Posted on 07/06/2008 5:42:26 PM PDT by Bokababe
YPSILANTI, MICHIGAN (WTOL) - As we celebrate Independence Day, four veterans of World War II want to thank those who kept them safe in enemy territory years ago.
They were recently reunited at the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti thanks to the Experimental Aircraft Association.
News 11's Jennifer Boresz was there and has their story.
These men are called the 'Forgotten 500' in a published book. As more and more people hear the story, however, they're hoping the daring rescue mission and the men behind it will never be forgotten again.
"When they said pull that rip cord, I started to pull the ripcord like a lawnmower. It came up and came out in my hand. Then I thought, 'Now what do I do with this?,'" Curtis Diles, a WWII veteran from Dayton tells News 11.
More than 60 years have passed since these U.S. airmen parachuted out of a plane into hostile territory.
Clare Musgrove of St. Joseph, Michigan tells us, "I had the ripcord in my hand, and I was freefalling. I immediately tried to get into my pack and get the pilot chute' out. When I did, it made a much larger chute,' and my flight afterwards was OK."
Their mission was to bomb a German oil field.
"We bombed Ploesti, so the Germans would be penalized for their lack of gasoline. But we paid one terrible price for that because the Germans knew what altitude we would come in," says Arthur "Jibby" Jibilian from Fremont. "They knew the formation we would come in. They had us zeroed in perfectly, and we were like sitting ducks."
For many of these men, the mission was never finished. They died when their planes crashed into the treacherous mountains in the Balkans of Yugoslavia. For the others, they were parachuting into the unknown.
Musgrove tells us, "On my way down, I saw a flock of sheep. When there's a flock of sheep, there's usually people around it. So I made up my mind that when I get down without being injured, that's where I was gonna head."
They landed in German-occupied Serbia, but got help from Serbian resistance fighters led by General Draza Mihailovich, U.S. and British ally.
"Those people had it pretty dog gone rough, and didn't have much to give. But they gave," Carl Walpusk of Moon Twp., Pennsylvania says.
Those Serbians kept the U.S. airmen safe for weeks until the U.S. government got word of the 50 downed soldiers in Yugoslavia. The United States sent in OSS agents on a daring rescue mission known as Operation Halyard.
Fremont's Jibby was one of those men who risked his life. "They asked if I would go as a radioman," he explains, "There wasn't even a heartbeat, and I said certainly."
When he got there, he found not 50 airmen but 250. And the number was growing. "We stayed. What started to be a ten-day mission... we were there for almost six months and brought 500 airmen in."
One-by-one C47s landed on a makeshift runway that the Americans and Serbs built by hand. "We were so pleased that these planes were coming in," Musgrove explains, "This is what we had worked so hard for... getting the airstrip built. It made us so happy."
But when they returned to America, the government said they couldn't share their incredible story. "We weren't supposed to tell them how we got out. I think they wanted to keep that a secret," Walpusk says.
These veterans feel the U.S. didn't give General Mihailovich credit for helping them. By the time the rescue happened, the U.S. and Britain had abandoned Mihailovich as an ally. They say false information was given that he was a traitor and collaborating with the Germans. The U.S. and Britain began siding with communist leader General Josip Tito instead.
Jibby explains, "I don't know why the state department will not admit they made a mistake, that they abandoned Mihailovich. He was voted Man of the Year in 1941 in Time Magazine and hailed as a hero. Then they turned around and called him a collaborator simply to justify favoring Tito."
When the war ended they say Tito put Mihailovich on trial, quickly found him guilty and executed him by firing squad.
The hundreds of rescued airmen were devastated that they couldn't testify at the trial.
"The only thing we ever wanted was to acknowledge that he did help us," Jibby says, "That the Serbian peopled helped us. That he was not a traitor. That we made a mistake in backing Tito. We backed the wrong man."
In 2005 Jibby, Musgrove and a few other airmen presented Mihailovich's daughter with the Legion of Merit. It was awarded posthumously to her father by President Harry Truman.
Jibby tells News 11's Jennifer Boresz, "I just want to say it's great being together with these guys again, and I wish the whole 500 were here today.
In case anyone wonders, I don't think the Masons are part of some grand conspiracy, but I do wonder if there was a connection between his being a Commie and a Mason. I don't know anything about Masons although I think all of my Mother's brothers were Masons and all of them were fine men.
After Wallace feuded publicly with Jesse Jones and other high officials, Roosevelt stripped him of all responsibilities and made it clear Wallace would not be on the ticket again. The Democratic Party, with concern being expressed privately about FDR being able to make it through another term, chose Harry S Truman as FDR’s running mate at the 1944 Democratic convention, after New Deal partisans failed to promote William O. Douglas.
Wallace had said that if he became President, he would appoint Laurence Duggan as Secretary of State and Harry Dexter White as Secretary of Treasury. Both Duggan and White were Communist sympathizers who are now known to have been Soviet spies. Their appointment could have been a major victory for Soviet intelligence.[3]-Wiki
ping for later..
65th Anniversary of “Black Sunday,” Operation Tidal Wave, coming up August 1st.
an article of interest to you
My aunt tells me that F.D.R. was a commie lover.
