[Prophet in the wilderness]

Their mission was to bomb a German oil field.

"We bombed Ploesti, so the Germans would be penalized for their lack of gasoline. But we paid one terrible price for that because the Germans knew what altitude we would come in," says Arthur "Jibby" Jibilian from Fremont. "They knew the formation we would come in. They had us zeroed in perfectly, and we were like sitting ducks."

Lose lips sink ships, someone must have leaked the plans of this operation to the Germans... sounds like something the NEW YORK TIMES would do.

[Smokin' Joe]

Their mission was to bomb a German oil field.

Close, but no seegar.

The refinery complex at Ploesti was a group of five refienries ringing the town with pipelines and interconnections set up in such a way that any of the refineries could be bypassed in the event there was a problem, in order to keep the flow of petroleum products moving. It was essential to the Reich's war effort.

It was also defended by more antiaircraft batteries than Berlin.

The loss rate on the raids there was near 50%, and greater in some units. In order to reduce the time the antiaircraft gunners to acquire and fire at the planes, and to increase accuracy of bombing, they came in at low level. The bombs had timed fuses to keep from blowing the planes in the formation around the sky when they went off (they went in that low).

The raids were successful and hurt the Axis war effort severely.

[Domangart]

That was the Army Air Farce that screwed up the mission. The goof balls got on the radio and gave away enough information that the Germans knew they were coming. A B-24 outfit from north Africa with a name starting with R.