Sunday August 1, 1943 AAF pays a visit to Ploesti

[Valin]

Eyewitness To History

 

Ploesti was a vast complex of oil refinery facilities located some 30 miles north of Bucharest, Romania. It supplied an estimated sixty percent of the refined oil necessary to keep the German war machine running. In the words of Winston Churchill, Ploesti was "the taproot of German might." It was a strategic target whose destruction allied planners hoped would deliver a severe blow to Germany's ability to carry on the war.

 

 

The blow was to be delivered by American B-24 bombers flying out of the Libyan Desert, across the Mediterranean Sea to the target and return - a two thousand mile journey that would push the abilities of both planes and crews to their limits. This would not be the first raid on Ploesti - this had occurred in June 1942 -, nor the last, but it had the highest expectations. Five bombardment groups - two borrowed from the Eighth Air Force stationed in England - equipped with B-24 Liberator bombers began low-level flight training in the Libyan dessert. Flying in formation at altitudes of fifty feet or lower to avoid radar detection and impede enemy antiaircraft fire.

 

Loaded with extra fuel tanks, 178 attack planes struggled aloft from their Libyan airstrips early Sunday morning August 1, 1943. They flew into a fiery hell that would be remembered as "Black Sunday." Trouble began almost immediately. Unbeknownst to the air crews, the Germans had broken their communication code and monitored their flight almost as soon as they took off. As they approached their target, the lead flight made a wrong turn up a mountain valley taking one of the following flights with it. Detected by German radar, the attacking Americans had lost the element of surprise.

 

(Snip)

 

http://youtu.be/6Zk5YeOjYVw