Word: titos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Notoriously Clear. The UNRRA workers had just witnessed the beginning of the most spectacular postwar diplomatic crisis. For the second time in a fortnight Tito's fighters had shot down an unarmed U.S. transport plane which had strayed over the forbidden corner of Yugoslavia between Austria and Italy-a region of high mountains and frequently lowering skies. Said the two U.S. eyewitnesses: "It was completely overcast; there wasn't a break in the clouds." Said Marshal Tito: "It was notorious " . . that the day was absolutely clear and of perfect visibility...
...first attack (Aug. 9), witnessed by Marshal Tito while fishing near Bled, had cost no lives. The one casualty: a Turkish captain passenger in the U.S. plane, who was wounded by fire from the Yugoslav fighters. The nine crew members (including Captain William Crombie, veteran of 23 supply-drop missions to Tito's forces during the war) and passengers were taken to Yugoslav officers' quarters in Ljubljana. There they were given "everything we asked for except our freedom," questioned repeatedly "on all subjects...
Bruised Fingers. When the U.S. first demanded an explanation, Tito said that U.S. planes had repeatedly violated Yugoslav sovereignty. Then the U.S. sent its sternest postwar note (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS...
...Tito ordered his planes "not to fire on foreign planes, civil or military," released the interned crew and passengers before the U.S. demand was formally delivered, said he considered the U.S. ultimatum no longer "applicable." He promised to rebury the Americans, with highest military honors, in Belgrade's American Military Cemetery (among the graves of some 80 other American airmen who helped Tito during the war), but Secretary of State Byrnes ordered their reburial...
...week's end the State Department announced that "messages from Ambassador [Richard C] Patterson indicate that the demands [of the U.S.] have been complied with," but reserved final action until Tito had fully "made right the wrong." In Belgrade, press and radio continued to charge repeated violations of Yugoslavia's sovereign air, accused the U.S. of a "campaign of calumny." This, week the U.S. transport service resumed its Vienna-Udine runs-now in flying fortresses with machine guns ready for action...