Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan, Carroll Stewart Page B
Authors: James Dugan, Carroll Stewart
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low-flying
formations because of their inability to follow fast-moving targets. The
results would be nil. The target has been unmolested for years and is
not expected to be alert."
Squadron operations officers searched files and faces to find men to fill
out the combat crews. Walter T. Holmes, who had completed his own ordained
missions, was the operations man in an Eight Ball squadron. Hating to do
it, he called in pilot Robert Lehnhausen, who was not yet recovered from
his crash in the sea. Lehnhausen said, "I have no desire to fly a mission,
but will if I am ordered to go." Holmes, a shy man, mumbled something
which the pilot construed as a direct order: "Okay, Bob," said Holmes,
"check yourself into the green hut." Holmes had already been in the hut
and felt sorry for the men he had to send there. He did not know that
on the eve of the raid he would look over his crew lists, find nobody to
pilot a first wave ship on Blue Target, and would write in his own name.
Lehnhausen joined the crowd in the green hut and looked at the exhibits.
"Ploesti?" he asked himself. "Where have I heard of that before?" The
occasion came back to him in a seizure of trepidation: in the hospital
at Malta three weeks before, an American colonel coming to his bed
and saying, "Did you people come out here to bomb Ploesti?" Lehnhausen
wondered how many other outsiders knew the objective. "Does the enemy
know it too?" The pilot left the hut, keeping "the feeling of horror"
to himself, not wishing to alarm the others.
On this day in the enemy camp General Gerstenberg also received bad
news. A terrible thing had happened in Germany. He went to the railway
station to bid goodbye to one of his two precious 500-man regiments
of fire police. They had been ordered to Hamburg to fight the fire
typhoon which took 60,000 lives in three nights. The cataclysm
began with one secret weapon and ended with another. On 25 July the
R.A.F. reached Hamburg, almost unopposed, by dropping a blizzard of
metalized paper strips to craze the German radar. The bombers dropped
the new RDX-2 blast bomb, whose monstrous explosion raised a tornadic
updraft that sucked in ground air in a fiery tempest that seethed
through whole blocks of buildings. It carried flaming trees torn out
of the ground by the roots. The survivors said it was "beyond all human
imagination." Gerstenberg's people wondered whether the new weapon was
coming to Ploesti. Quite the contrary was true: the Americans had only
general-purpose bombs, and recent tests on a U.S. proving ground had
determined the dismaying fact that 50 percent of the 1,000-pound bombs
failed to detonate and a quarter of the 500-pounders did not go off.
Tidal Wave labored under another severe handicap. Normally the Liberator's
Pratt & Whitney engines had a life of 300 hours. However, in the desert
grit they were good for only 60 hours. Sam Nero had hundreds of "Pratt &
Wog" engines on his hands -- tired mechanisms that had been repaired all
too often in the desert. The minimum 2,300-mile trip to Ploesti required
new-engine performance. Nero called for 300 engines from the States,
an order beyond the lift capacity of Air Transport Command. Washington
borrowed the fast liner Mauretania from Britain and she brought the
engines to Benghazi two days before the mission. The mechanics began a
sleepless 48-hour job to install them in time.
Killer Kane's khamseen-weary ships were already in shocking condition
when his engineering inspector came down with dysentery. He borrowed
an inspector from the Eight Balls -- Master Sergeant Francis I. Fox,
Regular Army -- who pronounced 32 of Kane's Liberators unfit to fly.
Fox cracked the whip on the numb ground crews, teaching, hectoring,
cozening, and gave Kane 40 Pyramider planes for take-off.
On Friday, 30 July, General Brereton flew from his Cairo headquarters to
Benghazi, bringing along Lord Forbes
formations because of their inability to follow fast-moving targets. The
results would be nil. The target has been unmolested for years and is
not expected to be alert."
Squadron operations officers searched files and faces to find men to fill
out the combat crews. Walter T. Holmes, who had completed his own ordained
missions, was the operations man in an Eight Ball squadron. Hating to do
it, he called in pilot Robert Lehnhausen, who was not yet recovered from
his crash in the sea. Lehnhausen said, "I have no desire to fly a mission,
but will if I am ordered to go." Holmes, a shy man, mumbled something
which the pilot construed as a direct order: "Okay, Bob," said Holmes,
"check yourself into the green hut." Holmes had already been in the hut
and felt sorry for the men he had to send there. He did not know that
on the eve of the raid he would look over his crew lists, find nobody to
pilot a first wave ship on Blue Target, and would write in his own name.
Lehnhausen joined the crowd in the green hut and looked at the exhibits.
"Ploesti?" he asked himself. "Where have I heard of that before?" The
occasion came back to him in a seizure of trepidation: in the hospital
at Malta three weeks before, an American colonel coming to his bed
and saying, "Did you people come out here to bomb Ploesti?" Lehnhausen
wondered how many other outsiders knew the objective. "Does the enemy
know it too?" The pilot left the hut, keeping "the feeling of horror"
to himself, not wishing to alarm the others.
On this day in the enemy camp General Gerstenberg also received bad
news. A terrible thing had happened in Germany. He went to the railway
station to bid goodbye to one of his two precious 500-man regiments
of fire police. They had been ordered to Hamburg to fight the fire
typhoon which took 60,000 lives in three nights. The cataclysm
began with one secret weapon and ended with another. On 25 July the
R.A.F. reached Hamburg, almost unopposed, by dropping a blizzard of
metalized paper strips to craze the German radar. The bombers dropped
the new RDX-2 blast bomb, whose monstrous explosion raised a tornadic
updraft that sucked in ground air in a fiery tempest that seethed
through whole blocks of buildings. It carried flaming trees torn out
of the ground by the roots. The survivors said it was "beyond all human
imagination." Gerstenberg's people wondered whether the new weapon was
coming to Ploesti. Quite the contrary was true: the Americans had only
general-purpose bombs, and recent tests on a U.S. proving ground had
determined the dismaying fact that 50 percent of the 1,000-pound bombs
failed to detonate and a quarter of the 500-pounders did not go off.
Tidal Wave labored under another severe handicap. Normally the Liberator's
Pratt & Whitney engines had a life of 300 hours. However, in the desert
grit they were good for only 60 hours. Sam Nero had hundreds of "Pratt &
Wog" engines on his hands -- tired mechanisms that had been repaired all
too often in the desert. The minimum 2,300-mile trip to Ploesti required
new-engine performance. Nero called for 300 engines from the States,
an order beyond the lift capacity of Air Transport Command. Washington
borrowed the fast liner Mauretania from Britain and she brought the
engines to Benghazi two days before the mission. The mechanics began a
sleepless 48-hour job to install them in time.
Killer Kane's khamseen-weary ships were already in shocking condition
when his engineering inspector came down with dysentery. He borrowed
an inspector from the Eight Balls -- Master Sergeant Francis I. Fox,
Regular Army -- who pronounced 32 of Kane's Liberators unfit to fly.
Fox cracked the whip on the numb ground crews, teaching, hectoring,
cozening, and gave Kane 40 Pyramider planes for take-off.
On Friday, 30 July, General Brereton flew from his Cairo headquarters to
Benghazi, bringing along Lord Forbes
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