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This rescue of captured US flyers would be a fabulous movie! Maybe it was and I missed it...

“45 US Fifteenth Air Force P-51s strafe the airfield at Reghin. Fighters claim a record number of 150+ aircraft destroyed on the ground; and starting Operation REUNION (the evacuation of US airmen interned in Romania), 36 B-17s evacuate more than 700 of the 1,100 US airmen from Bucharest (which falls to the Soviet Army today) to Bari, Italy. This operation is the brainchild of Rumanian airmen and civilians who concentrate the Americans at a Rumanian Air Force Base while contacting HQ Fifteenth Air Force in Italy by flying a high-ranking USAAF POW to Italy in a Rumanian Air Force Bf-109. Everyone involved realizes that the operation must be kept secret from both the Germans and the Soviets.”

I noticed that story too. What was noteworthy to me was, first, that so many Romanians were willing to help and keep quiet about it after years of alliance with Hitler, and, second, that it was already known that the Soviets couldn’t be allowed to find out about the airmen.

I could not find any info on this operation. Google searches bring up nothing on Operation Reunion. I did find this very disjointed account of Croatian retrivals and Opeperaion Halyard which was the evacuation of 417 men from Serbia. AMERICAN AIRMEN RESCUED IN CROATIA, BOSNIA AND HERCEGOVINA BY CROATIAN AND BOSNIAN PARTISANS IN WORLD WAR II http://www.croatia.org/crown/croatians/www.croatians.com/MILITARY-AIRMEN-PILOTS.htm Wiki Page: Operation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was an Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. In July 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) drew up plans to send a team to Chetniks led by General Draža Mihailović in the German-occupied Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia for the purpose of evacuating Allied airmen shot down over that area. . . 417 Allied airmen who had been downed over occupied Yugoslavia were rescued by Mihailović's Chetniks, and airlifted out by the Fifteenth Air Force. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Halyard