Dramatic Photo Images of a Promising Raid Gone Awry
A bomb group leader saw that that all formation was hopelessly lost. So he broke radio silence, and ordered 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 that suddenly loomed in their path amid the billowing smoke.
Photo images of low-flying B-24 Liberators over Ploesti captured the dynamic drama of the moment. Of the 177 heavy bombers that took off that day, 162 reached Ploesti. 53 of them 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.
