PART I — MISIDENTIFICATION

Dawn broke slowly over Yugoslavia on November 7, 1944, climbing over the jagged mountain ridges like a yellow blade cutting through the gray. Cold mist clung to the valleys, drifting over villages still scarred by years of occupation and conflict. The war had come here early and stayed long, leaving behind a landscape where every burned-out barn and cratered field whispered of battles fought and lost.

High above that scarred terrain, twelve P-38 Lightnings carved their way through the morning sky.

The twin-boom fighters flew in tight formation, sunlight glinting off their silver skins. Their Allison engines droned in a deep metallic harmony, a sound that every German unit in the Balkans had come to fear. For months, American fighters had raided supply lines, strafed convoys, and hunted trains like metal hawks. Today was no different—or so it seemed.

At the tip of the formation flew Colonel Clarence Theodore Edwinson, a man known by his squadron for three things: his steady nerves, his impeccable aim, and the hard edge in his voice whenever he spoke about “Jerry.” He leaned forward in his cockpit, eyes narrowed behind the glare of the rising sun.

Then he saw it.

A plume of white vapor climbing skyward from the forested hills below.

He blinked once.

A locomotive.

A German steam train chugging along the valley floor, hauling who-knew-what—troops, ammunition, fuel, or maybe just equipment that would soon be turned into something deadly. Whatever it carried, it didn’t matter. A train in Axis-held territory was always a target.

And a damn fine one.

Edwinson keyed his radio.
“Blue One to all flights—look down at your ten o’clock.”

A chorus of voices crackled back.
“Copy, Colonel.”
“Visual on steam.”
“Oh, baby, that’s a fat one.”

A grin spread across Edwinson’s face.

“Let’s go get it, boys.”

He rolled his Lightning over and kicked the nose down. The other eleven P-38s followed instantly, the entire formation diving like a wedge of daggers plunging toward the earth. Gravity pressed the colonel back into his seat as the altimeter wound down. The airframe vibrated, engines howling.

Below, the German engineer saw the fighters approaching.

He barely had time to scream.

The Lightnings opened up at 600 yards. .50-caliber rounds slashed into the locomotive’s boiler, punching jagged holes into the pressurized steel. White steam erupted outward in violent jets, covering the length of the train like a miniature blizzard. As the fighters roared overhead, the shower of bullets ripped into the train cars, shattering windows, shredding wooden planks, tearing through anything unlucky enough to be inside.

Edwinson pulled up sharply, the G-forces making his ribs ache. He rose into the sky again, letting out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

Then all hell broke loose.

Black bursts of German flak suddenly peppered the sky. The first explosion erupted just behind Blue Three. The second detonated at the center of the formation, scattering shrapnel like a metallic rainstorm. A third burst sent a cloud of razor-sharp fragments slashing across Edwinson’s left boom.

The colonel shouted into his radio.
“Everyone—get low! Break, break!”

The P-38s dove for the treetops, but they weren’t fast enough. A fireball erupted at the trailing end of the formation—one of the Lightnings had taken a direct hit. Flames chewed through its left engine. Smoke poured out in thick gray plumes.

The pilot’s panicked voice crackled over the radio:
“I’m hit! I’m hit! I’m going down!”

Edwinson twisted in his seat, eyes scanning the sky behind him.

There—a trailing plume of flame spiraling downward.

“Does anyone see a chute?” he barked.

His men searched desperately, voices tight.

“Negative, Colonel.”
“No chute, sir.”
“Oh God…”

Silence swallowed the radio waves.

Then the Lightning struck a hillside and exploded in a rolling fireball.

A piece of Edwinson’s heart caved in.

He swallowed hard. Fury tightened like a fist in his chest.

“Copy,” he said through gritted teeth.

Rage powered his thoughts more than oxygen now. One of his men—one of his boys—lay dead because the Germans had gotten lucky with a flak burst.

And he intended to pay the bastards back.

---

The Lightnings roared over the Serbian mountains at treetop height, the terrain whipping by beneath them in a green blur. Edwinson’s eyes scanned ahead, searching for their primary target. A valley opened before them, abrupt and wide, as if the hand of God had scooped a bowl out of the mountains.

Inside it—exactly where intelligence had said—it lay.

A long airfield.
Rows of buildings.
A line of trucks and armored vehicles winding north toward Belgrade.

Edwinson felt a pressure in his chest. This was it.
A chance for revenge.
A chance to make someone pay for the flaming wreck that still burned behind them.

“There they are,” he said, voice shaking with righteous anger.
“There are those sons of bitches.”

He keyed his radio.
“Blue Flight, hit that German convoy. Red and Yellow—take the airfield!”

