Commie with western leaders....
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.
The real second front in WW-II in Europe was in the air.
Controlling the air above the battlefield became essential to victory, from a strategic and tactical standpoint during WWII.
The war started in Europe with coordinated armor/air/infantry attacks (the Blitzkreig), and ended with the second Atomic bomb. The era of the battleship was brought to a close by carrier operations. Even U-boats felt the pressure of aerial attacks which helped turn the hunters into the hunted.
While all efforts were essential to positioning the planes where they could do that work, infantry needed to take and occupy the ground, and naval power to supply it, air power became essential to those efforts.
Yep, I see TratorJoe is nowhere to be had on this thread, maybe the FSB hiding under his wheelchair finally caught up to him.
The ultimate tragedy of Draza Mihailovic cannot erase the memory of his heroic and often lonely struggle against the twin tyrannies that afflicted his people, Nazism and Communism. He knew that totalitarianism, whatever name it might take, is the death of freedom. He thus became a symbol of resistance to all those across the world who have had to fight a similar heroic and lonely struggle against totalitarianism. Mihailovich belonged to Yugoslavia; his spirit now belongs to all those who are willing to fight for freedom.
I wish that it could be said that this great hero was the last victim of confused and senseless policies of western governments in dealing with Communism. The fact is that others have suffered a fate similar to his by being embraced and then abandoned by western governments in the hope that such abandonment will purchase peace or security.
Thus, the fate of General Mihailovich is not simply of historic significance--it teaches us something today, as well. No western nation, including the United States, can hope to win its own battle for freedom and survival by sacrificing brave comrades to the politics of international expediency.
......... it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that both freedom and honor suffer when firm commitments become sacrificed to false hopes of appeasing aggressors by abandoning friends."
- Ronald Reagan
......... it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that both freedom and honor suffer when firm commitments become sacrificed to false hopes of appeasing aggressors by abandoning friends." - Ronald Reagan"
Couldn't have been more appropriate if it had been written last week! Thanks for that, mp!
BB
You gotta admire the heroism of the rescuers, who I'm sure were told all the crap about the Mihailovich group and went in anyway.
Josip Broz Tito, was also a mason.
This is his funeral. Year 1980, just watch western representatives on the funeral, including Margaret Tacher
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq8QcrJCqko
clip is from Kusturicas movie “Underground”
P.S. “Lilly Marlaine” was Titos favourite tune.
That is interesting, actually very interesting.
Commie with western leaders....
The Commie and the Pope Tito And Pope Paul 2nd April 1971: Yugoslav statesman and president Marshal Tito (left) and Pope Paul VI during Tito's audience with the Pope at the Vatican. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Well Tito certainly got around.
No mention on how the Chetniks stopped opposing the Axis and began collaborating with them as early as the winter of 1941. The rescue of the 500 airmen was little more than Chetnik doublegames which resulted in their strategic failure and elimination from the scene.
Correct. Most Serbian Chetniks never fought the Axis, especially in the Italian zone, where collaboration with the Axis began from day one. Mihailovic’s group was one of the last to begin collaboration with the Axis, but it collaborated nonetheless.
He was not Serbian. In fact he fought against the Serbs in WW1.
The Balkans would have been better off if someone had taken him out when he came to power. I'm sure many people know about Goli Otok.
I do......the largest population of prisoners on Goli Otok were Croatian nationalists. I know two of them personally.
jimmy looks like he’s going to jump out of his shorts!
lol “where’s the flood, Jimmah?”
Open questions for anyone interested:
Can anyone name any anti-Italian or anti-German actions undertaken by the Serbian Chetniks of Dalmatia, Lika, Hercegovina, or Western Bosnia?
Can anyone tell us who rescued the Serbian Chetniks of the Dinara Division from annihilation by Tito’s Partisans by evacuating them to safe territory?
Can anyone here tell us when open collaboration began between Serbian Chetniks and the Germans?
Can anyone tell us on which side the Serbian Chetniks appeared during the Battles of Neretva (Operation Weiss) and Sutjeska (Operation Schwartz)? (Axis side or anti-Axis side).
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