Good to Go

Just five hours after radio contact was first made with Basher 52—O’Grady’s call sign—the Air Force captain was safely on board the USS Kearsarge. The downed F-16 fighter pilot’s rescue from a Bosnian mountainside by Col. Martin Berndt’s 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit electrified the nation in June 1995 and renewed many Americans’ faith in the military. To get the inside account, Mary Pat Kelly traveled to U.S. ships and bases and UN posts in Croatia and Bosnia where participants were stationed to conduct more than one hundred interviews. Adm. Leighton W. Smith Jr., commander in chief of U.S. naval forces in Europe and head of NATO forces in the Southern European theater, provides a day-to-day commentary on the efforts to find Captain O’Grady. This edition contains an interview with Brig. Gen. Selmo Cikotíc, former Minister of Defense of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who discusses the dangerous conditions on the ground during the rescue and the impact the success of the mission had on NATO expansion in the area.