The reply came instantly:
“Yes, sir!”

The Lightnings tore across the valley like unleashed hounds, splitting into attack elements—three toward the convoy, the rest toward the airstrip.

Down below, marching northward, was a column of vehicles draped in red Soviet flags.

Not German.
Not Axis.
Not the enemy.

The Red Army, celebrating the anniversary of the October Revolution.

Soldiers in the truck beds sang loudly, arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Yugoslav partisans marched beside them. Red banners fluttered proudly behind motorcycles. It was a parade more than a deployment.

The sound of engines overhead made them look up.

Soviet soldiers cheered.

American P-38s—friendly aircraft—were approaching.

They waved, cheered, raised their caps.

Then they saw the first three Lightnings break formation.

And dive straight at them.

One Soviet sergeant’s smile died instantly.
His eyes widened.

“No…” he whispered.
“No, no—they’re about to strafe us!”

He grabbed a flag and waved it over his head as violently as he could. Around him, soldiers did the same—scrambling, shouting, desperately trying to signal the fighters.

It was too late.

The P-38s were locked in.
Triggers were pulled.

And death rained from the sky.

The first burst hit the lead truck, tearing its hood apart in a shower of sparks. The driver was thrown against the windshield by the force of the impact. Soldiers jumped from the bed screaming as machine-gun rounds ripped through their ranks.

The Soviets scattered in panic, but there was nowhere to go. Trucks exploded. Men were thrown across the road. The column dissolved into chaos.

And then the bombs fell.

Two P-38s released their ordnance in perfect synchronized runs. Explosions tore through the convoy—shattering vehicles, flipping trucks, igniting fuel stores into roaring infernos. Soviet soldiers who had moments earlier been singing now cried for help, crawled through smoke, or lay still on the burning earth.

The first American attack was over in seconds.

But the damage was eternal.

---

Back at the airfield, celebrations turned to terror as lookouts spotted a wave of aircraft approaching at attack altitude.

“Man the guns!” an officer shouted in Russian.

Sirens wailed.
Soldiers sprinted for anti-aircraft emplacements.
Yak fighters sat parked in neat rows, unaware of the storm descending upon them.

The Lightnings dove in.
To them, it was a Luftwaffe base.
To the Soviets, it was the unthinkable.

Tracer fire from Soviet guns arced upward, slicing into the formation. A P-38 on Edwinson’s left wing took several bursts to its underside but kept going, diving toward the parked aircraft.

“Hit the fighters!” Edwinson ordered. “Wipe the field!”

Twin .50-calibers chattered. Twenty-millimeter shells blasted craters in the runway. Soviet mechanics sprinted between aircraft, some diving under parked Yaks, others firing rifles hopelessly into the air.

Explosions blossomed across the field.

And above it all, the Lightnings screamed past, completing their run.

Then Edwinson heard a voice on the radio—panicked, strained:

“She’s not coming up!”

Second Lieutenant Eldon Coulson.

His P-38 flew low—far too low.
The Lightning’s engines roared, but the plane refused to climb.

“Pull up, Coulson! Pull up!”

“I’m trying—she’s not—!”

A new wall of Soviet fire erupted toward him. Dozens of guns turned inward, tracking the wounded Lightning. Tracers chewed through its wings. The rudder shredded. Coulson yanked on the yoke with every ounce of muscle he had left.

The P-38 rolled.
Dipped.
Lost lift.

It slammed into the ground a kilometer from the airfield.

The explosion lit the sky.

Edwinson screamed into the mic:
“Coulson! Coulson, respond!”

Nothing.

Only static.

Then a sickening realization crawled through his spine.

Whatever these planes were—whoever they were—they were no longer just “Germans” to kill.

They had taken his second man today.

And Clarence Edwinson was not a man who forgave easily.

He leveled his wings, turned hard into the sky, and roared:

“Build some altitude—we’re going in again!”

His squadron followed.

And as they banked into their next attack, none of them yet knew—

They had just started the first full-scale air battle between American and Soviet fighters in history.

PART II — FIRE OVER FRIENDLY LINES

The twelve surviving P-38s climbed hard, engines screaming as they clawed upward through the acrid column of smoke rising from the ruined convoy. The air shimmered with heat, dust, and the ghostly echoes of the bombs they had dropped. Beneath them, the burning Soviet trucks still smoldered—wrecks scattered like broken toys along the serpentine road.

Edwinson didn’t look down again.

He couldn’t.

He was too busy trying to keep his squadron alive—and too consumed by the white-hot fury that had been building since the moment that flak gun tore their first man from the sky. He’d already lost two pilots. Two good men. And as far as he knew, the enemy had paid for only a fraction of that debt.