This is one story that US history books won’t tell. The communists in the OSS made sure that Mihailovich was made into a pro-Nazi terrorist rather than the anti-Nazi resistance leader that he was.
A late friend, David Martin (Canadian RAF, WW2 and Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, US Senate), wrote a book whose title was “Allied Betrayed”. It told the story of the betrayal of Mihailovich by the US and British, esp. the State Dept. and OSS.
Then US Air Force pilot George McGovern (later Sen. (D-SD), was forced to land his bomber at a Tito-Partisan controlled island in the Adriatic Sea. He wrote glowing reports on how popular Tito was and what a nationalist he was. The helped to promote Tito among the leftists in the State Department. Communists in the OSS in Yugoslavia did the rest, like some did in Vietnam with Ho Chi Minh.
Mihailovich fought the Germans while Tito often made territorial deals with them, had ceasefires, etc.
Glad that FR ran this story. More stories about history and how communism has perverted it need to be published for the readership.
This particular book "Flying Tiger" had a section about the Communist influence in China and that is where I got the quote about the bridges.
I actually got to meet Scott when he was in his 80's and he was in great shape and mentally sharp. I did not get to talk with him too long but did get in some questions about Joe Stilwell, and the State Department. Scott had mellowed a bit but still thought the country was being run by one-worlders, or at least they had a lot of influence.
Can't answer that, although I know some British and few Americans made it out with Tito's help after this, but in nowhere near these numbers.
There are more links to this story and Wiki has a pretty good description of what happened.
USAF Major Richard Felman was the leader of the rescued Americans trying to honor Mihailovich, but he died a few years ago. When the break up of Yugoslavia happened and the US took the other side, against the Serbs back in the 1990's, Felman gave anyone who would listen, an earful: An Open Letter To Our Troops In The Former Yugoslavia From Over 500 MlAs Saved By The Serbian People During World War II (Spring 1999)
The commies are still around in the state department, the democrat party, the environmental movement, ACLU etc.... those that view the world as a place to gain advantage by the work of others and to control better men by the use of coercion and force rather than competition are always going to be around.
neat story, maybe at least we can honor his memory for aiding our men at their time of need.
Welcome to real Serbs, Joe, not those figments of your ugly imagination!
Close, but no seegar.
The refinery complex at Ploesti was a group of five refienries ringing the town with pipelines and interconnections set up in such a way that any of the refineries could be bypassed in the event there was a problem, in order to keep the flow of petroleum products moving. It was essential to the Reich's war effort.
It was also defended by more antiaircraft batteries than Berlin.
The loss rate on the raids there was near 50%, and greater in some units. In order to reduce the time the antiaircraft gunners to acquire and fire at the planes, and to increase accuracy of bombing, they came in at low level. The bombs had timed fuses to keep from blowing the planes in the formation around the sky when they went off (they went in that low).
The raids were successful and hurt the Axis war effort severely.
My parents took a trip to the eastern and southern European countris in the 60s and my dad sent me a postcard with a picture of Yalta and all it said was is “this is where FDR sold out the USA”.
Apparently the censors held it for a long time because I didn’t get it until 3 months after they got home.
I suggest you rethink your assessment of the “Army Air Farce”. It was not a case of the Germans finding out due to poor radio discipline.
I’d also like to point out, “Of the 177 aircraft originally listed for Operation TIDAL WAVE only some 88 managed to make the full return to Libya and only 33 of these were fit for service the following day. Losses included 53 aircraft, 44 of which were to German and Romanian and air defenses. Additional aircraft would be forced ditch in the Mediterranean or divert to other bases such as the RAF airfield at Corfu. A few would land and be interned in neutral Turkey. Of the aircrews, 440 men were killed, and a further 220 were taken prisoner. Five airmen were awarded the Medal of Honor, three posthumously, the most ever awarded for a single mission by the USAAF.”
That isn’t a level of effort that deserves to be called a ‘farce’.
“The enemy was well aware that a major bombing raid had been mounted. Across the Mediterranean they had tracked the 177 Liberators. When the formation reached Corfu, spotters had announced their direction sending German forces throughout the region into a second-stage alert. As the bombers made landfall and continued north over Greece, Axis forces went to third-stage. In the Romanian capitol of Bucharest Major Ernst Kuchenbacker phoned his commander, Brigadier General Alfred Gerstenberg, at his weekend mountain retreat. “It is unclear what is developing,” he advised the man who commanded one of the most heavily defended cities in Europe, “but we think the objective must be Ploesti.” Immediately Gerstenberg headed back to the city to command its defense.
As many as 200 Axis fighters were in the vicinity of Ploesti, including four wings (52 planes) of ME-109s at Mizel, twenty miles east of the city. All pilots were put on alert for immediate takeoff, with spotters already in the air. More than 200 big anti-aircraft guns ringed the city limits to protect the refineries, including 88-mm flak guns and 37-mm and 20-mm rapid-fire cannon. Well-trained German gunners heard the sounds of the sirens and rushed to their stations, ready to rain death on the Americans they now believed were heading towards them. Across the city barrage balloons were raised on their explosive laden steel cables, to snare wings and destroy the bombers that might soon arrive.”
http://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part2/09_ploesti.html
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