North Carolina Town Accepts, Then Spurns Russian Gift

Strings attached, or politics? is that like Obama sending a bust of Churchill back?

Thanks for sharing the revenge of the lend-lease program CW5 Jack Cardwell
The proposed gift is a monument to honor a highly at the time classified World War II program called Project Zebra through which Americans trained hundreds of Soviet fliers on amphibious bombers that they then flew home to fight German and Japanese submarines.
Image: A model of the proposed monument to Project Zebra. The monument is projected to be 13 feet tall and weigh 25 tons.
"Almost a year ago, Elizabeth City [, North Carolina] agreed to accept the monument, valued at an estimated $1 million, as a gift from the Russian government. But in a surprise move, a city council with new members has torpedoed the deal, with some saying the city shouldn't associate with Russia.
"I would caution this council that you, or this previous council, gave your word to another foreign government and I'd be embarrassed, to be honest with you, to go back on your word," City Manager Richard Olson said at a council meeting last month."
"A secret program in the American South
One reason the Russians didn't propose the monument earlier could be that Project Zebra wasn't declassified until six years ago.
The project began in 1944. The U.S. was making the amphibious bombers for Russia, and needed a place to train more than 300 Soviet pilots.
"We then went ahead and made 185 of these 11-crew planes in the Philadelphia Naval Yard and painted red stars on them and flew them down to Elizabeth City, N.C.," says M. G. Crisci, author of Project Zebra: Roosevelt and Stalin's Top-Secret Mission to Train 300 Soviet Airmen in America.
'It was both a Coast Guard base that had huge airfields that could take these planes, and it had the waterways nearby that they could practice and take off in the water.
"The town was remarkable in that it was essentially cheerleaders and provided these crews things that they wanted and needed and it was actually an amazing team effort," Crisci said.
"There was once a time in America where a bunch of people that didn't know each other, who couldn't speak each other's language, came together through circumstances and built a monument to humanity. While at the same time completing a very successful military mission."
That's what the Russians say they want to honor with the monument."

This benighted council is focusing on rumors and completely ignoring the fact that lend lease was one facet of our relationship with the USSR during WWII.
It is very sad IMHO that Elizabeth City is taking a stand to reject this monument.
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I’d be OK with it as long as it isn’t representative of the Confederacy. Sarcasm