Basic Overview
Scope: Minor
Nature: Air, Evacuation/retirement
Status: Implemented
Theater
- Romania
Nations Involved
- Romania
- USA
Operation Details
'Reunion' was a US operation to recover, via airfields in the Bucharest area, all USAAF personnel incarcerated in Romania following that country’s surrender and change of side (31 August 1944).
,A total of 36 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft evacuated more than 700 of the 1,100 US airmen in Romania from Bucharest to Bari in south-eastern Ital;y as Romania fell to the Soviets. The undertaking was the brainchild of Romanian airmen and civilians, who concentrated the US prisoners of war at a Romanian-controlled air base while contacting the headquarters of the US 15th Army Air Force by flying a high-ranking prisoner to Italy in a modified Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter of the Romanian air force. All of those involved in the undertaking realised that the entire operation had to remain a tightly held secret from both the Germans and the Soviets.
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