In his headset, the chatter was growing tense.

“Colonel, I count at least a dozen fighters warming up on that strip!”
“No way they let us get another clean pass.”
“We hit them hard, sir. Maybe it’s time to RTB?”

Edwinson’s jaw flexed.

“Negative. We finish the job.”
A pause.
“That’s an order.”

He banked back toward the Soviet airfield—still believing it was German-run—still believing those Yaks were Messerschmitts or Focke-Wulfs about to take off and fill the sky with danger.

“Red Flight, with me. Yellow, spread high. Blue, stay low and watch for flak.”

The sky was suddenly alive with movement.

Below them, Soviet gunners swarmed over their anti-aircraft guns again, reloading ammunition belts and swinging barrels skyward. Officers ran between sandbagged positions, shouting orders. Pilots sprinted for their fighters.

The anniversary celebration had turned to hell in seconds, and no one knew why.

---

At the far end of the airfield, two Yak-9s skidded into position on the runway. Their pilots—Lieutenant Ivan Krivonogikh and Junior Lieutenant Alexei Shipulya—had jumped into their cockpits the moment the sirens wailed. They’d seen the burning convoy from the airfield perimeter. They’d heard the bombs. They’d watched the first wave of Lightnings rake their runway with gunfire.

They had no idea who the hell they were fighting.

But they weren’t going to sit and wait.

Krivonogikh slammed his canopy shut and shoved the throttle forward. His Yak shot down the runway like a kicked wasp. Shipulya followed three seconds behind, wheels bouncing once before lifting into the smoky morning air.

Ahead of them, the Lightnings were already circling for their second strike. They gleamed in the sunlight—sleek, twin-boomed shapes nothing like the Luftwaffe’s Fw 189 reconnaissance planes.

Krivonogikh’s brow furrowed.

Those are American.

He squinted to be sure.

There was no mistaking the silhouette.

“No way… No way… What are they doing?” he muttered.

But he didn’t have time to think. The Lightnings were turning. Hard.

Straight at them.

“Shipulya! Faster!” he barked into his throat mic.

“I see them! They’re coming right for us!”

The two Yak-9s skimmed the treetops, engines crying out as they clawed for altitude. Krivonogikh could practically feel the heat of incoming American gunfire behind him. He rolled right, diving low into a narrow clearing between forests.

The first American shots ripped over his canopy like hammers hitting sheet metal. Shipulya veered left, narrowly avoiding a hail of .50-caliber rounds that chewed through a row of birches.

“We can’t outrun them!” Shipulya shouted.

“Then we fight!”

---

High above, Edwinson watched his men turning back toward the airfield, each Lightning tightening formation into a defensive spread.

This wasn’t supposed to be a dogfight. His men were raiders—hit-and-run specialists. P-38s were powerful aircraft, fast and heavily armed, but not optimized for low-altitude turning fights. Not against single-engine fighters. Not against enemies who knew the terrain better.

Edwinson gritted his teeth.

They’d expected Germans.
They’d gotten something else.

But his mind—still locked in the fog of misidentification—refused to piece the truth together.

To him, everything down there still looked German.

And he’d already lost two men.

“This is Blue Leader,” he radioed. “Get those fighters before they gain altitude.”

His men didn’t question. The grief from losing comrades made obedience sharp and immediate. The Lightnings dove again—straight at the runway where the rest of the Soviet flight was scrambling.

The timing could not have been worse.

Seven Yak-9s were rolling down the runway as the Lightnings descended. The Soviet pilots were barely airborne—wheels still retracting, engines still straining—when the first streams of American fire tore across the airfield.

One Yak disintegrated instantly, shattered by dozens of .50-caliber rounds. Two more were hit, limping into the air trailing smoke. Another swerved, barely avoiding a catastrophic collision with a taxiing fighter.

The scene resembled a nightmare ballet—smoke, fire, and spiraling aircraft swirling above one of the last frontiers of World War II.

---

Meanwhile, Krivonogikh and Shipulya had managed to escape the first deadly pass. Now, with altitude and surprise on their side, they turned in wide arcs and prepared to re-enter the fight.

“Shipulya, attack! I’ll cover you!”

“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant!”

Shipulya angled his Yak downward in a screaming dive, sights lined up on a lone P-38 climbing away from the main furball. He squeezed the trigger. The Yak’s 20mm cannon boomed, joined by the chattering .50-caliber machine gun mounted above it. His rounds ripped through the right boom of the Lightning—but the American plane kept flying.

