The mission seemed straightforward: disrupt the Nazi war machine by targeting its lifeblood: oil. The City of Ploiești in România, supplying over one-third of Germany’s petroleum reserves, was pivotal. On August 1, 1943, a fleet of 178 B-24 Liberators descended upon Ploiești, intent on obliterating ‘Hitler’s gas station’ from the face of the earth.
A smaller raid the previous year had led to expectations of minimal resistance. However, the Allied pilots were flying toward a grim reality. Approaching their target, they were engulfed in a relentless storm of FLAK fire, lighting up the sky with explosive fury. Ploiești bristled with defenses: heavy 88 millimeter, medium 37 millimeter, and light 20 millimeter anti-aircraft batteries blanketed the city. Tethered to steel cables, German barrage balloons filled the skies, making low-altitude maneuvers nearly impossible.
Complicating the mission further, the Germans had significantly upgraded their radar and early warning systems. As the B-24 Liberators neared Ploiești, Luftwaffe fighters ascended to intercept them. Confronted by overwhelming defenses, the Allied airmen faced a nightmarish scenario when they could not locate their targets; Germans had camouflaged their oil refineries and also created decoy sites.
The decisive bombing raid quickly devolved into a struggle for survival. As B-24s plummeted in a devastating cascade of twisted metal and flames, the Allied pilots, against all odds, pushed forward. Their heroic efforts that day would not only earn them five Medals of Honor, the most awarded for a single air mission, but also secure their place in modern military history…
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Showing B17s in a raid conducted by B24s is a nice touch. Adds a lot of credibility to the presentation..
Why are you showing P51s? They were not actually engaged. This is sad.
How can a pilot be pushed beyond their limits? Please explain.
The fact that there was no fighter escort makes the video clips of P-51s and P-38s kind of awkward, maybe even inappropriate. But I love seeing the P-38 flying, so there’s that.
On a personal note, one shot of the P-51s was of three fighters with the distinctive black and yellow checkerboard on their tails, this is the group my great uncle flew with. He was killed in a low-level ground support training accident in 1944. His P-51 broke apart in midair due to faulty maintenance, the aircraft having been badly damaged previously and not properly repaired.
Background to an interesting conversation with a pilot who bombed Ploesti: A division of Esso owned refineries in Romania. Esso was Standard Oil of New Jersey's name in Europe, later called Exxon in the USA. This former bomber pilot was, at the time I met him, an employee of Exxon Company USA…and laughed at the irony he was working for Exxon after trying destroy Esso's refineries in Ploesti.
The video footage should atleast match the narration, else between the visual and the audible you end up with a story line that's harder to follow.
Thumbs down. Footage is crap. Anticipated resistance is not west I’d learned.
Casablanca was not the first time Roosevelt and Churchill met face to face. This occurred a year and a half earlier off Canada at the Atlantic Conference (August 1941). The result was the Atlantic Charter. They met again shortly after Pearl Harbor when Churchill came to Washington and stayed at the White House. The result was the basic strategic vision that would win World War II.
The Internet is so full of badly researched, misleading crap…. like this.
Not mentioned were 37 and 38 sqdns bombing at night from the same airfield in alexandria 😢