The May 28th episode along with a few others have talked about the Allies air dropping supplies and officers for Joseph Tito’s partisan forces, was just wondering about logistics of how this happened? As the partisan forces obviously are quite behind the line but it still sounds like that those air drops happen without issues despite needing to go over a significant amount of occupied territory. Did the Luftwaffe and Italian Air Force not have any planes stationed nearby to block the supply drops?
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Well, the drops occurred in the dark, with fires (or battery operated lights) lit to signal aircraft, which flew low to avoid radars. The SOE had people in Yugoslavia (with all the major groups) with radios, to arrange the drops. By January 1944, Tito’s partisans were selected as the people to be supported, but until then, things were dropped to various groups.
Also, Yugoslavian partisans held large areas that the Germans and Italians simply didn’t go into; plenty of room to drop things.
Sorry, forgot to reply.
Ah that makes sense, I was more kinda wondering about how the supply planes got around the Axis air defences / air groups stationed in the area? As from what’s been said it sounds like all these supply drops happened unopposed.
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