Seventy Years Ago Today: Black Sunday

We of the other services sometimes chide our Air Force brethren for not being “hardcore” enough. And in some respects, that’s certainly true.  The Air Force lifestyle is in general  considered the least stressful of any of the military services.  Ground combat it ain’t – by design.

Still, some in the Air Force are certifiably hardcore at times.  And seventy years ago today, “hardcore” doesn’t even begin to describe the actions of a group of roughly 1650 Army Air Forces personnel.

Today marks the seventieth anniversary of one of the most costly US operations in World War II:  Operation Tidal Wave.  This operation was a large-scale bombing raid on oil facilities near Ploesti, Romania.  It was executed by elements of the 8th and 9th Army Air Forces.

As in many wartime operations, politics played a part.  The operation had been agreed to by the POTUS and British Prime Minister at their conference in Casablanca in January 1943.

It wasn’t solely a political target, though.  The Ploesti oil facilities were chosen as the operation’s target as they were believed to be a critical part of the “Achillies heel” for the Axis war effort:  POL production.  Postwar analysis was to show that this assessment regarding Axis POL production was correct – even if for many reasons Ploesti turned out not to be a single point of failure.

Ploesti was too far away from bases in England to be reached by aircraft operating from bases there.  The USSR would not permit US or British aircraft to operate from its territory; suitable bases in the eastern Mediterranean did not exist.

The operational concept was to launch a bombing raid from airfields in North Africa.  The planes would fly northward, skirt the Greek coast, cross inland over Albania, and then attack the Ploesti facilities from the west.  They would then return to base.

The closest suitable bases available to support the attack were austere facilities near Benghazi, in Libya.  The operation was marginal due to range – a round-trip of approximately 2,300 miles.  Due to a lack of available aircraft, the operation’s targets were to be attacked via low-level bombing.  (Less than 200 B-24s were to be available for the operation; a minimum of 1,400 were estimated required if the targets were attacked using high-altitude bombing.)  The additional speed and surprise provided by a low-level attack were assessed sufficient to negate much of the Axis air defenses in the target area.  This – plus the additional damage due to the enhanced precision of low-level bombing – would therefore allow the Ploesti refinery complexes to be attacked successfully with the forces available. Even so, high casualties were foreseen – estimates ran as high as 50%.

Yet the operation was nonetheless approved in spite of expected heavy casualties.  The target was considered so critical that, in the words of then US Army Air Forces Brigadier General Uzal G.Ent, “If nobody comes back, the results will be worth the cost.”  (Other sources attribute a similar quote to US Army Air Forces Major General Lewis Brereton.)  For what it’s worth:  Brig. Gen. Ent was the not merely pontificating about sending others on what might be a potential suicide mission from the safety of some remote HQ.  He personally flew over Ploesti during Operation Tidal Wave.

Operation Tidal Wave was executed on 1 August 1943.  The operation depended on virtually everything going according to plan.

As is common in war, everything most decidedly did not go as planned.

One B-24 crashed shortly after takeoff.  In-flight difficulties caused the loss of another 12 aircraft:  one that crashed at sea; one that searched for survivors from the crash and could not later catch up with and rejoin its formation; and another 10 aircraft forced for various reasons to abort.  Technical and navigation errors further unhinged the mission’s timing – which had been designed to hit its targets near-simultaneously in order to confuse/overwhelm air defenses and add to the chances of returning safely; a simultaneous attack was no longer possible.

Radio silence, imposed as a security measure, made in-flight coordination difficult to impossible (until abandoned out of necessity after a major navigational gaffe), and was in any case perhaps unnecessary.  A previous small (13-plane) raid against Ploesti launched from airfields in Egypt nearly 14 months earlier had identified to Axis planners the vulnerability of this critical asset.  From intercepted radio traffic, Axis intelligence correctly deduced that the Allies were planning some type of air operation in the Mediterranean and that the Ploesti refinery complex as the most likely target.  As a result, air defenses near Ploesti were greatly improved, and were dramatically stronger than expected – including a locally-based “aerial welcoming committee” that by some accounts outnumbered the bombers participating in the raid.  German radar tracked the mission as well, starting shortly after takeoff, passing this information to German air defense headquarters in Bucharest – about 35 miles south of Ploesti..