“Damn it!” Shipulya hissed, pulling out of the dive.

But the American wasn’t done.

He radioed his squadron.
“Blue Four, I need support!”

Two Lightnings immediately broke their orbit and swooped in to protect their comrade.

They came in fast. Very fast.

Krivonogikh saw the danger unfolding below.

“Shipulya! Break right!” he yelled.

Shipulya heard the warning and threw his Yak into a brutal right turn. Tracer fire streaked past his canopy so close he felt the heat of it through the glass.

“I can’t get rid of him!” Shipulya shouted.

“Hold on, I’m coming!”

Krivonogikh rolled into a steep descent, his heart hammering against his ribs. The sky filled with streaking lines of fire as American rounds whizzed past him from multiple angles.

The moment he came out of the dive, he saw it:
One P-38 was still glued to Shipulya’s tail.

Krivonogikh squeezed the trigger.

His burst cut across the sky in a long, angry line.

He missed.

Just barely.

But the American broke off anyway, peeling away like a scarred bird.

Krivonogikh didn’t hesitate.
He rolled left, aligned behind the second Lightning, and fired again.

This time, his aim was perfect.

His 20mm shells slammed into the Lightning’s twin booms. Fire erupted instantly. The American pilot clawed at his canopy and managed to bail out at the last moment, his parachute blooming behind him like a pale flower against the dark smoke.

The burning P-38 spiraled downward and smashed into the ground eight kilometers north of the field.

“Thank you, Lieutenant!” Shipulya gasped.

“You’re welcome. But stay sharp—we’re not out of this.”

---

The air battle intensified.

Soviet fighters poured into the sky, turning the once-calm Yugoslav morning into a chaotic hornet’s nest. Lightnings streaked through the melee, firing in frantic bursts. Yaks twisted and climbed, trying to stay on the Americans’ six while dodging ground fire below.

But the chaos was too much.

Somewhere beneath the dogfight, a Soviet anti-aircraft crew—rattled, afraid, and half panicked—swung their guns upward at the wrong silhouette.

Krivonogikh never saw it coming.

Russian shells slammed into his Yak’s fuselage, detonating with a flash so bright it stunned half the men who saw it. The fighter disintegrated in midair, shards of metal tumbling from the sky like burning leaves.

Shipulya saw the explosion and gasped.
“Krivonogikh! Lieutenant—come in! Do you hear me?!”

Only static.

He swallowed hard.

Then rage washed over him.

He dove back into the fight.

He never saw the bright silver shape rising beneath him.

A P-38 burst upward in a steep climb, stalled at the apex, then rolled just enough to bring its nose onto Shipulya’s Yak.

The Lightning fired.

Shipulya’s plane was ripped apart. Flames engulfed the cockpit. The Yak slammed into the earth five hundred meters north of the airfield.

Two Soviet aces gone within seconds.

And the battle raged on.

---

Soviet command was desperate. Radios crackled between outposts—
“All units, engage!”
“Scramble everything!”
“We need reinforcements now!”

Help arrived in the form of a fresh flight of Yak-3s led by Captain Aleksandr Koldunov, one of the most respected pilots in the region. His squadron tore through the sky toward the battle, their engines howling.

But as he approached, he froze.

Those weren’t Fw 189s.
They weren’t German at all.

The silver twin-boom shape was unmistakable.

“Those are Americans,” Koldunov whispered.
“What the hell…?”

He broke formation, flying his Yak straight toward the nearest P-38. He wagged his wings. He shouted over the radio.

“We are allies! Cease fire! Americans—what are you doing?!”

The P-38 swept past him.

Then slowed.
Turned.
Dropped behind him.

Its guns glinted.

“Damn it!” Koldunov snapped.
He dove hard, tracers screaming past his canopy.

He tried again—cutting across the furball, waving his wings like a madman.

This time he flew right beside Colonel Edwinson.

Edwinson froze.

His eyes fixed on the Yak’s bright red Soviet stars.

A cold wave of disbelief washed through him.

He looked around wildly.

Every single aircraft he’d been fighting—every so-called “enemy”—was Soviet.

His stomach dropped.

“Holy shit,” Edwinson gasped. “Cease fire! Cease fire! They’re Soviets!”

Every P-38 in the area heard him.

The shock was instant.

“Say again?”
“Colonel—what?”
“Oh hell…”

“Repeat,” Edwinson barked.
“BREAK OFF. RETURN TO BASE. NOW!”

And just like that, the Americans fled westward.

The Soviet Yaks chased instinctively—but Koldunov severed the pursuit.
“All pilots—let them go! They are allies!”

The battle ended as abruptly as it had begun.

