VICTIM OF THE COLD WAR
Reports of a Navy plane missing over the Baltic Sea flooded the news in early April 1950. Aviation Machinist Mate First Class Jack William Thomas was a crewmember aboard of the missing plane, a PB4Y-2 Privateer (BuNo 59645) veteran of World War II. Shortly after WWII, the U.S. government received information that the Baltic Sea was being turned into a “Soviet Gibraltar” and that four Soviet submarines were being launched monthly in the Baltic. Additionally, information was circulated that Soviet airfields were being built on various Baltic islands. The Navy was ordered to investigate, and planes equipped with state of the art electronic monitoring and photographic equipment were prepared. Patrol Squadron 26 (VP-26) detached several PB4Y-2 planes to Lyautey, French Morocco, in the secret Operation Ferret whose primary mission was to record and analyze Soviet radar and electronic signals, and to obtain photographs when it did not interfere with the primary mission.
On April 8, 1950, BuNo 59645, carrying a crew of ten, departed NAS Port Lyautey, French Morocco, on its secret intelligence gathering flight. It first flew to Wiesbaden, West Germany, where it departed at 1031. At 1330 the aircraft reported it was flying over Bremerhaven, Germany, and a little over an hour later, at 1440, while flying over the Baltic Sea off the coast of Liepaja, Latvia. This was its last radio report and almost nine hours later, VP-26 headquarters at Port Lyautey received a dispatch from U.S. Naval Base, Bremerhaven, stating that BuNo 59645 was “overdue.” Early the next morning three PB4Y-2s were ordered from Port Lyautey to conduct a search for BuNo 59645. Their initial search began on April 10 but was discontinued 10 days later when an additional plane from VP-26 and about 25 USAF aircraft had unsuccessfully scoured the Baltic without finding any trace of the missing plane.
However, a British freighter later pulled an empty aircraft life raft from the Baltic Sea and a Swedish fishing vessel found a life raft and bullet-riddled nose strut and wheel, all of which were tentatively identified as coming from the missing plane. The U.S. issued a stiff note of protest as mounting evidence implicated the Soviets as having attacked and destroying the aircraft. Although the Navy suspended Operation Ferret for three days, the flights were then resumed with fighter escorts. Shortly thereafter the Soviets reported that at 1739 they had sighted a Navy aircraft over Liepaja, Soviet Latvia, and that the aircraft had been mistakenly identified as a B-29 bomber when Soviet planes flying at an altitude of 12,139 were ordered to intercept the American plane. The Soviet account reported the Navy plane exchanged fire with the Soviet planes and headed out to sea. The credibility of the Soviet report suffered seriously when it was revealed the only armament aboard BuNo 59645 was a .45-caliber pistol carried by one of the officers.
For nearly 40-years, very little thought was given to discovering the fate of BuNo 59645 and her crew. Then, in November 1992, a retired Soviet General Colonel, who had commanded the unit that downed BuNo 59645 stated that some items of equipment and aircraft parts had been recovered with the intention of presenting the recovered parts to the United Nations as evidence of U.S. spying but the intelligence value of the recovered material overrode the desire for a propaganda victory, thus the Soviet Union kept the recovery a secret and the material was destroyed in 1953 when his unit was disbanded. Later, a letter printed in the Russian newspaper, Izvestiya, claimed to be written by a former Soviet sailor who remembered items from the plane being raised to the deck of his ship and hearing divers talk about the remains of crew members being found in the plane’s cockpit. In a 1993 interview, a Chief of the Latvian Police stated that when Russian pilots returned from their mission, they were laughing because they “shot down a big plane” and “it was easy.” The only Soviet document found by researchers was a letter sent to Joseph Stalin in 1950, indicating the search for the PB4Y-2 conducted during April 1950 was unsuccessful. Over the years there have been unconfirmed reports that at least some of the crew survived the crash and were being held by the Soviets. They have consistently denied the reports and all ten crewmembers were subsequently declared dead by the U.S. Government.
On April 8, 2000, the citizens of the coastal city of Liepaja, in the formerly Soviet controlled Latvia, dedicated a towering monument in memory of the 10 Americans who died when BuNo 59645 was destroyed. Inscriptions on the monument are written in Latvian and English and carries a plaque reading: “IN MEMORIAL OF THE MISSING CREW OF THE U.S. NAVY PB4Y2 AIRCRAFT, BUNO 59645, SHOT DOWN AT SEA OFF LIEPAJA ON APRIL 8, 1950.” The name “AD1 JACK W. THOMAS, USN” is one of the 10 names inscribed on the monument. These men were among the first casualties of the Cold War.
Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)
