Low Flying B-24s During the Ploesti Raid
The Romanian oil field and refinery complexes surrounding Ploesti were a vital source of oil for the Axis during WWII, providing them with roughly one third of their needs. The Germans defended Ploesti with one of the world’s densest and best integrated air defense networks, including hundreds of 88mm flak guns, thousands of smaller ones, plus Bf 109 and Me 110 fighter planes.
On August 1, 1943, which came to be known as “Black Sunday”, 177 American B-24 “Liberator” heavy bombers took off from Libyan airfields for Ploesti. Maintaining radio silence and flying at about 50 feet to avoid enemy radar, they skimmed over the Mediterranean, then flew at treetop level upon reaching land. However, the Germans were alerted and the raid came to grief because of a cascade of mishaps.
A navigation error took some bombers directly above a German position. A lead navigator’s crash resulted in bomber groups arriving over the target staggered instead of simultaneously. A bomb group leader, seeing that all formation was hopelessly lost, broke radio silence to order the scattered B-24s to make their way to Ploesti individually and bomb as best they could.
The Liberators were met by alert defenders. Hundreds of antiaircraft guns, machineguns, and a specially designed flak train whose cars’ sides dropped to reveal flak guns, opened up on the bombers, while fighter airplanes fell upon them. The low flying B-24s also had to contend with smoke stacks suddenly looming in their path amid the billowing smoke.
Images of low flying Liberators over Ploesti captured the dynamic drama of the moment. Of the 177 B-24s that took off that day, 162 reached Ploesti. Of those, 53 were shot down, for the loss of 660 crewmen. Of the 109 surviving Liberators that reached an Allied airbase, 58 were damaged beyond repair. The damage to Ploesti was quickly repaired, and within weeks, the oil complex was producing even more oil products than it had before the raid.