USAAF Training Film For Ploesti Part 1

This is the official training film for one of the most significant raids by the USAAF in World War Two. The raid was mounted by 178 US Liberator bombers of the North Africa-based Ninth USAAF comprised of five groups of B-24 Liberators - three of them borrowed from the Eighth Air Force in the United Kingdom. The August 1st 1943 raid took place on the oilfields near Ploesti in Romania. By 1943 these oilfields were the most heavily defended targets in Europe, and surprise was not achieved as the Germans were reading Ninth USAAF's codes. When the mission's top two navigators were shot down before arriving at the target confusion followed: 54 bombers were lost, 41 of them in action, and 532 of their crews were either killed, wounded, or made prisoners-of-war. It was the only American air action of the war in which five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded.

I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "Ploesti." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Oxford University Press. Encyclopedia.com. 16 Jan. 2010 http://www.encyclopedia.com.

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