By Gregory A. Freeman
An unbelievable, never-before-told tale of the second one international warfare, in line with newly declassified records and particular interviews.
Bombing of the Ploiesti, Romania, oil refineries, a key German source, begun in 1942. Allied pilots maintaining harm usually bailed out over Serbia in German-occupied Yugoslavia, the place the resistance and others concealed them. through 1944, greater than 500 have been stranded and slowly ravenous. The OSS concocted the bold Operation Halyard to airlift them, yet that they had to build a touchdown strip with out instruments and with out alerting the Germans or endangering neighborhood villagers, after which the rescuers needed to steer clear of being shot down themselves. The operation's tale is an exhilarating story, however it used to be saved from normal wisdom for many years; the resistance chief so much in charge was once a rival to Tito. Nazi-baited by means of a Stalinist mole in British intelligence, he used to be completed in 1946 with the consent of england and the US, which thereafter refused to recognize having been snookered (the nation division saved many information categorized greater than 50 years). Evoking the rescuees' successive desperation, wild desire, and pleasure, and their gratitude to the Serbians who risked their lives to aid, Freeman produces a wide ranging well known account.
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Additional info for The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
Sample text
Wherever there is. The villagers helping Musgrove and the other Americans get to their destination were risking their lives. If caught helping the downed American airmen, they would be killed just as the Germans had already killed thousands for resisting the Nazi invasion. German troops had been vicious when they overtook the country in 1941, brutalizing anyone seen as resisting the invasion and bombing the country into submission virtually overnight. In 1944 the country was firmly controlled by Germany.
But as soon as the Nazi bombs had begun to fall three years earlier, those who had resisted the German invasion from the start had begun to fight back. The Germans may have rolled into Yugoslavia with little difficulty, but the Yugoslav people would not let them stay without a fight. These poor people in the Yugoslavian countryside were resisting in every way possible, from acts of sabotage and the occasional Nazi soldier who never returned from a visit to the hills to aiding every American airman they could find.
The Germans were just as determined to protect this vital supply of oil, and they installed an astonishing array of antiaircraft guns all around the refineries for miles and miles. Some of the best German fighter pilots were stationed at airfields around Ploesti, with orders to protect the refineries from Allied bombers. Ploesti was the first target in Europe bombed by American aircraft. Many more attacks would follow the first. The honor of hitting Ploesti first went to Colonel Harry A. Halverson in May 1942.
