13 million dropped into Adriatic

Last year, there was a gathering Joe’s who operated out of Harrington.

These were the guys who flew B-24’s into occupied europe to drop supplies and agents

A few of these guys came back to Harrington for a renunion.

One of the outings these chaps went on was to Sywell Aviation Museum.

On the Friday afternoon, one of the Joe’s was wandering around in the museum on his own. Several members of the museum were there and we struck up a conversation with him.

The conversation continued in the bar. Joe (they were all called Joe) related a story to us which was just incredible. It went something like this.

We went on this trip to drop crates to yugoslavian partisans. On the way we got shot up by a nightfighter which badly damaged the aircraft.

We were losing fuel and to be able to make it back to base we needed to lose the cargo which was very heavy.

We dumped the cargo and managed to get back to Harrington without further problems. After landing we went in for the customary de-brief.

This de-brief which should have lasted a short time actually went on for about 4 hours. They wanted to know exactly where the crates had been dropped.

It transpired that they had been on a mission to drop gold to the partisans who were fighting for money. They would not accept paper money, they wanted gold and we had dropped it into the adriatic ocean.

I cannot remember how much he said the gold was worth maybe texantomcat can remind me but i seem to recall a figure of £13 million. 😮

Joe went on to tell us that every dime of that gold was recovered!!! 😮 😮

how true this is i cannot say, but this was an old veteran telling us this story and i couldn’t really tell this eighty some odd year old chap he was a liar could i.

was it true, i don’t know…..i like to think it was true…..great movie plot

These old boys were great to chat too by the way. One of the agents even went up to one of the pilots to thank him for dropping him behind enemy lines….that is true because i was there and heard him.

One old boy crashed on his first trip out of Harrington…..he did not look happy, he looked very scared all the time….

Another very well spoken chap mentioned hearing a wellington in distress and crashing, it must have been somewhere over that away he said pointing into the distance.

He was right, a wellington did go down “over there” and the guysd from the museum dug it up a few years back……more details please texantomcat.

open for discussion guys.