Flight of the 6026

For two weeks there had been only Iron Curtained silence about the fate of the four U.S. Air Force men who vanished in a EUR-47 flying from Munich to Belgrade. Then Moscow's 4 a.m. newscast cracked the silence: the C-47 had been forced down in Hungary by Soviet fighter planes, its crew arrested by the Hungarian secret police and charged with plotting to ferry -"spies and wreckers" into Hungary and the Ukraine. A few hours after Moscow spoke, Budapest said the same thing in a note to the U.S.A picture of what happened to Plane No. 6026 at last began to take shape.

The plane took off on the morning of Nov. 19 from Erding, near Munich, with supplies for the Belgrade embassy: stationery, canned food, toilet articles. Its course, laid out to avoid the Iron Curtain, was south over the Alps to Venice, eastward to Zagreb, then down the Sava River to Belgrade.

The 6026 reported itself over Zagreb about on schedule, but Yugoslav radio monitors later computed that it was actually over Varazdin, 40 miles away (see map) ; apparently the pilot had mistaken the Drava for the Sava.

Near Beli Manastir, where the Drava flows close to Hungary, the plane reportedly was fired on by Hungarian ground batteries. As it approached Recita, in Rumania, it was fired on again. The 6026 wheeled around, crossed into Hungary at Gyula, according to Radio Moscow. "However," said Radio Moscow, "the plane then got into the zone of the Soviet Air Force stationed in Hungary."*

The 6026's pilot asked U.S.A.F. for a bearing and course back to Venice, later sent a final message: "Low on fuel. Not sure I can make Venice or emergency landing." Red fighters evidently got on the trail, forced the 6026 down at a Soviet airfield at Papa, Hungary. There, after seizing the map kits, chutes, blankets and field radios which all U.S. transports carry for emergency landings, the Reds accused the crew of "criminal intentions" and held them. Hungary ignored two State Department notes demanding the release of the flyers and the plane. Apparently the next step is blackmail: within a day or two of the plane's landing, Hungary blandly sent word that it is now dissatisfied with the multimillion-dollar ransom which the U.S. paid to Hungary to free Businessman Robert Vogeler.

* Russia's first admission that the Soviet Air Force is actually operating in Hungary, as Tito has repeatedly charged.

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