have read the detective story 3 times now
LOL. Okay, okay.
TIGHAR member Leonid Sagalovsky successfully researched the fate of Lockheed 10E Special NR-16059 "Daily Express" after it was sold to the Soviet Union.
Here is a summary:
"This Electra was registered as CCCP-H214 on 17 June 1938 and in August skis for this aircraft were shipped from the USA. It was dismantled by Factory No 156 (TsAGI) in 1939 and was then delivered to Aeroflot as spare parts." The plane was cancelled from the Polar Aviation register on April 15, 1940 (source: Lennart Andersson's 2010 book "Aeroflot Origins - Red Stars Vol. 6"; the Model 10E Electra, NR16059, c/n 1065, gets a half-page in the section on "Imported Minor Types.")
Factory No. 156 is the famous Tupolev Design Bureau, now a government-owned Tupolev Corp, in Moscow. A historian on Tupolev's staff provided information that the factory made detailed drawings during the Electra's disassembly. We followed it up and traced the Tupolev report on the "Daily Express" to Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). An inquiry to MAI confirmed that the report exists in their library and contains photographs taken in 1939. I was able to obtain copies of some photos, but the full report remains inaccessible due to (irony of ironies) the US State Department sanctions on MAI in connection with "WMD proliferation activities."
So, I'm afraid the fate of NR-16059 is very much known and it is Aeroflot spare parts."
We are currently trying to get the State Department to waive the restriction so that we can get the full report.