HOME > BUFFALO > BW-372 > 6 - GARY VILLIARD

'That was when they started shooting'
(Gary Villaird's story)

by Gary Villiard

When I started out in Russia in June of 94, I started out in the Gulf of Finland, looking for one particular aircraft, BW-388, because I had had a lead on it given to me by the Naval Museum. Then, after three and a half months of bouncing around on the Gulf of Finland in a boat with a bunch of Russians, I decided that it was really a stupid thing to do, you know. I had a side-scan sonar, magnetometers, and more equipment than I knew how to operate or what to do with. Then I went into the research mode. In the winter of 94-95, I spent considerable time at the Finnish museum and the Finnish archives, and also at the Russian museum and the Russian archives, and I finally came up with two Finnish pilot reports of the two Brewsters that were on a particular mission that matched two Russian pilot reports--same day, same time, same area of Russia. After that I started to compare all four reports. Of course you can imagine that pilots are assumed to be honest and honorable people, but when they file their after-action reports, sometimes it's difficult to believe everybody.

As early as June 1994, according to Gary's Finnish helper Marja Dmitriev, he already teamed up with the Russian entrepreneur Vladimir Prytkov. In this photo, taken that month in front of St. Isac's Cathederal in St. Petersburg, Vlad is on the left, Gary in the center, and Marja on the right. This was, I believe, the first time they'd gotten together. The financial backer of the venture apparently was Marvin Kottman, an American salvor with a good reputation with the museum people he'd dealt with.--DF

After I did that research, I started running two expeditions, one using a Finnish team and one using a Russian team, and we just started narrowing it down. The reason we weren't exactly positive about the location was because the Finnish pilot reports said that the aircraft crashed at some amount of kilometers north of a particular island, and the Russian pilot reports said that the aircraft crashed at some amount of kilometers north of a particular town. That island and that town were about 40 miles apart. If you're familiar with Karelia, it's got more lakes than Minnesota ever thought of having, so we just had to go through a process of elimination. I ran all my expeditions after that in the wintertime, using snowmobiles, a magnetometer, and a gradiometer to search the lakes. It took us two and a half years to eliminate about 60 lakes.

This past summer [1998] we were down to the last three lakes that possibly could have been where this particular Brewster, BW-372, had force-landed. The Finnish team went in June the 6th, and on June the 10th I got the fax from the Finnish team that they had found this particular aircraft. The reason that I ran a summer expedition was that only the Russians would search in the winter; the Finns would only go in the summertime.

The Finns had done some homework of their own, which of the last three lakes we had left to search, they had gotten a fairly good idea from a [Finnish army] ground team which was in the area when the aircraft crashed--they'd gotten a pretty fair idea of which of these lakes the aircraft was in. As a matter of fact, of the 40 troops that were in that area when the aircraft crashed, there were only three of them alive. Still, they located one of the guys who was still alive, and he remembered it like it was yesterday, and told them exactly where in the lake the aircraft had crashed.

[DF: who remembered?] He was one of the Finnish ground troops who was watching the dogfight. [DF: I thought they were behind Russian lines?] Exactly. They were behind Russian lines.

So we mounted our expedition in July, and on the third of August we launched the expedition to go after this aircraft, and the rest is pretty much different from what the Finns and Russians are saying about it now.

[DF: Are you buying the plane or buying the permit?] No, the permit was free. We actually went to the Karelian government and got a permit--we went to the powers that be in the state, and we got the permit for searching for an aircraft. And we paid our money--you know you have to pay under the table money there, whether you like it or not. And then when they found out it was a Brewster, well, all hell broke loose. That's when things really got tough. Had it been probably any other aircraft I wouldn't have had many problems. But when they found out it was a Brewster....