Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 (40 page)

 

 

An impulsive act by an American pilot brought heavy retribution to his
group. The Messerschmitts shot him out of formation with a crippled
engine. As his ship fell behind, shaking with hits, he lowered his
landing gear, the classic act of surrender in the air, but one rarely
used by the American bomber army. The Me-109's ceased fire and formed
a diamond around the B-17 to escort it to their base. Then the American
flight engineer phoned his pilot that he could recover the engine and give
nearly maximum power. The pilot told his gunners to aim at the fighters,
and, upon command, they shot down the Messerschmitts. The B-17 pulled
up its wheels and returned to base.

 

 

The next mission of its group brought a day of terror. Every fighter in
the air attacked the group, virtually ignoring the other bombers. Before
the following mission, the U.S. commander painted out the group symbol
on his rudders, but the fighters ganged up on him as before, calling
his pilots by name and littering the air with burning planes and
parachutes. Throughout the high war on Ploesti the fighters unerringly
picked out the group, exacting heavy revenge.

 

 

 

 

Norman Appold flew two high-level missions to the refineries. To him
Ploesti was a crusade. Some new men went to the deadliest target more
often than his four times. On every mission Gerstenberg took installments
on his price for the refineries -- a 3.6 percent average American loss
per raid. The Fifteenth Air Force paid it from the minting of new planes
and men rolling out of the fully geared production lines and air schools
in the States.

 

 

Hundreds of white parachutes dotted the bomber courses, overtaxing
camp facilities in Romania. None of the high-level men were brought to
Timisul, however. They were kept in Bucharest. The high strikes could not
help hitting civilians. The petulant Romanians talked of the low-level
captives as the "Africans," and complained to them about the unmannerly
"Italians" -- the high-level Americans. The "Africans" grew in esteem
as more "Italians" fell into harsher confinement in Bucharest. The
offensive went on, wider attacks on the whole Romanian oil system --
refineries at Ploesti, rail tanker yards at Brasov and Bucharest, and
water transshipping points at Giurgiu and Constanta.

 

 

On 24 June the popular former commandant at Timisul, Colonel Saulescu,
and his beautiful daughter drove into the POW compound and spread
a picnic for their American friends. Carma brought them news of the
throngs of comrades in prison in Bucharest, where she had volunteered
as an interpreter. She said the boys there were not as gentlemanly as
her low-level favorites. During the bucolic afternoon the bombers struck
Ploesti, Craiova and Brasov.

 

 

It was not a reconnaisance. It was an American defeat, proportionately
heavier than the low-level mission. By now the resilient Gerstenberg was
gaining on the bombers, and oil production was rising, due to extensive
use of smoke screens. He had had two thousand smoke generators placed in
patterns to take advantage of prevailing winds. It took twenty minutes to
raise a smoke blanket over Ploesti, and his radar gave him plenty of time
to prepare for high attacks. The Fifteenth Air Force on this day tried
to circumvent the smoke screens and radar by sending 46 twin-engined
Lightnings with thousand-pound bombs slung on their bellies to attack
under the smoke. The overburdened P-38's were surprised by Messerschmitts
before they reached the target. The second low-level mission on Ploesti
cost 26 Lightnings, more than half the force.

 

 

Yet this bad day was the turning point of the Ploesti campaign. Escorting
Lightnings destroyed ten fighters, and not long after that the Luftwaffe
was a negligible factor. This was due principally to U.S. Mustang (P-51)
and Lightning escorts that were now able to go all the way to the target
with the bombers. Gerstenberg's hoarded fighter strength was vanishing
and he could not get replacements from Goering. In fact, Romanian defense
squadrons were being pulled out to defend northern Italy and Germany.

 

 

Soon after its day of ignominy the Lightning became the dictator of Ploesti.
The Fifteenth Air Force took a leaf from the British textbook and sent
out, in advance of the bombers, a Master Bomber in a Lightning. He sat
high over the target, inspecting Ploesti for holes in the smoke screen.
Despite Gerstenberg's concealment, winds usually exposed a refinery or
two. The Master Bomber openly radiophoned the oncoming destructive force,
directing it to the openings. He was quarterbacking the defense posture
just before the play. The bomb force no longer went in with a pattern
set by side-line coaches in Italy.

 

 

In the end the formula for destroying the refineries, which had begun
with the ponderous Tidal Wave instructions, was found in fewer briefings
at base and more improvisation over the target. Gerstenberg could not
shift fast enough for the Master Bomber.

