Late in 1944, thirteen U.S. B-24 bomber crews bailed from their cabins
over the Yugoslavian wilderness. Bloodied and disoriented after a
harrowing strike against the Third Reich, the pilots took refugee with
the Partisan underground. But the Americans were far from safety.
Holed up in a village barely able to feed its citizens, encircled by
Nazis, and left abandoned after a team of British secret agents failed
to secure their escape, the airmen were left with little choice. It was
either flee or be killed.
In The Lost Airmen, Charles Stanely Jr. unveils the shocking true
story of his father, Charles Stanely-and the eighteen brave soldiers he
journeyed with for the first time. Drawing on over twenty years of
research, dozens of interviews, and previously unpublished letters,
diaries, and memoirs written by the airmen, Stanley recounts the deadly
journey across the blizzard-swept Dinaric Alps during the worst winter
of the Twentieth Century-and the heroic men who fought impossible odds
to keep their brothers in arms alive.