Word: ploesti
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...Balikpapan raid (second in a week) showed that the Japs were still fiercely determined to defend the "Ploesti of the Pacific." As the Liberators crossed Celebes they were picked up by Jap "Bettys" (fast twin-engined bombers) which radioed instructions ahead to fighters. Forty Zeros were ready for the U.S. flyers at Balikpapan and, though 19 Japs were shot down, seven Liberators with 70 airmen went down in flames...
Meanwhile, the King's mother, Queen Helen, notified of events by telephone, sped from the royal family's summer home at Sinaia (northwest of Ploesti) to a rendezvous with her son. All through German-held country she clutched a small pistol, determined to shoot the first enemy soldier attempting to halt...
...Germans had done their best to defend Ploesti with heavy smoke screens, a formidable thicket of ack-ack, a strong fleet of fighters. In addition to an unknown total of U.S. airmen killed, the number shot down and captured alive in Rumania was last week disclosed as more than a thousand. The Germans had repaired bomb damage with their usual nimbleness, had covered vital pipelines and machinery with massive roofings of concrete...
They still valued Ploesti enough to put up a stout fight for it. They fought from hastily improvised fortifications and turned their antiaircraft guns on the attackers before Malinovsky's pile driver smashed them. When they fled, they fired the wells and tanks...
...passenger was Lieut. Colonel James A. Gunn III of Kelseyville, Calif., who had been shot down over the oil fields of Ploesti-"the hottest target on the face of the earth"-two weeks before. He was one of more than 3,000 U.S. airmen downed in Rumania in 13 months of raids. Two-thirds had been killed. But 1,101, plus 25 Britons, were still alive in prison camps around Bucharest. They were well treated but they chafed...