From the May 3, 2012, Chicago Tribune.
GEORGE VUJNOVICH (1915-2012)
In 1944, as head of the Office of Strategic Services in Italy, he guided a team of agents who worked with Yugoslav guerrillas to airlift more than 500 airmen from a makeshift airstrip carved out of a mountain top in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia.
It was called Operation Halyard and was relatively obscure until the release of the 2007 book "The Forgotten 500" by Gregory Freeman.
In the summer of 1944 U.S. bombers started attacking German oil fields in Romania. The planes flew from Italy across Yugoslavia to the oil fields and many were shot down. About 1,500 airmen were forced to bail out over Serbia and were taken in by local villagers and sheltered.
Mr. Vujnovich devised his plan involving the airfield being built without tools and assembled a team of Serbian-speaking agents to parachute in and lead the effort
The team jumped on August 2, 1944 and went to building the 700-foot-long airstrip, just barely long enough for the 15th Air Force's C-47s to use. From August 9 to Dec. 27, they were able to get 512 airmen to freedom under the noses of the Nazis.
They didn't lose a man in the operation.
And, I Had Never Heard of It. --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
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