Behind Enemy Lines: Scott O’Grady’s Incredible Survival Story

In ‘This Week in History,’ as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s civil war rages, an American fighter pilot is shot down, stranding him behind enemy lines for six days.

Capt. Scott F. O'Grady at a press conference. Capt. O'Grady's F-16 Fighting Falcon was shot down over Bosnia on June 2, 1995, while he was flying in support of Operation Deny Flight. Public Domain

On Oct. 18, 1990, a report conducted by the United States’s intelligence community was issued predicting the breakup of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its inevitable violent aftermath.

“Yugoslavia will cease to function as a federal state within one year, and will probably dissolve within two,” the report claimed. “Economic reform will not stave off the breakup. … [S]erious intercommunal conflict will accompany the breakup and will continue afterward. The violence will be intractable and bitter. There is little the United States and its European allies can do to preserve Yugoslav unity.”