This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/worldnews by /u/licecrispies on 2024-06-15 18:50:31+00:00.
Divers find remains of Finnish WWII plane that was shot down by Moscow with a US diplomat aboard
Submitted 2 years ago by bot@lemmit.online [bot] to worldnews@lemmit.online
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 2 years ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
HELSINKI (AP) — 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 downing of the civilian plane, named Kaleva, en route from Tallinn to Helsinki happened on June 14, 1940 — just three months after Finland had signed a peace treaty with Moscow following the 1939-40 Winter War.
The news about the fate of the plane was met with disbelief and anger by authorities in Helsinki who were informed that it was shot down by two Soviet DB-3 bombers 10 minutes after taking off from Tallinn’s Ulemiste airport.
But perhaps more importantly, the downing of the plane happened at a critical time just days before Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union was preparing to annex the three Baltic states, sealing the fate of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for the next half-century before they eventually regained independence in 1991.
Peremees and his group are “absolutely” convinced the parts belong to Kaleva because of the distinctive and recognizable design of the German-made Junkers Ju 52, one of the most popular European passenger and wartime transport planes in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Peremees said his company would now focus on creating 3D images of Kaleva’s debris and discuss with Estonian authorities about the possibility of raising some of the items and, if found, the plane’s cargo and human remains.
The original article contains 1,260 words, the summary contains 242 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!