And the smoke over Yugoslavia finally began to clear.

PART III — THE AFTERMATH OF MISTAKEN ENEMIES

The sky over Yugoslavia began to quiet, but the silence carried a strange, hollow weight—as if the air itself sensed that something catastrophic had just unfolded. Smoke drifted from the wreckage of trucks and aircraft. Burning fuel crackled along the edges of the airfield. The distant rumble of falling debris echoed between the mountains like fading thunder.

On the ground, Soviet medics and partisans scrambled through the shattered remains of the convoy, pulling wounded men from overturned trucks and extinguishing flames with buckets of dirt. Officers sprinted along the road, shouting for triage teams, searching desperately for survivors beneath the blackened, twisted metal.

What had been a march of celebration an hour earlier was now a graveyard.

And no one yet understood why.

---

Up in the sky, the twelve remaining P-38s streaked westward, engines whining at full throttle as if trying to outrun the shame that had not yet reached their hearts.

Inside his cockpit, Colonel Edwinson gripped his yoke so tightly that his knuckles had turned bloodless white. His breathing came shallow and uneven. Sweat collected on his brow, even though the cockpit was cold.

He still heard the screams in his headphones—Coulson’s panicked voice, Brewer’s strangled transmission, the horrible silence after each loss.

He’d spent the entire morning believing he was attacking Germans.

Now he knew better.

He looked down at his fuel gauges, blinking hard to stave off the sickness growing in his gut. He didn’t want to imagine what lay below—the burning Soviet trucks, the bodies, the red flags still fluttering amid the ruins. He didn’t want to think about the fact that every trigger pull, every bomb release, had struck allies who had trusted American markings.

But there was no escaping the truth.

He’d ordered the attack.
He’d led the charge.
He’d been wrong.

Horribly, disastrously wrong.

“Colonel…” a pilot’s voice crackled weakly on the radio.
“What the hell just happened back there?”

Edwinson didn’t answer.

He couldn’t—not yet. Not until he found the words.

Another pilot spoke, voice shaking.
“That wasn’t the Luftwaffe, sir. Those were—”

“Soviets,” Edwinson forced out.
His voice sounded like gravel sliding down metal.
“Red Army. Soviet Air Force. All of them.”

A stunned silence filled the channel.

Then someone whispered:
“Oh God…”

---

While the Lightnings raced back toward Italy, the Soviet airfield swarmed with chaos and confusion. Smoke stained the sky where flames still licked the wreckage of Yaks shot down during takeoff. Mechanics and ground crews ran between shattered aircraft, some dragging hoses from shattered hydrants, others prying open jammed canopies to check for life inside.

On the runway, Captain Aleksandr Koldunov taxied his Yak to a stop and ripped open the canopy. He climbed out so fast his boots skid on the wing. Helicopter-blade adrenaline still pounded in his veins from the frantic dogfight.

“What are you doing?!” a ground officer shouted as he approached.

“Americans!” Koldunov snapped.
“It was the Americans!”

The officer froze mid-step.
“What?”

Koldunov pointed toward the mountains where the Lightnings had vanished.
“Amerikanskiye! Not Germans. Not Germans!”

The officer’s jaw tightened as the truth washed over him. Around them, mechanics and soldiers turned at the sound of those words, shock freezing their expressions. Someone dropped a wrench. A partisan cursed under his breath.

Nothing about the battle made sense.
Not the sudden attack.
Not the relentless strafing.
Not the dogfight that followed.

But one thing was now inescapably clear:

The United States Air Force had attacked the Red Army.

And they had killed Soviets—scores of them.

---

Minutes later, a staff car raced from the command building and skidded to a stop near Koldunov. Three officers jumped out—the base commander, a political commissar, and an intelligence major. Their faces were hard, pale, and tight with a mixture of fury and disbelief.

“Captain Koldunov,” the commander barked, “you were the one who made contact with the enemy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell us exactly what happened. Everything.”

Koldunov explained—how he had approached the P-38s, wagged his wings, tried to signal the American pilots. How they had fired anyway. How he had had to dodge their attack. How the dogfight intensified until he flew right next to their formation leader.

“How close?” the intelligence major asked.

“Close enough to see the colonel’s eyes behind his goggles,” Koldunov said.

“And he still shot at you?”

“No.”
Koldunov hesitated.
“Not then. Not once he realized.”

The commissar scowled. “Realized what?”

“That we were Soviets,” Koldunov said plainly.
“That they weren’t fighting Germans.”

The officers exchanged dark looks.

“So the Americans attacked without confirming their targets,” the commander murmured.

