ONE OF THE LAST GREAT UNTOLD STORIES FROM WORLD WAR II.

December 2013.

70 years after the fact, Project Zebra, a little-known, top-secret mission, personally conceived by Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin in 1941, was declassified by the U.S. State Department.

This daring project was the only time in history America would custom build 185 huge, state-of-the-art warplanes exclusively for Soviet wartime use.

The huge flying-boats, as they were called, were hand painted with Soviet stars by American workers, in a a need-to-know location in the Philadelphia Naval Yard , then ferried to the sleepy, patriotic town of Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

There, for the next 18 months, a specially-selected group of US Naval officers and engineers trained 300 elite Soviet airmen to fly and fight before dispatching separate Soviet squadron to the Atlantic and Pacific battle theaters.

Project Zebra was far more than just a bold military mission; it was a historic human event. Despite language barriers, cultural differences, and the subsequent Cold War, the Soviet and American Zebras built life-long friendships based on mutual respect and trust--something that might serve us well to remember during today's turbulent times.

(Contains 213 rare documents and vintage photographs from the library of Russian American Gregory Gagarin, the last living survivor of Project Zebra. Greg passed at the age of 96.)