811.2361/28: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Standley) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 1—1:19 p.m.]
1224. Pravda of August 30 carried a Tass report from Khabarovsk which reads in translation as follows:
“An American military airplane landed on August 12 on the territory of Kamchatka. According to a statement of the crew of the airplane the latter had participated that day in a raid of American [Page 689] aircraft on Japanese military bases in the region of the Kurile Islands and made a forced landing on Soviet territory because of engine trouble.34
On the basis of international law the American plane and its crew have been interned by the Soviet authorities.”35
- The Consul General at Vladivostok, Angus I. Ward, informed the Department in his telegram No. 32, August 20, sent also to the Embassy in the Soviet Union, that a B–24 bomber had made a forced landing on August 12 at Kalakhtyrka Lake near Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka Peninsula. The cause for landing was damaged motors while returning to base at Adak Island in the Aleutians from a bombing mission to Paramushiro and Shimushi Islands of the Kuril chain. The Diplomatic Agent of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, Semen Petrovich Dyukharyev, told Ward that the crew of 11 officers and men, 3 of whom were wounded or injured, had been interned near Petropavlovsk. (811.2361/25) In his later telegram No. 36, September 5, Ward stated that Sgt. Thomas Ring had died on September 1 from injuries sustained in the crash landing (811.2361/29).↩
- In a note of September 20, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs let the Embassy know that the 10 interned crew members had been transferred for residence to the city of Yangi Yul, the station for which was Kaufmanskaya, 28 kilometers southward from Tashken (811.2361/31).↩