# USAAF Ploesti raid, Aug. 1, 1943



## MarkOttawa (13 Nov 2007)

Excerpts from a good review of _Into the Fire_ by Duane Schultz:
http://www.opinionjournalbookstore.com/cgi-bin/Shopper.exe?preadd=action&key=1594160511

Hell at Low Altitude
Minutes in World War II took a toll comparable to that of months in Iraq. 
http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110010857



> The target was Ploesti (pronounced "ploy-esht"), a small city in Romania north of Bucharest. Its 12 refineries produced most of the petroleum that fueled the German war machine, so the Allies were eager to take them out. Alas, the city was 1,200 miles from the nearest Allied airfield, in Egypt--an impossible journey, or so it seemed, over water, mountains and neutral Turkey. Surely the Germans would assume that Ploesti was safe from attack and therefore scant its defenses?
> 
> Wrong. Unknown to the Americans, the refinery complex was guarded by fighter planes and "more flak guns than those protecting Berlin," as Duane Schultz tells us in his vivid chronicle. The Ploesti raid was small by the standards of the Anglo-American bomber offensive against Germany, involving only 178 heavy bombers. Still, each plane carried a crew of 10, meaning that the lives of more than 1,700 young men were at risk...
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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