after Globemaster 49-244 ditched and disappeared, the United States took a rare step: confronting Russia directly about Moscow's suspected role in the incident.Since so many crucial details of the disaster had remained classified, going public with U.S. suspicions risked revealing some of the most sensitive details about the entire mission. Speaking on behalf of the U.S. delgation, Tim Shea, of the Defense Intelligence Agency, stated:
"On March 22, 1951, a USAF C-124 tail number 49-0244, after a refueling stop at
Loring AFB in Maine, headed for Mildenhall RAFB in England. Early on March 23, about 700
37
miles southwest of Ireland at approximately 50 degrees, 45’, 0” North; 24 degrees, 3’, 0” West,
the C-124 issued a Mayday call, reporting a fire in the cargo hold. The C-124 ditched in one
piece, and its location was reported by a U.S. B-29. One of the largest search and rescue
operations in history began only nineteen hours later, and nothing, including human remains of
the 53 persons aboard, was found aside from some charred plywood and a single briefcase.
Dozens of airplanes, weather ships, a British submarine, and several U.S. Navy warships,
including the aircraft carrier, USS CORAL SEA, scoured thousands of square miles of the ocean.
There were reports that Soviet submarines and surface ships were active in the area of the crash.
The U.S. Side seeks access to relevant archival material located at the Russian Navy Archives in
Gatchina which might shed light on the fate of this C-124 and its 53 passengers. Soviet Naval
personnel almost certainly witnessed the aircraft crash and would most likely have recorded the
event in their ships’ logs. Any information found would help formulate a final and accurate
explanation to the families as to the circumstances of loss of these 53 men."
His Russian counterpart, General-Lieutenant Vasiliy S. Khristoforov, Chief of the Department of Registration and
Archival Funds of the Russian Federal Security Service, responded: "Send your request and we will look into it."
With that,the matter effectively disappeared again from the public sphere. The Russians later stated that they could find no information responsive to the U.S. query. The Americans didn't press again. I tried to get Shea to explain the genesis of his query, something he did his best not to answer, blaming it on pressure from family members of the men who disappeared.