In early March 1941, the German Luftwaffe forces started arriving in neighboring Bulgaria. On March 12, 1941, VVKJ units began to deploy to their wartime airfields. On 27 March 1941, the overthrow of the government that had signed the Tripartite Pact in Belgrade two days earlier, by a group of officers led by Dušan Simović, an air force general, brought an end to hopes of a settlement with Germany.[26]