On June 13 1952 an unarmed Dc3 from the Swedish Air Force was shot down and vanished over the Baltic Sea. The plane was on a radio surveillance mission to pick up intel from the Soviet Union. It was equipped with the latest technique supplied from the US. It had a crew of eight, three were military personnel from the Swedish Air Force and the other five were civilian signals intelligence (SIGINT) operators from the National Defence Radio Establishment.
Three days later an unarmed Swedish PBY-5A Catalina that participated in the search for missing Dc3 was also shot down over international waters. This time the crew survived and was picked up by a West German fishing boat.
Both planes were shot down by Mig-15's from the Soviet Union.
This events became a hot political issue. Specially due to the very secretive mission of the Dc3. Sweden quickly turned their focus on the rescue plane that was obviously shot down by the Soviets. Thus it was to become known as the Catalina affair (Catalinaaffären in Swedish).
The Dc-3 remained vanished. There was a lot of theories about it being forced to land in the Soviet Union and the crew being interned. Finally on the 10th of June 2003, 51 years later, the wreck of the Dc3 was found at the bottom of the Baltic sea on international waters together with remains from some of the crew.
The models are in scale 1/48:
- Revell's C-47 Skytrain (Dc-3) (Converted)
- Revell's Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina (Converted)
- Tamiya's Mig 15 bis
