August 30 – September 20, 1995 · Bosnia-Herzegovina Theater
August 30 – September 20, 1995
On August 28, 1995, a Bosnian Serb mortar shell killed 43 civilians at the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo — the second such massacre in eighteen months. NATO responded with its first sustained combat operation in its 46-year history: Operation Deliberate Force. Over 21 days, 400 aircraft from 15 nations flew 3,515 sorties and struck 338 Bosnian Serb military targets — ammunition depots, command centers, radar sites, and artillery positions ringing Sarajevo. The campaign was designed not to destroy Serbian forces but to coerce them: by demonstrating that NATO could strike at will, it stripped Karadžić and Mladić of their military leverage at a decisive political moment. Combined with Operation Storm's crushing defeat of Serb forces in Croatia, the air campaign broke the Bosnian Serbs' will to continue the war.
Commanders