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Friday, March 24, 2006
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Early news account was inaccurate
When wreckage from Leo Mustonen's missing plane was first discovered in California five years after the plane was reported missing in 1942, the Brainerd Dispatch ran a front page banner story on the young airman.
Early reports of finding the bodies of the crew were found to be inaccurate, according to Air Force reports of the crash site. The entire story and other information on Mustonen is available on the Dispatch Web site at www.brainerddispatch.com.
This story ran Oct. 2, 1947.
Mrs. Arvid Mustonen, of 1220 East Maple street, sat in the living room rocking chair in her home, hands clasped nervously in her aproned lap.
She could only say, "God bless you for telling me," when informed that the Army Airforce ship, in which her son, Cadet Leo Arvid Mustonen, was a passenger in Nov. 18, 1942, missing in the Sierra Nevada mountains about 75 miles south of Sacramento, Calif., had been found.
"It's been a long five years of waiting," she said as she placed a bundle of thumb-worn telegrams from the Army on the dining room table.
As she showed each telegram received during the long months of grief prior to the war when Army airplanes searched the mountains near Sacramento, one could see that hope, bright at first, had slowly died.
Nov. 18, 1942, Mrs. Mustonen was informed that the plane in which her son was training had been reported overdue. Nov. 23, a telegram from Mather field told her it was believed the plane had gone down in the flat country of the mountains some 75 miles south of Sacramento.
Telegrams reporting progress of the search continued to come during the months of November and December ... then the wires became periodic, each beginning with the information that nothing had been found through searching attempts, but that the search would go on.
Approximately a year following the first report of the overdue plane, Mrs. Mustonen received a letter directed by Gen. H. H. Arnold, Army Airforce chief of staff, telling her that it must be presumed her son was deceased. She was sent the wings her son would have been commissioned with as a navigator. He would have graduated from training at Mather field within a few weeks.
Leo Mustonen was 22 years of age at the time he boarded the airplane which was found believed recently on the slopes of the mountains 13,700 feet above sea level.
He was born March 1, 1920, in this city, as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Arvid Mustonen. His father is a carman at the Northern Pacific shops.
Leo attended schools in the city, graduated from high school and entered the Brainerd Junior college. He had studied one year at the University of Minnesota when he enlisted in the Army September, 1941.
From Jefferson Barracks, Mo., Leo was transferred to Angel Field, Calif., he was accepted into the Army Airforce at Santa Anna, Calif., and sent to Mather field for training as a navigator.
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