The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

flew down to Tallinn on the morning of June 14, 1940, taking an Estonian commercial flight. Henry and Greta had just spent a happy getaway week- end in Tallinn on June 1-2. But he would never complete the short 50- mile journey back to Helsinki. After learning of their son’s death on June 15, Henry Antheil Sr. and his wife sent the following telegram to Secretary of State Cordell Hull: “We appreciate your words of sympathy. While deeply grieved, we know that Henry loved his work and his country even to giving his life for it. We will appreciate any further information you can give us.” Further information turned out to be rather difficult to get, however. Both the Finns and Estonians launched investigations, but these inquiries went nowhere once the Soviet occupation of Estonia became a fait accompli on June 16, 1940. From then until the collapse of the Soviet Union a half-century later, any public mention of the incident was considered taboo. Although the plane crashed sever- al kilometers north of Keri Island, the wreckage was never found and the nine bodies on board were never recovered. Documents in Russian, Finnish and Estonian archives are equally elusive. A Finnish commission assigned to investigate the crash did not clarify matters when it issued a cryptic report on June 17, 1940, con- cluding that “the explosion was caused by an external factor.” Despite such obstacles, Estonian and Finnish investigators have recent- ly pieced together eyewitness ac- counts confirming that two Soviet bombers downed the “Kaleva” — de- spite the fact that the Winter War be- tween the Soviet Union and Finland had officially ended three months ear- lier, on March 13, 1940. Some Estonians have mistakenly identified Antheil as the first U.S. offi- cial to die in World War II. That dis- tinction actually belongs to Captain Robert M. Losey, killed by a German bomb in Oslo on April 21, 1940, while 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 7 Antheil was in charge of Embassy Moscow’s code room, sending cables written by George F. Kennan, Loy W. Henderson and other key U.S. diplomats.