 

 

At last, in early summer, bombs found Romana Americana, and the deluded
civilians who ran there for sanctuary painfully learned that the United
States was not sparing Standard Oil property. *

 

 

* When the U.S. Strategic Bomb Survey team inspected Ploesti after the
Red Army captured Romania, its Russian hosts were amazed at the
proof that capitalism had destroyed its own property.

 

 

During the ferocious June Battles the air-raid alert sounded on the
Liberator base at Bari, Italy. Radar had picked up a lone, unidentified
aircraft approaching. Three Spitfires scrambled to meet it. The plane
was a new Focke-Wulf 190, with its wheels down. The German machine
waggled its wings and landed. The pilot was resigning from the Ploesti
campaign. German aviation fuel was so low that none could be spared
for training new pilots. What there was went to the front, where the
old pilots kept on fighting and dying hopelessly against giant swarms
of fresh Allied planes. The Tidal Wave fighter pilots were all gone
from Romania. Werner Gerhartz had been shot down twice in Italy, once
by a Liberator, once by an R.A.F. Kittyhawk, and was going to his last
rendezvous at Berlin. Gamecock Hahn had been shot down and killed over
Rome. Sixty U.S. Mustangs jumped Hans Schopper's eight Me-109's at Fulda
and shot off his arm. Hans Eder was killed in Italy. Manfred Spenner was
hunting U.S. artillery liaison planes in Italy when he was hit in German
and American crossfire. He parachuted and was captured in no man's land
by Americans. Uncle Willie Steinmann succeeded Gamecock Hahn in Italy.
He was to be the only Mizil pilot still fighting at the end of the war.

 

 

Bulgarian interceptors were punished severely. Just after Tidal Wave,
Germany had presented 120 French Dewoitine 520 pursuits to the Sixth
Bulgarian Air Polk. The Dew-520 was a good fighter in 1938, but this
was 1944. With this inferior equipment the unfortunate Bulgarians threw
the first blocks on the invading air armies. The bombers and P-38's
knocked them out of the sky. By the time the Bulgarians were traded
up to Me-109's, the invaders had the superior Mustang. When there were
four pilots left in the Wraschdebna strength, the regiment was regrouped
at Karlovo and given thirty Me-109's from battle-repair shops. While
new pilots were being trained, the R.A.F. clobbered the Karlovo field,
killing 82 airmen and destroying or damaging all aircraft, including a
hundred Me-109's in the repair shops.

 

 

At the start of July the Timisul POW's who were counting German military
movements outside the wire noticed a convoy of half-tracks and armored
trucks going north. Gerstenberg was beginning the final phase of his
plans, the creation of
Festung Ploesti
to stop the Red Army and
the national rising. Big changes were at hand. The Royal Air Force now
appeared in force in Romania, bombing Bucharest by night, while American
heavies struck Brasov and Ploesti by day. The Russian cooks and servants
in the POW camp were removed, and the noncommissioned officer prisoners
had to work for the first time. They squawked to Major Matiescu about
cleaning toilets. Food deliveries became uncertain. Uncollected garbage
piled up at the camp gates. The idyl was over.

 

 

They grumbled among themselves about another infliction. Officer Z, the
luncheon speaker at the Bucharest Rotary Club, wore out his welcome in
the officers' camp and came to live with the gunners. Top Sergeant Terry
was equal to the occasion. He called Officer Z before a meeting of the
enlisted men, explained that all duties were shared among them, and put
the officer on latrine duty. Officer Z bought a lamb and butchered and
ate it himself, without sharing the food. The sergeants bleached the
lamb's skull and surreptitiously strung a line on pulleys between the
barracks. At night they put a candle in the skull. Garrett doused the
lights, and they hauled the candlelit skull between the buildings.
The guards poured out, yelling and shooting. They saw the ghostly
death's-head in the sky and fell on their knees in prayer.

 

 

The deteriorating situation offered no such relief to German soldiers
below at the target city. Werner Horn, a radio operator at H.Q.,
Flak Regiment 180, stationed five miles north of Ploesti, lived with
two gnawing anxieties. His fiancée, airwoman Liesel Droge, was in a
plotting center under the American salvoes, and a Soldatenklau, one
who steals soldiers, was prowling among the Luftwaffe technicians. His
name was General Unruh, which means "unrest," and he was causing plenty
of it. Hitler had sent the Soldatenklau to impress rear echelon men
for frontline military duty. Horn was in danger of being torn from his
intended wife into a death mill grinding harder than Ploesti -- the Red
front. By now the Soviets had hurled the last German from their soil and
were gathering a swift and shattering blow for Gerstenberg and Antonescu.

