No planes were lost and from August 9-18, 1944, the most active part of the operation, 447 airmen were rescued from Pranjani, while dozens more were rescued in subsequent missions from other locations in the months that followed.Ī tragic prologue to the mission, was that General Mihailovic, along with many of the Serbs that helped the Allied airmen, were eventually arrested and imprisoned or killed by Tito’s government, which won backing from the Allies. Miraculously, the operation succeeded beyond all expectations. The airstrip, which was little more than a field near Pranjani, had to be meticulously cleared of debris, flattened and lengthened by sympathetic Serbian villagers, soldiers and the Allied airmen. It involved sending in a fleet of Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo planes to land on an improvised airstrip in Serbia in an area largely in German hands, and shuttle a dozen airmen at a time back to Italy. The initial mission of the planned rescue operation was unprecedented in its daring and danger. OSS 1st Lieutenant, George Musulin, in Serbia, October, 1943

The challenging political situation was another hurdle for any prospective rescue, as the British had authority over Allied forces in the Mediterranean, and favored Tito and the communists. Led by George Musulin, the team made contact with General Draza Mihailovich, the Serbian nationalist leader of the Chetniks, a resistance movement that fought both the Nazis and the communist partisans led by Josip Broz Tito. Radio transmissions and other messages filtered in until it was decided to send a team into Serbia to assess the situation. military command had to be informed of the fact that hundreds of airmen were being hidden and protected by Serbian partisans, and dozens more were being found and rescued as the weeks and months between the summer of 1943 and the spring of 1944 went on. The “lucky” airmen who survived being shot down and parachuted into the unknown and were found by heroic and selfless Serb villagers who chose to help them, faced weeks or months of dangerous travel from one safe house to another, before ultimately reaching the Chetnik camp near the village of Pranjani.īefore any rescue mission of the downed airmen could be planned, the OSS and the U.S. Subsequent missions would also bring heavy losses. The first strike against Ploiesti on August 1, 1943, named Operation Tidal Wave, resulted in 53 of 177 bombers being shot down and another 54 heavily damaged with 660 airmen lost, the worst death toll ever for a single mission of the U.S. B-24s on a bombing run over Ploiesti, Romania

The Forgotten 500 by Gregory A. Freeman