![]() ![]() “What the hell’s the Navy doing here?” asked one American airman as five more men emerged. The crowd burst into applause at the sight of Green in his full khaki Navy work uniform, with the single star and two stripes of a United States lieutenant (junior grade) on his shoulder. Their clandestine arrival was “a carnival,” according to one of the B-17 pilots. When James Holt Green (MBA 1935) dropped out of the forward crew hatch he was surrounded by a throng of people-Soviet officers, Slovak partisans, American airmen, and local residents who had rushed to the airfield to see what was happening. On this day, though, the B-17s instead touched down on the dirt runway at Tri Duby airfield, miles behind German lines. The sound had become familiar since the United States had entered the Second World War almost three years earlier it was inevitably followed by bombs. There was no disguising the drone of the American B-17 Flying Fortresses as they passed over Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, on the morning of September 17, 1944. But these attempts at subterfuge were of little use. An elaborate code of flares and signal fires was agreed upon, and the US Army Air Force’s 52d Fighter Group staged a midair diversion over the Adriatic Sea. The flight had been arranged by secret military cable. ![]()
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