Project Zebra

<p>Top-Secret Project Zebra was/is the only time in history that Soviet airmen were trained in America by Americans. Their mission: to fly a state-of-the-art amphibious warplane produced in Philadelphia. Incredibly 185 of these huge heavily-armed PBN-Nomad painted with bright Red Army stars were then ferried to the sleepy patriotic town of Elizabeth City North Carolina without a single media leak.</p><p>There 11 hand-picked Naval officers befriended and trained 300+ Soviet airmen over a period of 18 months before the planes were dispatched to the Atlantic and Pacific theaters where they destroyed numerous Nazi U-Boats and Japanese submarines without losing a single plane.</p><p>Project Zebra was more than a military mission. It became a historic human event.  The Soviet and American teams shared experiences that created bonds of trust and mutual respect despite their language barriers and cultural differences — something that might serve us well to model during these uncertain Russian-American moments. Project Zebra was declassified on December 31 2012 and remains one of WWII’s last never-been-told stories. Until now!</p>