19431776 Club
B-24s hit Ploiești's refineries at rooftop height; 53 bombers do not come home
A navigational error over Târgoviște sent part of the formation toward Bucharest before crews found the oil fields waiting with 88mm guns already loaded.
Romania's refineries around Ploiești supplied nearly a third of all Axis oil, and Winston Churchill had called their destruction a potential knockout blow to Germany's war effort. On August 1, 1943, 178 B-24 Liberators flew from Libya, crossed the Mediterranean and the Pindus Mountains, and dropped to treetop altitude over nine target refineries defended by hundreds of flak guns and fighters, screened by smoke. Only 88 bombers made it back to Libya, 55 of them damaged, after 53 aircraft and 500 airmen were lost. Refining capacity dropped 40 percent, and most of it was repaired within weeks…