 

 

Horn said, "The U.S. Air Force put us under a test of nerves. Every day
that God made, the attackers swept over. Shortly after sunrise, the
Master Bomber appeared in the sky at great heights, and a few hours later
the bomber formation came. Our troops became unnerved under constant
attack. Daylight was hardly ever seen in Ploesti as the black clouds
rolled over it. And night never really came, as the refineries blazed
away. Everybody felt things were going backward. The supply lines broke
down. Prospects of victory diminished by the hour. The Romanians turned
anti-German. The situation was hopeless, but we had to obey."

 

 

Horn's regimental commander was a great morale asset to the bedeviled men.
Then, late in July, the spirit suddenly went out of him. An unsuccesful
attempt had been made on Hitler's life and the plotters were being rounded
up. The commander listlessly obeyed an order to report in Bucharest,
where the Gestapo pushed him out a high window, as a suspected member
of the assassination ring. Sergeant Horn decided he had to disobey.
He trumped up medical grounds for sending his fiancée home to Germany,
and she left before the debacle of Romania.

 

 

At Timisul the Romanians took away the sheets and blankets from the POW's.
Matiescu separated the officers and men, confiscated the radios, and
took up the rule of an uneasy tyrant. The bomber hordes came stronger and
more often. On 15 July, 607 planes bombed Ploesti. An FW-190 fell toward
the camp, shedding its wings, but crashed beyond the wire. John Palm,
finding the bombing rather hazardous for a chap with a peg leg, took a
vacation in the Alps and brought along to Timisul a high-level officer
named John Cune. Cune gave the Rip Van Winkles of Tidal Wave a year's
news from home; he described the awesome B-29 Superfortress and the new
hot Liberator and the Black Widow fighter. The POW's learned for the
first time that they had all been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

 

 

The first of August, the first anniversary of Tidal Wave, the POW's
spent in somber contemplation of life, thanking God for deliverance,
or getting happily drunk.

 

 

For some months the Romanian paymaster, who was known as "Jesse James,"
had been stealing part of their salaries. Major Matiescu, who was
suspected of getting some of the loot, would not listen to complaints.
Sergeant Doll wrote a letter of protest to the Romanian Minister of War
and gave it to "Jesse James" for transmittal to Bucharest. The thief
was thunderstruck. In his army an ill-humored glance from an enlisted
man entitled an officer to thrash the soldier on the spot. The puzzled
officer alternately threatened Doll and whined to him, but the soldier
stood his ground. The complaint actually reached the minister. He settled
it in Romanian fashion, by ordering Doll and three fellow protestors,
including Lieutenant Henry Lasco, to imprisonment in Bucharest with
the high-level captives, under the bombs. During the slow rail journey
Doll got a good look at the high-level depredations at Ploesti. Among
Romanian passengers he noted a healthy increase in the national spirit
kindled a year before by Tidal Wave.

 

 

Princess Caradja visited Timisul and was accosted by Sergeant
Robert Locky, who, she said, was "a boy who could get anything out of
me." Locky asked her for electrical wire, sockets and bulbs for a big camp
show. "Copper wire is just about the last thing you can find in Romania,"
she told him, "but I'll try." Locky said, "If you have any old ladies'
dresses lying around, we could use them to dress up in -- I mean for the
show." She left in a pensive mood, suspecting he wanted the electrical
gear to light a tunnel, and the dresses for getaway disguises. During her
visits to the camp she had scrupulously avoided involvement in military
matters. Antonescu's fascist crowd had indulged her as an anti-Soviet
brainwasher, but if she were inculpated in an escape plot, the Iron Guard
would surely try to hang her. Nonetheless, she scrounged the lighting
equipment and rummaged in her attic for female costumes. She heaved open a
mildewed trunk and gazed inside with a wicked grin. It contained camphored
layers of ball gowns worn by her mother, Princess Irene Cantacuzene, at
galas in Vienna and Budapest in the halcyon days of the Second Hapsburg
Empire. Here were enough watered silks and lace, swags and bangles,
bugle beads and boas for the camp show! Runaway G.I.'s scuttling
cross-country in this