Ultimatum

At Bled, a Yugoslav alpine resort, two American UNRRA workers on holiday watched a U.S. transport plane come in from, the north. Two smaller Yugoslav planes darted about it. Suddenly the transport began to smoke, rolled over on its side, plunged into a wooded hillside. The two Americans started for the scene of the crash. They scrambled up granite slopes past a Yugoslav officer who paid no attention to them. But when they started down the mountain after a futile search for the wreck, the Yugoslavs had set up a machine gun at a roadblock, carefully checked their identification.

Notoriously Clear. The UNRRA workers had just witnessed the beginning of the most spectacular postwar diplomatic crisis. For the second time in a fortnight Tito's fighters had shot down an unarmed U.S. transport plane which had strayed over the forbidden corner of Yugoslavia between Austria and Italy--a region of high mountains and frequently lowering skies. Said the two U.S. eyewitnesses: "It was completely overcast; there wasn't a break in the clouds." Said Marshal Tito: "It was notorious " . . that the day was absolutely clear and of perfect visibility."

Whatever the weather, four (probably five) Americans* were killed in the crash. On the trees around the wreck hung blobs of flesh. Last week the flyers' shattered bodies lay in a common grave in the mountain village of Koprivnik.

The first attack (Aug. 9), witnessed by Marshal Tito while fishing near Bled, had cost no lives. The one casualty: a Turkish captain passenger in the U.S. plane, who was wounded by fire from the Yugoslav fighters. The nine crew members (including Captain William Crombie, veteran of 23 supply-drop missions to Tito's forces during the war) and passengers were taken to Yugoslav officers' quarters in Ljubljana. There they were given "everything we asked for except our freedom," questioned repeatedly "on all subjects."

Bruised Fingers. When the U.S. first demanded an explanation, Tito said that U.S. planes had repeatedly violated Yugoslav sovereignty. Then the U.S. sent its sternest postwar note (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

Tito ordered his planes "not to fire on foreign planes, civil or military," released the interned crew and passengers before the U.S. demand was formally delivered, said he considered the U.S. ultimatum no longer "applicable." He promised to rebury the Americans, with highest military honors, in Belgrade's American Military Cemetery (among the graves of some 80 other American airmen who helped Tito during the war), but Secretary of State Byrnes ordered their reburial in the U.S.

At week's end the State Department announced that "messages from Ambassador [Richard C] Patterson indicate that the demands [of the U.S.] have been complied with," but reserved final action until Tito had fully "made right the wrong." In Belgrade, press and radio continued to charge repeated violations of Yugoslavia's sovereign air, accused the U.S. of a "campaign of calumny." This, week the U.S. transport service resumed its Vienna-Udine runs--now in flying fortresses with machine guns ready for action.

Potent Suggestion. The Yugoslav attacks on unarmed U.S. transports did not by themselves set the world to speculating on early war. The real focal point of U.S.Yugoslav trouble was Trieste, where some 20 Yugoslav divisions are massed on their side of a troubled boundary, threatening to overwhelm the city. On his own side of the border, Major General Bryant E. Moore last week paraded his 88th Division (who now call Trieste their Bataan) in full battle array. The suggestion was potent though none knew better than responsible Americans that the 88th was the only combat-ready U.S. division in Europe. Behind Tito's demand for the city stood Russia, eager to see how far the U.S. would go to stop Communist expansion. Washington's violent reaction to Yugoslav attacks had cleared the air. Moscow now knew that a coup to seize Trieste could well mean war with the U.S.

* Captains H. F. Schreiber, R. H. Grays, B. H. Freestone; Corporals M. Conco, C. J. Lower.

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