1943 The Low-Altitude Bombing of the Ploesti Oil Fields

http://www.romanoarchives.tk

Mix of Allied and German rarely seen color footage.
Sunday, Aug. 1, 1943. The Liberators started their long flight from airfields in Northern Africa. The low-altitude (to avoid German advanced Radar equipped line of defense) bombing of the Ploesti Oil Fields (Romania) was deemed a success, even though 54 of the 177 bombers that took part were lost, and 53 more were heavily damaged. The refineries output was greatly curtailed, and five Medals of Honor were awarded, the most for any single American military action.
04-23-2010
Today we received the following email regarding this video from Mr. G. Rossiers from the U.S.:
"I've seen the video on YouTube and I'm quite sure the inflight pictures were shot by an almost unknown USAF
cameraman named Jerry Joswick.
When I was young (I was 9, and now I'm 51 lol) I read a book written by him in wich he describes this raid, and precisely the images he shot while pointing his camera through the bomb trap he was surprised and terrified
seeing the Liberator flying under the one he was on board having a wing cut right at the fuselage junction and then fall like a brick...
Jerry Joswick manages to be lucky, because he was in for the Ploiesti raid, but he also was in for Schweinfurt... And then to land with the second attack wave on June 6, 1944 at Omaha beach.
For Omaha beach, as far as I record, he wrote "from far we were thinking that what we were seing above the waves in the distance was tree trunks that the Germans would have dropped in the water to damage the landing boats.
From closer, the trunks happened to be dozens of corpses floating in a sea of blood, and that far from the shore..."
You're doing a great job for history. Keep it on.
Best regards.
G. Rossier"

Soundtrack added (Demo Only) in 2008 by ROMANO-ARCHIVES, performed by Introspective (Vanishing Point - Black Mesa Winds).

Editing by ROMANO-ARCHIVES.

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This is a clip from the ROMANO-ARCHIVES' new website "Unknown World War 2 in Color"-WW2 Europe" section.
At:
http://www.webalice.it/romanoarchives/
Visit also:
http://romanoarchives.altervista.org/
or:
http://digilander.libero.it/romanoarchives/

A better quality silent version of this clip is available.
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