Operation Halyard

Operation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was an Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. Between 417 and 512 Allied airmen who had been downed over Nazi Germany-occupied Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were rescued by Chetniks and airlifted out by the United States Fifteenth Air Force. Most of the rescued airmen had been shot down during bombing runs on oil-fields in Romania. After the successful Allied invasion of Sicily, Italy capitulated in the autumn of 1943, the Allies occupied the whole of southern Italy. In late 1943, the 15th Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces, under the command of General Nathan Twining, was transferred from Tunisia to an airfield near Foggia. This airfield...