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Originally Posted by jimbotosome jhor9,
Where you there when General Doolittle was heading it up and if so did you ever meet him?
Did you guys fly with the escort of the Tuskeegee airman?
I attended a presentation of our flying club from a couple of the local Tenn pilots from the 15th (I don't remember the groups but they did fly the B-24s) They gave a presentation on the Ploesti raids. Ploesti might have been the singlemost devastating asset to lose in WWII for the Germans. If I am not mistaken, I don't believe there was a single target that could compare to its importance, not even the fighter factories.
It has been about 10 years now but I seem to recall he had mentioned how the initial raid on Ploesti had a navigation problem so not all the groups found the target but it woke the Germans up about the risks to the Romanian fuel production and caused the Germans to bring in flak defenses out the ying yang trying to protect it from subsequent raids.
Glad you are here. The 15th AF never got the fame or glory the 8th AF did but had just as profound affect on the Luftwaffe and ETO air supremacy because of what it did to the German fighter factories in spring 44. That was a real back-breaker. |
Jimbo
I was there when Doolittle was C.O. of the bomber force, I never met him
The Tuskeegee Airmen didn't get to our theatre until after I left. They were good, so I've been told.
The low level strike at Ploesti was in Aug 1943 flown by B24s from Libya
One group that went astray was late over the target, the group in front of them were supposed to be the last planes over because they had delayed action bombs, Unfortunately as the lost group went over the target, the bombs went off. The 24s lost close to 50% of their aircraft.
I went to Weiner Neustadt twice, after Ploesti it was one of most well defended targets, flak and fighters. In mid 1944 it was considered a twofer (2 missions) My 1st time to that target was a 14 hour flight in Nov 43, from Tunis.