brezna rescue

This is the dramatic story in pictures and words of how the British-led Balkan Air Force (BAF) rescued over 1,000 Yugoslav freedom fighters, who were surrounded by and enemy force of about 10,000, from certain death in August 1944.

The Dakota airlift from a tiny rough-made grass strip in Donja Brezna in northern Montenegro to Bari in southern Italy on August 22 1944 was possibly the largest, most dramatic and dangerous air rescue operation made by the Allies in the Balkans during the Second World War. The touch-and-go landings by an estimated 36 Dakotas, guarded by Spitfire and Mustang fighters flying high above the tiny village in the mountains of the Piva region, were called in to snatch hundreds of severely wounded Yugoslav fighters from the jaws of death. The airstrip was at least 30% smaller than the textbook size recommended for landing Dakotas. The event has largely been forgotten in Montenegro, which in the war lay at the fulcrum of the battle between Yugoslav resistance fighters, with the support of British and American special forces, and the occupying might of the German army. Until recently it had been mostly forgotten in Britain too, but with the recent release of British Special Operations Excecutive (SOE) secret files and the work of the British historian Kenneth Morrison, the full story is now beginning to emerge. The events in and around Brezna make up an epic tale of courage and sacrifice that seems destined to enter legend as one of the most formidable joint actions of British and Allied pilots of the Balkan Air Force (BAF) and Yugoslav partisans in the Balkan theatre during the war. Holed up in and around the mountain village of Donja Brezna were over 1,000 badly injured guerrillas, bravely carried there by the fleeing Yugoslav army. Many of the wounded were close to starving and had either been shot or were suffering from malaria, sepsis or typhus. Without rescue no-one doubted they would die as the village was effectively surrounded by over 10,000 soldiers from the crack German Prinz Eugen division, which had followed the partisans after mounting a major offensive against them in the Durmitor mountain region.

In the days leading up to the rescue as many as 300 partisans may have sacrificed themselves in brutal hand-to-hand fighting just north of the small mountain village of Donja Brezna. They were battling to protect local women, boys and old men clearing the village fields of trees and stones to build an airstrip for what all prayed would be a successful last-minute rescue mission. Guarding the strip were the Montenegrin 3rd division and the Lička 6th division.

For the wounded it was their last chance, for the German offensive was just hours away and the 2-6 partisans needed to carry every stretcher over long distances through wild terrain would soon have to abandon them if the embattled partisan army was to make its escape to fight another day.

The first good news came when Allied Spitfire and Mustang pilots of the Balkan Airforce (BAF) – possibly American, Yugoslav and Russian as well as British - started to shoot up the German artillery, relieving the pressure on both the partisans and those building the airstrip.

Within 48 hours an emergency airfield, about 830 metres long and 75 metres wide, was ready.

At last, on August 22 1944 after a tense day of delay, in an audacious and well-co-ordinated operation, as many as 36 Douglas Dakota DC-3s flew low along the Komarnica river canyon from the south-east, banking sharply left to land on the grassy strip in waves of six an hour, each picking up around 35 wounded.

Over 900, possibly more than 1,000 injured partisans and several Allied pilots who had been shot down over Yugoslavia earlier in the year, were rescued and flown on to the Allied base in Bari, southern Italy for treatment. Thanks to the Spitfires and Mustangs not one Dakota was shot down.

Less than an hour after the last plane had left Donja Brezna, Prinz Eugen military scouts captured the village and the landing strip. But the village was almost empty and enemy forces did not even bother to occupy it permanently.