With the arrival in the middle of 1943 of the British military mission in their midst, the Slovenian partisans have received the obvious recognition as an Allied military force. The cooperation of the Slovenian National Liberation Army with the Allies has started to grow particularly since the Allies started to supply the Slovenian partisans with arms and ammunition, medicaments and food supplies, clothing. These supplies were dropped from the air to specially selected grounds. In the middle of 1944 the Slovenian partisans have built an improvised airport at Nadlesk in Lož valley and later also the second airport in liberated territory of Bela Krajina, where the allied airplanes were bringing in the aid supplies, taking back to allied bases in Italy the heavy wounded, mothers with small children evacuated from burned villages and also the rescued allied airmen. Besides fighting the common enemy, the partisans have helped the Allies with important intelligence information, with attacking and

On the 50th anniversary of the victorious end of W.W. II the exhibition on US airmen rescuing in Slovenia during World War II was opened in the spring of 1995 in the Pentagon. The exhibition was prepared by the Museum of Modern History, Ljubljana and the Union of Associations of War Veterans and Victims of Nazi-fascism in Slovenia. The ministers of defence of both countries Jelko Kacin and William Perry opened the exhibition and on that occasion signed an agreement of military co-operation between the Republic of Slovenia and USA.

destroying communications thus disrupting Nazi supplies to the Italian front and particularly by rescuing the Allied airmen. In 1944 and in 1945 the Allied Air Force squadrons were flying daily across the Slovenian territory on bombing missions in the Third Reich. 33 flying fortresses crashed on the Slovenian territory and Slovenian partisans have, with the help of the civil population, rescued 303 American and 30 British airmen and 454 British and 121 French war prisoners, as well as several thousand war prisoners from the Soviet Union.

The permanent exhibition at the Aerospace museum in Rantoul, Illinois, presents sincere and heroic contribution of the Slovenian people to the common struggle of the Allies in the WW II and also that some of these unique rescue stories happened in the darkest hour of European history resulted in strong human bonds of friendship among the persons directly involved, who continue to keep in touch.