which the Junkers entered the left bank and at 14:06 from a height of 400-500 meters fell into the Gulf of Finland .

At a distance of 5.8 nautical miles (10.7 km) from the crash site on duty was the Soviet submarine Sch-301 , commanded by Grigory Goldberg , and the crew could also observe the disaster, a minute after which at 14:07 (15: 07 MSK ) an order comes to the boat to head to the crash site and determine what plane was shot down. Heading at the 327 ° course, at 14:47 the Sch-301 arrives at , where he discovers a large number of debris floating on the water, next to which there were already three Estonian fishing boats. A team of three people was assembled, who searched the bots and took things from the plane, while the rest removed items from the water; the bodies of passengers or crew were not found. It also later turned out that the fishermen still managed to deliver some things to Tallinn, where they handed them over to the police, including briefcases, a German passport, a sealed bag of diplomatic mail, money in bank packaging, clothes, notebooks of pilots and passengers, account books, and a dozen wreckage and a life jacket.

By that time, Helsinki already knew that the OH-ALL board had crashed, and at 14:51 the Finnish Air Force Brewster B239 flew in search of it, which was piloted by the famous ace Ilmari Yuutilainen . At 14:58, he notices the silhouette of a Soviet submarine on the surface of the bay and heads for it, and approaching it he discovers an oil stain and large pieces of plywood on the water - fragments of the interior trim of the aircraft. A Finnish fighter was also noticed on the Shch-301, in connection with which the calculation took its place at the gun, and the boat began to circle at low speed in order to maneuver when there was a threat of attack; having made at 15:02 three circles around the boat at an altitude of 40-50 meters, Yuutilainen turned and flew back to the airfield. At 15:10 (16:10 MSK ) the Shch-301 also left the crash site.

According to the report of the boat commander Grigory Goldberg, among the things raised there was a diplomatic mail weighing about 100 kg , as well as jewelry and money, including: two gold orders, 2,000 Finnish marks , 10,000 Romanian lei , 13,500 French francs , 100 Yugoslavian dinars , 90 Italian lire , 10 Estonian kroons , 3 British pounds sterling , 75 US dollars and 521 ruble by Soviet signs . Among the things, some documents were also found which, after studying, were urgently ordered on the Sneg escort ship by political instructor Pyotr Koblikov to the headquarters of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet in Kronstadt .

• Muromov I. A. Finnish U-52 (Kaleva) shot down over the Gulf of Finland // 100 great air crashes / Ch. ed. S. Dmitriev. - M .: Veche, 2003 .-- 528 p. - (100 great). - 10 000 copies - ISBN 5-9533-0029-8 .
• Meltiukhov M.I. Concentration and grouping of the Red Army // Baltic bridgehead (1939–1940). The return of the Soviet Union to the shores of the Baltic Sea .. - M .: Algorithm Publishing House, 2014. - 1172 p. - ISBN 978-5-4438-0602-0 .

• Kotelnikov, Vladimir Last Kaleva flight (Russian) . Date of treatment May 6, 2018.
• Sokolov, Boris . The last flight of Kalevy (Russian) , The New Times (July 14, 2008). Date of treatment May 6, 2018.