84 years after it was shot down – nearly to the day – the wreckage of Henry William Antheil Jr.’s plane has been found at the bottom of the Baltic.

Henry, who worked as an American diplomat, departed from Tallinn, bound for Helsinki, on June 14, 1940, when approximately ten minutes after take-off the aircraft, a commercial passenger plane, exploded. At the time of his death, Henry was in possession of several pouches of secret information.

Henry was the brother of composer George Antheil, Trenton’s self-proclaimed “Bad Boy of Music” (also the title of his autobiography). George achieved his greatest notoriety for his mechanized nightmare, “Ballet Mecanique,” which caused fists to fly at its Paris premiere. Later, his music became less confrontational and he pursued the Great American Symphony.

George also wrote prose on a variety of subjects (war correspondence, murder mysteries, endocrinology, and advice to the lovelorn) and, when he needed cash, Hollywood film scores. Latterly, he became a footnote in biographies of actress Hedy Lamarr for their experiments in developing a frequency-hopping system to confound Nazi torpedoes.

A grave marker to Henry’s memory was installed in Trenton’s Riverview Cemetery. Of course, his body is not there, but the remains of George and the rest of the family are.

Bad Boy brother’s plane is found

More about the circumstances of Henry Antheil’s death here.

https://ee.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/207/Henry-W_-Antheil.pdf

What was in the pouches?

https://lamokaledger.com/the-kaleva-incident-and-the-death-of-henry-antheil-jr/