“Or,” the commissar growled, “they attacked knowing.”

A chill went through everyone nearby.

Suddenly, the disaster that had unfolded was no longer just a battlefield mistake—it was a political nightmare.

---

Back in the air, three P-38s limped behind the main formation—each riddled with bullet holes, one losing altitude with a trailing plume of smoke. Edwinson checked his rearview mirror, making sure no Yak fighters continued pursuit.

Then he turned his eyes forward.

The Italian coastline appeared gradually beneath the horizon, sunlight glinting off the Adriatic. Beyond it lay the base where Edwinson would have to give the report he feared most—a report that would stain the squadron’s name, end careers, and perhaps ignite diplomatic firestorms.

He wiped a hand over his face, then pulled his oxygen mask back into place.

He had never felt so weary.

“Colonel…”

It was the voice of Lieutenant Harris, one of the youngest pilots in the squadron.
“We… we didn’t mean to. None of us meant to. Right?”

Edwinson closed his eyes.
He knew the younger pilots needed reassurance.
They needed absolution.
They needed their commanding officer to explain how everything had gone so wrong.

But he wasn’t ready.

He spoke in a low, steady voice.
“We’ll talk when we’re down. Save your fuel and stay alert. That’s an order.”

Harris fell silent.

---

Hundreds of miles away, in Yugoslavia, anger brewed like a boiling cauldron.

Soviet political officers stormed through the smoking wreckage of the convoy, documenting every bullet hole, every crater, every charred vehicle. They photographed bodies, interviewed survivors, and questioned witnesses from the partisan ranks.

Rumors spread like wildfire:

“The Americans want to slow our advance.”
“They are protecting their own influence in Yugoslavia.”
“They feared the Red Army would reach Belgrade before them.”
“They meant to kill us.”

None of the rumors were true—but war never cared about the truth.
Only perception.
And perception was turning dark.

By noon, headquarters sent a coded cable to Moscow:

“American aircraft attacked and destroyed Soviet convoy and airfield. Heavy losses. Request instructions.”

Another cable left the Soviet diplomatic office in Bari:

“Possible hostile action by U.S. forces. Situation unclear. Further investigation required.”

The word hostile burned like acid, and no one dared to remove it.

---

The P-38s descended in a long, low line and touched down at their Italian base, wheels screeching against the runway. Ground crews rushed to catch the returning aircraft, their eyes widening at the sight of shredded wings, holes in fuselages, and engines coughing smoke.

Pilots climbed down from their cockpits like wounded men returning from a nightmare.

Edwinson hit the ground last.

He pulled off his helmet.
His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
His eyes looked sunken—older by a decade.

A major from intelligence ran up to him immediately.

“Colonel, we received urgent signals from the Yugoslav partisans. Something went wrong with the strike?”

Edwinson stared at him.

His voice was hoarse.

“We accidentally engaged Soviet forces.”

The major froze.

“What?”

Edwinson nodded slowly.
Painfully.

“We thought they were Germans.”

Mechanics around them stopped mid-step.
Crews turned.
A dozen gasps rippled through the hangar.

The major swallowed hard, his face suddenly pale.

“This… this could cause a diplomatic disaster,” he whispered.

Edwinson exhaled.

“That’s putting it lightly.”

The major looked at him seriously.

“Colonel… what did you see down there?”

Edwinson’s face tightened.
He forced the words out as if they weighed a hundred pounds.

“I saw red stars,” he said quietly.
“I saw Soviet flags everywhere.”

The major stumbled back a step.

Edwinson finished, voice heavy as stone:

“And I saw what we did to them.”

---

While Edwinson filed a preliminary report behind closed doors, the rest of the squadron gathered in a dim, smoky briefing room. No one spoke. The weight of what they’d done pressed down like an invisible force.

Some pilots stared at their boots.
Some stared at their trembling hands.
Others simply stared at the wall, eyes unfocused.

Lieutenant Harris broke first.

“We didn’t know,” he muttered.
“We didn’t know…”

Another pilot snapped back, voice cracking:
“That doesn’t matter! We still killed allies!”

“Enough,” someone else whispered.
“Just… enough.”

Arguments erupted. Then fell silent.
Then erupted again.

One pilot finally shouted:

“How are we going to explain this to Moscow?”

No one in the room had an answer.

---

By evening, Washington and Moscow were exchanging tense, heavily coded messages. The U.S. military immediately prepared a formal explanation. Intelligence officers reconstructed the events minute-by-minute.

Why they misidentified the Soviet convoy.
Why the flags were not seen.
Why the P-38s believed they were attacking Germans.
Why the Soviets defended themselves.
Why American pilots fired at Yak fighters.