In short:  the airmen in Operation Tidal Wave were flying into the teeth of serious trouble. Trouble knew they were coming.  And when they got to Ploesti, trouble bit them.  Hard.

Yet on arriving, the men executing the mission carried on.  They fulfilled their orders to the best of their ability.

Several excellent and publicly-available articles give more detail concerning the events over Ploesti that day, as well as additional background on the operation’s planning and execution.  A brief overview article from the USAF web site may be found here.  A longer article from Air Force Magazine may be found here; while a third, more detailed article from Doug Sterner’s Home of Heroes web site may be found here.  All three are worthwhile reading; there are many others.  Even the Wikipedia article on Operation Tidal Wave is reasonably good.

I won’t attempt to present details here.  Suffice it to say that reading the linked articles is IMO well worth the time.

After running the gauntlet of ground fire and aerial attack, the survivors limped home.  More were lost during the return to base.

. . .

Militarily, for the US Operation Tidal Wave was at best a Pyrrhic victory – and at worst a disaster.  Although the operation did damage Romanian oil facilities near Ploesti, the damage was neither complete nor catastrophic.  It was also repaired quickly by Axis authorities.  A September assessment indicated that the operation appeared to have caused “no curtailment of overall product output”.

The cost to US forces making the attack was extreme.

A total of 178 aircraft and 1,764 aircrew embarked on Operation Tidal Wave.  Due to losses and aborts enroute, only 165 of the aircraft  made it to Ploesti.

Only 92 aircraft returned to their bases near Benghazi – and of these, only 33 were fit to fly the following day.  Seventeen additional aircraft diverted safely to other Allied bases instead of returning home.

A total of 54 aircraft were lost during the operation.  Another seven were interned in Turkey with their crews for the duration of the war.

A total of 532 aircrew were lost – KIA, MIA, taken POW, or interned in neutral Turkey for the duration of the war.  Additionally, at least 440 aircrew were reportedly WIA.

The overall casualty rate for Operation Tidal Wave appears to have been in excess of 55%.  (It’s unclear if any POWs or internees were included in the WIA total.  The calculation assumes they were not.)

That’s a higher total casualty rate than was sustained by Confederate forces during Pickett’s Charge.

. . .

In his comments to the after-action-report for the Rapido River debacle in Italy during January 1944, Brigadier Howard Kippenberger of New Zealand noted that “Nothing was right except the courage.”   This statement applies equally well to Operation Tidal Wave.

Little went right operationally.  But the courage was indeed right.  That day uncommon valor was commonplace – if not the norm.

During Operation Tidal Wave, in a brief period in the skies near Ploesti, Romania, individual and collective acts of valor occurred such that:

• At least the Silver Star was awarded to every aircrew member that attacked Ploesti.
• Literally dozens of Distinguished Service Crosses were awarded.
• The Medal of Honor was awarded to five different individuals – the most awarded for acts occurring during any single air operation in World War II.  These individuals were Col. John R. Kane, Col. Leon Johnson, Lt. Col. Addison Baker, Maj. John Jerstad, and Lt. Lloyd “Pete” Hughes.  Three of these – to Baker, Jerstad, and Hughes – were awarded posthumously.

Hardcore?  In a word:  yes.  However, IMO “hardcore” really isn’t the best word to describe this group of men.

A better word for their conduct over Ploesti also begins with the letter “h”.  That better word is “heroic”.

We salute you, my elder brothers-in-arms.  Your courage that day should make every American proud.

Many thanks.

 

Author’s Note:  August 1, 1943, was a Sunday.  For obvious reasons, within the Army Air Forces that day was often later referred to as “Black Sunday”.

Category: Air Force, Historical, Real Soldiers