Mission Lindsay

Mission Lindsay was a World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) military expedition to Yugoslav Partisans in Slovenia, sent in May 1944. The group was led by Major Franklin Lindsay and included Lieutenant Gordon Bush, Lieutenant Schraeder - the weather officer, and Corporal James Fisher - the radio operator. It was a part of the wider, Maclean Mission, which arrived in September 1943. The mission left Brindisi airfield in a RAF Halifax bomber and together with cargo of guns, explosives, radios and medical supplies parachuted in Dolenjska, near the village of Semič on 14 May 1944.^[1] The fifth member, Corporal Edward Welles, was left behind in Italy in order to assemble the additional equipment that the group would ask for, once they had arrived to Slovenia. Eventually, he joined them in mid-August.^[2]

The primary purpose of the mission was to disrupt railway transport between Northern Italy, Austria (still part of the Third Reich), Hungary and the Balkans. Reducing the movement of troops, weapons, fuel and raw materials (such as oil, bauxite, copper, zinc, lead and chrome) would damage German military ambitions and its war industry. They were to execute this via sabotage and demolition - blowing-up railroads, bridges and viaducts throughout their assigned area.^[3]