Operation Halyard is one of the least known - but most successful - air rescue operations of World War II. More than five hundred Allied airmen--most shot down while conducting bombing raids on the Ploesti oil refineries in Romania -hid in the hills of Yugoslavia. Chetnik forces, led by General Draza Mihailovich, and Serbian peasants hid the downed pilots, at considerable risk, while the men waited for a way out. It finally came in 1944.

The plan was was so dangerous that it was little short of a miracle that they didn't lose a single plane or airman. "Four OSS agents, going to ground for months in the Yugoslav countryside, would organize the dispersed, secreted airmen. Hardly robust after months of hiding, the men would then have to build an airstrip large enough for C-47s without any real tools, and without detection in the heart of Nazi-occupied territory. Last but not least, the C-47s would have to fly in and out over one of the war's most heavily fortified German-held regions--beginning with daring nighttime landings, but later in broad daylight, flanked by waves of fighters." It's an incredible story - check it out!