Operation Gunn_Reunion

The Repatriation of Allied POWs from Rumania

By: Gary Goebel

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

During World War II in the late summer of 1944, the country of Romania changed sides. Romania went from active wartime participation with Germany on the Axis side, to active participation on the part of the Allied side against the Germans. The change of sides occurred on August 23, when Romania's King Michael summoned the Romanian head of government to the royal palace and asked him to break with the Germans and negotiate surrender terms with the Allies. Shortly thereafter, Michael took Romania out of the war and issued an ultimatum that the German forces leave the country within 48 hours. The German commander after consulting with Hitler responded by bombing the royal palace, government offices, American POW locations and other targets in Bucharest. The Allied POWs were informed of King Michael's edict, and amid this military and political chaos the question of what was the best course of action for the POWs was discussed at great length by the prisoners themselves. Hanging in the balance were the lives of 1200 Allied airmen who had crashed or bailed out over Romania and were now trapped in the midst of a war hundreds of miles from friendly territory. The Senior American Officer (SAO), Lt. Col. James Gunn came up with a plan to pass the location of the German forces to 15th Air Force for bombing attacks and to arrange for the evacuation of the POWS by being flown to Italy aboard a Romanian Air Force aircraft. His eventual arrival at his home base in Italy while lying prone and unable to move in the radio bay of a Bf-109 fighter flown by the leading Romanian Ace triggered one of history's great and most novel mass evacuations. How this all occurred, the fascinating individuals involved on both sides of the conflict, and the ramifications of it all are the subject of this book. The original description of this event was written by Robert J. Goebel. It has been expanded to include the situation in Romania prior to the change of sides, and biographies of the principle characters both before and after the evacuations.