Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan, Carroll Stewart
Authors: James Dugan, Carroll Stewart
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so fast, you can't see them. We have to get something upright. After
all, the refineries are tall." The engineers planted poles topped with
fluttering rags on the corners of the aiming points. Timberlake flew over
them at German reconnaissance altitude and could not see them. Then pilots
aimed for the poles at ground level and also failed to see them. Arabs
had stolen the rag pennants overnight. When the engineers topped the
poles with shredded petrol tins, the Senussi left them alone and the
ground-hugging test pilots found their aiming points.
One by one the five B-24 groups roared into the mock Ploesti, dropping
wooden practice bombs and having a wonderful time. Afterward, the men held
mock interrogations. "Sergeant, how many camels did you get today?"
"Well, sir, one certain and one probable." "Like hell you did. That
certain camel was mine." Two Liberators came back from the lowest buzzes
on record with paint scraped from their bellies.
The commander of the ambitious junior Sky Scorpion group, Colonel Jack
Wood, who remarkably resembled the playwright Eugene O'Neill, thought
beyond target marksmanship to navigational problems of the long flight to
Ploesti, in which bombing cohesion could be denied by errors in navigation
and formation-keeping. He instructed his deputy, Major John A. Brooks
III, to take the Scorpions six hundred miles into Africa, deliberately
try to trick the navigators into error and see if they could come back
and hit the dummy target. Brooks made some calculations and announced,
"Colonel, we'll be on target at 1603 hours."
After the planes flew off, Wood loaded his ground officers and dozens of
smoke pots in a truck and drove to the dummy to surprise Brooks with smoke
screens, which were expected to be a serious obstacle at Ploesti. Gasping
in the baking sun, the officers planted the pots around the effigy of Red
Target. One of them called, "Colonel, it's 1600, close to ETA." Wood said,
"Don't worry, they'll never make it on time." Exactly on the predicted
minute, Brooks brought the ear-shattering bomber front over the target
at a height of twenty feet. Below, the fliers saw a Mack Sennett episode
-- their superiors dodging the skipping bombs, piling into a jeep that
would not start, and taking to their heels again. At dinner, Brooks said
as evenly as possible, "Well, Colonel, you knew our ETA."
Despite the fun of buzzing, the prolonged practice missions and the
unfolding of still more special briefing material increased speculation
and foreboding about the real thing. The airmen thought that a target all
this important was bound to present machine-gun fire. Geerlings said,
"Probably the most discussed question among all ranks was what losses
would be due to small-arms fire." The architect joined volunteers
who lay in desert foxholes with broomstick machine guns which they
tried to train on dust-swirling bombers coming from unknown directions
at unannounced times. "It's something beyond belief," said Geerlings,
"when from nowhere there is a sound of power and fury, coming and going
before one's reflexes can do anything but duck. I swallowed a lot of
sand and never got a satisfactory shot." Meanwhile, other men with real
machine guns were crouching in pits around Ploesti tracking Woldenga's
surprise practice bombings of the refineries.
During the desert rehearsals a ground crew chief grew suspicious of
an officer in a clean uniform who was snooping around the base. The
G.I. challenged the stranger, who identified himself as a member of the
Psychological Warfare Division. The mechanic said, "Jeez, we can sure
use you to examine some of the screwballs driving these airplanes."
in the last week of July all the flying officers had passed through
the green hut, and then the secret was exposed to the sergeants. Not
since Bernard Montgomery revealed his plan for El Alamein to all ranks
before the battle had such a
all, the refineries are tall." The engineers planted poles topped with
fluttering rags on the corners of the aiming points. Timberlake flew over
them at German reconnaissance altitude and could not see them. Then pilots
aimed for the poles at ground level and also failed to see them. Arabs
had stolen the rag pennants overnight. When the engineers topped the
poles with shredded petrol tins, the Senussi left them alone and the
ground-hugging test pilots found their aiming points.
One by one the five B-24 groups roared into the mock Ploesti, dropping
wooden practice bombs and having a wonderful time. Afterward, the men held
mock interrogations. "Sergeant, how many camels did you get today?"
"Well, sir, one certain and one probable." "Like hell you did. That
certain camel was mine." Two Liberators came back from the lowest buzzes
on record with paint scraped from their bellies.
The commander of the ambitious junior Sky Scorpion group, Colonel Jack
Wood, who remarkably resembled the playwright Eugene O'Neill, thought
beyond target marksmanship to navigational problems of the long flight to
Ploesti, in which bombing cohesion could be denied by errors in navigation
and formation-keeping. He instructed his deputy, Major John A. Brooks
III, to take the Scorpions six hundred miles into Africa, deliberately
try to trick the navigators into error and see if they could come back
and hit the dummy target. Brooks made some calculations and announced,
"Colonel, we'll be on target at 1603 hours."
After the planes flew off, Wood loaded his ground officers and dozens of
smoke pots in a truck and drove to the dummy to surprise Brooks with smoke
screens, which were expected to be a serious obstacle at Ploesti. Gasping
in the baking sun, the officers planted the pots around the effigy of Red
Target. One of them called, "Colonel, it's 1600, close to ETA." Wood said,
"Don't worry, they'll never make it on time." Exactly on the predicted
minute, Brooks brought the ear-shattering bomber front over the target
at a height of twenty feet. Below, the fliers saw a Mack Sennett episode
-- their superiors dodging the skipping bombs, piling into a jeep that
would not start, and taking to their heels again. At dinner, Brooks said
as evenly as possible, "Well, Colonel, you knew our ETA."
Despite the fun of buzzing, the prolonged practice missions and the
unfolding of still more special briefing material increased speculation
and foreboding about the real thing. The airmen thought that a target all
this important was bound to present machine-gun fire. Geerlings said,
"Probably the most discussed question among all ranks was what losses
would be due to small-arms fire." The architect joined volunteers
who lay in desert foxholes with broomstick machine guns which they
tried to train on dust-swirling bombers coming from unknown directions
at unannounced times. "It's something beyond belief," said Geerlings,
"when from nowhere there is a sound of power and fury, coming and going
before one's reflexes can do anything but duck. I swallowed a lot of
sand and never got a satisfactory shot." Meanwhile, other men with real
machine guns were crouching in pits around Ploesti tracking Woldenga's
surprise practice bombings of the refineries.
During the desert rehearsals a ground crew chief grew suspicious of
an officer in a clean uniform who was snooping around the base. The
G.I. challenged the stranger, who identified himself as a member of the
Psychological Warfare Division. The mechanic said, "Jeez, we can sure
use you to examine some of the screwballs driving these airplanes."
in the last week of July all the flying officers had passed through
the green hut, and then the secret was exposed to the sergeants. Not
since Bernard Montgomery revealed his plan for El Alamein to all ranks
before the battle had such a
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