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a lot of us in the 15th Air Force were too busy holding down are into the war when it happened but over at Barry Airport there was quite a show going on it was the 31st of August 1944 those forts coming in were finishing a job we had started last spring they were bringing back a lot of our people who'd been gone for quite a while 24 hours ago these boys were bivouacking behind Nazi barbed wire just 24 hours ago they were prisoners of war now they were free and now we were shaking hands with fellas we thought we'd never see again it was just one of those days some of these Joe's were so glad to get back they hit that Italian dust with a four-point landing and when that GI planted a smacker on the first MP so well that about did it all of these crew members were shot down or made a crash landing in the target area most of them walked away from it others weren't so lucky was no American quartermaster where these men were so they made themselves a few private deals Ranchi Romanian Air Force caps gypsy peasant hats tiny helmets even civvies and like all good tourists they had a handful of souvenirs the Iron Cross was the most popular gadget they even made room on their tio for a postmaster yes that was a day for the records it belongs in this family album of the 15th Air Force that was the day general twining took time out from the war you could tell from the way he talked to these men how proud he was at the job they've done and how thankful he was to have them back again for their return rank down the curtain on one of the roughest shows ever put on for the 15th he won't have much trouble remembering it play st ploy st the name still makes us nervous that's the kind of a target it was from our bases in southern Italy across the Adriatic over the Yugoslav mountains to the valley of the Blue Danube and high over the Romanian plain deploy AST the target we came to know better than our own hometown six hundred miles one way across hostile territory to Hitler's oil barrel deploy st 19 square miles of oil refineries tank farms marshalling yards boiler houses pipelines and cracking plants processing more than 700,000 tonnes of crude oil a month one-third of all the oil feeding the Nazi war machine and that meant lubricating oil gun oil gasoline kerosene diesel oil paraffin machine grease aviation gasoline the Nazis could make synthetic fuels but lubricating oil has to come from natural petroleum and one of the richest sources of natural petroleum was at Ploiesti obviously the Hun was going to use everything he had in the book to defend these oil resources to remember one day general spots and Iker flew in for a little session with general twining we didn't know it then but that was the beginning big business was underway and then there was another day of course we weren't in on it but at headquarters General twining and his staff were in a pretty deep huddle YUM you just received record establishing higher priority power and inner destruction to the German air force contained to be top priority our uniting a man now feel the authority and establish air superiority for DME that would permit us initiate full out efforts against other targets system the decision has been an out we will destroy oil refineries and synthetic oil and Colonel young what desire told is show us regarding these targets within our area more than 50 some of the refineries and synthetic plants producing gasoline for the axis are within range of the 15th airport between 25 and 30 percent of the total axis production of gasoline is represented by the ten large refineries around plastic while these refineries were seriously damaged in the attack last August by the task force operating from Egypt recent photo reconnaissance previewed that one exception all refineries are currently operating at full capacity Jennifer's problem so big Java gotta be knocked out Westy means German will be fired one third is Aubrey sorted this conference was translated into quick action intelligence supply weather operations starting 5 April the campaign against ploy as to Assad none of us knew what it would take to lick it but we did know that until it was flattened we were in for a long grind big air siege of Ploiesti had begun sometimes the fort's would lead sometimes the 24s were out in front although Jerry's flak and fighters often punched holes in our formations he never turned his back over the Adriatic climbing two out unfreeze guns try a few bursts now we're up to 14,000 we like a lot of daylight between us and the Jerry a cake on the Dalmatian coast flak vests go on fashionable for bomber crews helpful to cross the Yugoslav mountains still climbing mighty pretty scenery peaceful foothills that roll to the Danube Valley peaceful until they suddenly erupted with flak most of us were veterans by the time the Ploiesti show started during that winter we'd been over Regensburg steyr budapest ghee or winner Neustadt vienna those targets had been plenty rough going but we always went through if that's called a baptism of fire we'd had it we were ready for Ploiesti but don't get the idea that we were cocky it doesn't take long in this business to learn and there are no milk runs when we saw our top cover it always looked mighty good and when our fighter escort came in sight well to us that was like insurance but one thing we knew whenever our fighters join up it's just a question of time before the Heinie's get in the neighborhood and brother they did they started coming in all around the clock we soon found out that the Luftwaffe was having a tough time replacing the Jerry's we shot down every mission deploy st added names to Gehrig's Bureau of missing persons but one thing we learned early you don't get into that players to show without paying admission it's 30 below zero up here but the cherry has a way of warming things up and the closer to target the warmer it gets black mushrooms were growing thicker in flag alley on every trip and more accurate too as if things weren't already tough enough for us the Jerry gave us another headache smoke pots and for the Bombardier in the front office that smoke screen was a little extra chore to sweat out in addition to his other duties it was always nice leaving that target behind but we were still a long way from that donut lying back at base right now we had other things