Ploiești

[dramatic music] Sometimes we may wonder why a football team doesn't quit playing and walk off the field when it finds itself 50 points behind with only a few minutes of play to go.

What is that indomitable spirit that fills men with hope and keeps them going in spite of terrific odds, keeps them going just to play the game according to the rules, just to get the job done as well as they know how? This kind of spirit pervaded the feelings of heavy bomber crews of the Ninth Air Force on that day of glory, August 1st, 1943, the day of one of the most secretly planned surprise bombing missions of World War II, the day of the low-level attack on the Romanian oil refineries at Ploiești.

More than 170 B-24 heavily loaded bombers took off in a swirl of red dust from Benghazi, Libya, to bomb a highly defended priority target.

The element of surprise in the low-level attack was to be one of their greatest weapons, but things went wrong from the start.

The leaders of the mission encountered navigation difficulties and difficulty in identifying the specific targets, and due to the loss of that elemental hope, surprise, they also encountered devastating enemy firepower from flak and fighters.

The mission was partially successful, but a horrifying experience.

Five Medals of Honor were awarded to the heroes of the Ploiești raid for valorous action above and beyond the call of duty.

At any time, the men would've been justified in turning back, but they had a code of conduct that made them want to see the unequal game through to the end.

He was the man coordinating close air support over the Normandy beaches, getting fighters to the ground troops who needed them, making sure the air umbrella held on the day that everything depended on it.

Harry Halverson led the first American bombing raid against the Ploesti oil fields in Romania in 1942, a mission that planted the seed for the famous Operation Tidal Wave.

In January of 1929, none of that has happened.

They are five men in Army Air Corps uniforms going out to see what an airplane can do.

For pure concentrated combat brutality, there may be no mission in the entire war that matches what happened over Romania on August 1, 1943.

Operation Tidal Wave, the Ploesti Raid Ploesti was a city in southern Romania sitting in the middle of an oil field that processed roughly a third of all the petroleum fueling the German military.

Tanks, trucks, submarines, aircraft, all of it ran on Ploesti oil.

Shut down those refineries and you put a serious hurt on Germany's ability to keep fighting.

Allied planners had known that since before the war started, the problem was getting there.

Aircraft came home with engines shot out, hydraulics gone, wings holed through, crew members dead at their stations with the airplanes still flying.

The refineries were hit, hit hard.

But within weeks, Ploesti was back to nearly full production.

The foreign ministry put a lot of effort into maintaining ties with Romania.

And Britain was buying a lot of the oil from Ploesti up to the beginning of the war to keep it out of German hands, which was a smart play.

Actually, the smartest stuff that Britain did before the war was buying resources to keep them away from Germany.

There was a lot of that going on, and that was actually some of the most efficient way of reducing their military buildup was to keep resources away from them.

a cluster of refineries in the Romanian foothills about 35 miles north of Bucharest.

Allied intelligence estimated that the Ploesti complex was supplying roughly one-third of all the refined oil reaching the Axis powers.

One-third.

Knock out Ploesti, not just damage it, but really knock it out, and you don't just hurt Germany's ability to fight, you begin to strangle it.

An earlier attempt had been made in June of 1942.

12 aircraft, high altitude, minimal effect.

The theory was that at that altitude, by the time a gun crew acquired you and swung onto your heading, you were already through.

Theoretically, five groups were assigned the mission—the 44th, the 93rd, the 93rd, the 98th, the 376th, and the 389th Bombardment Groups—flying under the 9th Air Force.

I don't even know how you say it.

Ploesti?

Ploesti.

Ploesti.

They said it a...

That's the hardest thing for this book.

People can't say Ploesti.

And it's actually Ploiest, if you're in Romania you call it Ploiest.

Of course.

When I was still in training in Ploiești, I lived with a family.

I lived with a mother who was in her late 30s and her son, who was 12 at the time.

And one of her neighbors had had a Peace Corps volunteer, and she had just lost her husband.

They fought through every bit of it.

When the 332nd got their Mustangs, they flew escort missions over Germany, over Romania, over the oil fields of Ploesti, over some of the most heavily defended targets in the European theater.

Bomber crews who flew with the Red Tails asked for them by name on subsequent missions.

Their record was exceptional by any measure.

Hi, Lieutenant Landers.

Did the major here tell you about Ploesti?

I said knock it off.

This wrong-way guy goofs off overseas and ends up on the gravy train Stateside.

Why not? You'll find out sooner or later.

It doesn't matter.

On the bombing mission to the Ploesti oil fields, the big one, I turned back.

I claimed I had serious engine trouble.