The U.S. letter was long, apologetic, technical—painfully technical.

The Soviet response was short and seething.

The incident, some argued in Moscow, could not have been accidental.
The Americans were suspicious.
The Americans did not want Soviet influence expanding in the Balkans.
The Americans wanted to send a message.

For a dangerous moment in world history, the wrong spark had been lit.

And the war still had months to go.

PART IV — DIPLOMACY UNDER BLACK SMOKE

Night settled over the Adriatic like a heavy curtain, smothering the Italian coastline in darkness while cold air rolled in from the sea. In the American base near Bari, not a single pilot slept. Not a single mechanic laughed. Not a single officer forgot what he had seen hours earlier in the haze of Yugoslav smoke.

In a cramped briefing room lit by a single flickering bulb, Colonel Clarence Edwinson sat alone at a wooden table, staring at a stack of documents strewn in front of him. The ink from the typewriter had barely dried. Pages of witness statements, flight logs, radio transcripts, strike timelines—all of it gathered hastily into one compiled report.

In the corner, a pot of coffee simmered. No one had touched it.

The air was thick with dread.

Every few minutes, Edwinson reached for a page, re-read a paragraph, and let out a long, exhausted breath. He had been in combat for years. He had strafed German convoys in Tunisia, intercepted Luftwaffe bombers over Sicily, and watched P-38s burn in the skies of Italy. But nothing he had ever done—not a single sortie, not a single fireball—felt as heavy as the events of this morning.

A knock shook the door.

“Enter,” he said quietly.

A tall, gaunt intelligence officer stepped inside—Major Roland Grant. He shut the door behind him and walked over with the slow gait of a man carrying bad news.

“They want the full report in D.C. by morning,” Grant said. “General Twining has already sent advance notice. They’re treating this as top priority.”

“Priority,” Edwinson muttered bitterly. “That’s one word for it.”

Grant set a sealed envelope on the table.

“This is from the State Department liaison. A draft of the official explanation we’re sending to the Soviets.”

Edwinson hesitated before opening the envelope.

“And Moscow?” he asked. His voice came out softer than he intended.

“The Soviet command in Bari sent a communique,” Grant said. “Their senior political officer is calling the incident… ‘suspicious.’”

Edwinson closed his eyes.

That was not a word anyone wanted to hear.

Grant continued reluctantly.
“There are some in the Soviet high command claiming the attack was deliberate.”

“That’s insane.”
Edwinson shook his head sharply.
“We’ve been flying support for them since Italy. We’ve cleared Luftwaffe positions alongside their advance. Why would we turn on them?”

“That’s not the point,” Grant replied quietly. “In war… people remember what they’ve suffered most, not what their allies meant to do.”

Edwinson rubbed his temples.
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to face my boys. They trusted me. They followed my orders.”

“You made the call you believed was right,” Grant said.
“And you followed the intelligence brief.”

“That brief cost Soviet lives.”

Grant didn’t argue. He didn’t need to.

The silence said enough.

---

Back in Yugoslavia, the Soviet airfield was lit by fires—some from the crash sites, some from the torches that soldiers used to search for bodies. The air carried the smell of smoke, oil, and scorched metal. It was the kind of night that burned itself into memory.

Captain Aleksandr Koldunov stood beside the wreck of a Yak-9, his gloved hands tucked under his arms for warmth. Flames licked upward from the broken, twisted fuselage. The number 27 painted on its side was barely visible under the soot.

It was Lieutenant Krivonogikh’s aircraft.

Koldunov bowed his head for a long moment.

Beside him, a partisan soldier muttered softly in Serbian.
“A tragedy… so many dead.”

Koldunov nodded. “He saved his wingman. Paid for it.”

The soldier kicked at a loose piece of metal.
“Why did the Americans attack? We fight the same enemy.”

Koldunov didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at the distant mountains, still glowing faintly from the setting sun.
He thought of the P-38 that broke off the attack once it saw his red stars.
He thought of Edwinson’s shocked face when he recognized him as an ally.

“I don’t think they meant to,” Koldunov finally said.

The partisan scoffed. “They killed our comrades.”

“Yes,” Koldunov said quietly. “But intention matters.”

The partisan shook his head bitterly.
“Intent does not bury the dead.”

---

At dawn, the American delegation arrived.

Two staff cars rolled onto the Soviet airfield—an unusual sight, especially under the circumstances. A trio of U.S. officers stepped out, led by Brigadier General Ernest McCullen, a man known for blunt honesty and an even blunter temper.

Koldunov met them at the runway edge. His uniform smelled faintly of smoke.