on our mind what our escort pick us up before the cherries jumped us again with the weather pile up between here and home and what about those mountains they were sure going to see much higher looking at them through a feathered prop that's how it was and it never got any easier the first six missions caused Hitler a lotta C coupons from a capacity of 700,000 tons of crude oil per month we reduced ploy st's production 317 thousand tons a cut of 44 percent it was a good start but only a start and after every mission those of us who made it home knew that as soon as the weather was right we'd be heading straight back to Ploiesti again to hammer it and get hammered back home a donut used to mean dunking over here it meant dining every time we bucked that donut line it meant we'd bucked that target again sometimes the fellas we'd had breakfast with that morning didn't always get back for donuts funny thing about playas tea it's sort of got into your skin after we worked it over from the air it got a treatment on the ground we ate it slept convalesced from it down at Barry headquarters the meeting of the operations planning section began every day at 11:00 but on this day 8 June the problem of smoke screens over Ploiesti still a big headache of the 15th came in for some special treatment by a three operations reckoned it was time for a change in tactics we knew from experience that when our recce boys were over play st the nazis never smoked it up they had always discounted fighter planes as bombing menace they knew our 38 s were over there to take pictures but what they didn't know was that our 38 s now packed a long-range punch that they'd been modified to carry belly tanks and heavy bombs we're gonna dine ball come on over tomorrow using p38 this was a pilots dream 600 miles of buzzy and this was one time that nobody was going to be chewed out for it today it was an order up to bombing altitude there goes the last of the belly tanks target going down for the following two weeks bad weather forced us to raise the siege during this time the Haunted play st had been working fast intelligence told us how they were repairing damage improving the smokescreen increasing the Attic but we were busy to new techniques for blind bombing offset and synchronous pathfinder were being perfected that smokescreen had to be licked beginning 23 June and through 10 August we slugged it play SD for another 8 rounds now the Bombers were getting a well-deserved break long-range fighter escort could run interference all the way to the target and back it was during this period that the fighters took on the best of the Balkan based Luftwaffe and cleaned them out of the skies and when Jerry wouldn't come up the peashooter boys went down and plastid him in his own front yard over the target the Bombers put the newly developed methods to work for offset and synchronous Pathfinder all we needed were certain visible checkpoints to get a bead on our target usually to us Floy st looked like this into the nazis it looked like this we didn't know until later from captured German films how hot we really made it for the Heine no sooner did they put the fires out when large labor battalions began salvage and repair they never stopped trying to patch up that oil barrel of course we had a little patching up to do ourselves our bombers had really had it we never stopped wondering how a hundred and sixty-five pounds of guts and skill could bring home 30 tons of beaten up hardware not see a CAC was getting rougher more accurate business was booming in flak alley not all of the boys walked away from those crash landings by the middle of August the production from Hitler's oil barrel had been reduced to a hundred and forty four thousand tons per month the knock out meant the roughest work was still ahead down at Air Force Headquarters the boss called a meeting of the Wing Commanders we hope this was the huddle that would close the deal on Ploiesti I've called you in today to discuss you to air operations gets West E oil refinery this to teach eclair force during the next three days we'll attack continuously night and day with magic member against all fineries in the area 17 August now with only a couple of the refineries left to polish off Jerry knew just where we were going to strike he pulled in his guns from the knocked out areas concentrated them around the remaining targets and laid it on the skyline for us and even when we were chopping the unseen art out of him he wasn't doing us any good and while the ground crews were giving our bombers that all-night workout the RAF were setting up to fly the nightshift and before the Wimpy's were cooled off we were warming up morning 18 August operations really called it when they said this would be around-the-clock show if the fires we started that day kept burning the RAF boys wouldn't have much trouble finding their target that night they didn't the RAF weren't the only ones on the night shift back at our fields the ground crews were also on a mission not the kind of folks back home read about but one that counts mighty dig in this game it was the way the ground crews hit the ball that kept us in business morning again 19 August not that the flack would have been any less over the mission easier but it would have given us quite a thrill that day if only we've known this was the last time we ever had to bomb Ploiesti it would have given us even more of a thrill if we could have seen this we didn't know we were that good it made you think of a graveyard the graveyard of one third of Hitler's oil it was a quiet place now very quiet but the stillness of Ploiesti traveled far to the beaches of normandy to the coast of southern france to the rhine to berlin a clank of tiger tank treads was not as loud as before the u-boat boys were spending more quiet evenings at home a rumble of traffic on Germany's super highways was becoming a murmur the roar of the Luftwaffe became a side that's how this stillness of Ploiesti was heard that's how strategic bombing pays off we lost more than 2,300 men but we got more than 1400 of them back these were the first and the general made it pretty plain how glad he was to have his men back again yes it was quite a show that day at Barry Airport and now these men were back in the trucks again headed out for another mission only this time their IP would be the Statue of Liberty you