Word: ploesti
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...Tail-End Charley" (last plane of a flight) caught this picture of flaming Ploesti during the U.S. raid on the Rumanian oil center which supplies vital fuel to Germany (TIME, Aug. 9). Delayed-action bombs had not yet exploded when the camera clicked, but incendiaries had started a network of fires. The U.S. Liberators dropped 300 tons of high explosive and thousands of incendiaries from as low as 100 ft. Planes flew through sheets of flame, emerged covered with soot, while gunners dueled with rooftop anti-aircraft and saw people waving from the streets. Losses were high...
This was the big target. Nearly a third of the petroleum for the Axis war machine was drawn from Ploesti. To attack it properly the Ninth U.S. Air Force, in the Middle East, built up a powerful group of Liberator bombers, its pilots and bombardiers specially trained for low-level bombing. One day this week more than 175 of the bombers took off on the long (2,400 mi.) mission. Droning over Greece and Bulgaria, they crossed the Danube just before 3 in the afternoon and dropped low above the villages and farms of Rumania...
...this part of the Balkans the Germans had strong air defenses. The Liberators shot down at least 51 enemy fighters, lost 20 U.S. planes over the target and eleven more on the return. Over Ploesti's 19 sq. mi. of oil derricks, refineries, storage tanks and Tracking plants, the bombers dived dangerously low, within 500 ft. of the ground and often through flames from the fires. One Liberator was destroyed by a bomb blast. Behind them earth and air trembled, patterns of black smoke blossomed and merged into one massive pall...
...sseldorf's turn came on a moonless night last week. Three nights later it was Bremen's. Simultaneously Soviet bombers ranged over eastern Europe, attacking Königsberg in East Prussia, Bucharest and Rumania's Ploesti oil fields...
...have plenty of fuel to roll their tanks and lift their planes. But after the British had, at least for the time being, sewed up Iraq's oil, after the Germans had attacked one of their oil suppliers, Russia, after the Russians had done some damage in the Ploesti fields of Rumania, the oil barrage took on more point and more fury. Last week a roundabout hint of the growing Axis oil squeeze came out of Italy, where it was announced that after Oct. 1 private auto owners would be allowed no gasoline...