McCullen saluted him.

“Captain. We’re here to discuss the incident.”

Koldunov returned the salute, then pointed toward the burned trucks.

“This was not an incident,” he said. “This was slaughter.”

McCullen swallowed hard.

“I understand. And we are prepared to issue full apology. Full accountability.”

“And reparations?” asked a Soviet political commissar stepping forward.

McCullen paused but nodded.

“If Moscow demands them, yes. This is not something we intend to hide.”

It was a bold statement—one Koldunov did not expect.

The commissar narrowed his eyes.
“You claim… mistake?”

McCullen exhaled heavily.
“Yes. A tragic, horrific mistake. But not malice. Never malice.”

The commissar folded his arms.

“I suppose Washington will say your pilots misidentified our column.”

“They did.”

“They mistook Soviet Yaks for German aircraft?”

“Yes.”

The commissar laughed sharply.
“Then perhaps your pilots need glasses.”

Koldunov raised a hand.
“Comrade, please.”

He turned to McCullen.

“Your man—Edwinson. He is your squadron commander?”

“Yes,” McCullen said somberly. “He requested to come personally, but command forbade it. He’s… taking it very hard.”

Koldunov nodded in grim understanding.
“He should. Two of our best pilots died today.”

He gestured to the runway.

“And four of your aircraft, including two of your own men, did not return.”

The commissar scoffed.
“True enough. So perhaps this is even.”

Koldunov shot him a glare.
“This is not a game of balance sheets.”

McCullen added stiffly:
“No casualty makes the other ‘even.’ We all lost good men.”

Silence settled between them—heavy, somber, honest.

Finally, Koldunov said:

“I saw the moment the realization hit your colonel. He signaled cease-fire instantly. I believe you when you say this was not intentional.”

McCullen’s shoulders eased slightly.

“But,” Koldunov continued, “belief does not erase suspicion. Some in Moscow will say the Americans tried to slow our advance. They will say the attack was sabotage.”

McCullen stepped closer, meeting his eyes.
“And what do you say, Captain?”

Koldunov held his gaze.
“For now… I say it was incompetence, not conspiracy.”

The commissar stiffened.
“Captain—”

Koldunov ignored him.

McCullen extended a hand.

Koldunov looked at it.

Then shook it.

The commissar did not look pleased—but he said nothing.

All three men understood the fragile thread they were holding together.

If this spiraled, if Moscow chose anger over patience, if Washington responded defensively—

An accident in Yugoslavia could ignite a diplomatic inferno.

---

Back in Italy, Edwinson finished writing his report just as the sun breached the horizon. He looked out the briefing-room window—the sky turning pink and gold over the coastal hills—and wondered how many more sunrises the war would hold before it finally sputtered out.

He felt old.

Older than any pilot his age should have felt.

He had always believed combat killed men cleanly—bullet, bomb, blade.
But this…
This felt worse.

The door creaked open. Major Grant stepped inside.

“It’s done?” Grant asked quietly.

“Yes,” Edwinson said.

Grant walked over and picked up the report.
He nodded once.

Then he set his hand on Edwinson’s shoulder.

“Clarence… you saved lives too. Across Italy. Across the Balkans. Across the Med. Don’t let this one day erase everything you’ve done.”

Edwinson didn’t answer.
He stared at the table.

Finally he whispered:

“We were supposed to kill Nazis today.”

He closed his eyes.

“But instead, we killed the men who kill Nazis.”

Grant had no reply.

Some wounds didn’t need salve.
Only time.

---

Three days later, the official U.S. letter reached Soviet command. It detailed the entire sequence of misidentifications, timing failures, terrain confusion, wrong briefings, and the tragic chain of assumptions.

The Soviets accepted the explanation.

Barely.

They issued a stern warning about future cooperation and demanded tighter coordination.

The matter was quietly buried.

Not forgiven.
Not forgotten.
Merely… buried.

---

In the decades that followed, Soviet accounts of the incident emerged slowly—often with embellishments, sometimes with omissions, sometimes with accusations. Many believed the full American records had been sealed away—classified for a century.

Some say they still sit in a dark archive somewhere, waiting for a day when history will finally pry the lid open and read the whole truth.

But among the men who survived it—those who fought in the smoke-choked air over the Yugoslav mountains, those who watched allies fall from the sky thinking they were enemies—there was one truth no document could capture:

War is not always fought between foes.
Sometimes, wounds are inflicted by friends.
Sometimes, confusion kills.
And sometimes, history’s greatest tragedies are born not from hatred—

—but from the simple, terrible fact that even allies can see ghosts in the fog of war.

THE END.