Headed by task force commander General George B. Dany, it successfully evacuated over 27,000 Hungarian refugees to the United States over a period of 90 days, with an additional 11,000 being settled, also in the US, in the following year.
[1] On Sunday 28 October 1956, some 56.5 million television viewers in the US were watching the popular Ed Sullivan Show, on which Elvis Presley (1935–77) was headlining for the second time.
These in turn were distributed with the help of the US Air Force, which flew 100 sorties to deliver these supplies to the estimated 250,000 refugees, the majority of whom settled, for life, in Austria and England.
On 1 March 2011, Budapest Mayor István Tarlós announced that the city would posthumously make Presley an honorary citizen, as well as name a small park facing the Margaret Bridge (its second oldest crossing) after him.
These honors were designed as a gesture of gratitude for his involvement in lessening the plight of the above mentioned quarter million refugees not covered by Operation Safe Haven.