 Exploring
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The
P-38's Blackest Day 6.10.44 By
Thomas Mckelvey Cleaver |
| An 82nd FG P-38 heads toward a target. Note the roughness of the terrain below (photo courtesy of Jack Watson via Warren Thompson). |
Dawn: June 10, 1944. The great complex of air bases near Foggia, Italy, bustles with activity as the sun rises. Forty-six 82nd FG Lockheed P-38J Lightnings from the 95th, 96th and 97th Fighter Squadrons, each carrying a 1,000-pound bomb on the right wing shackle and a 310-gallon ferry drop tank on the left, shake the Foggia No. 11/Vincenzo airfield as they taxi for takeoff. Over the Adriatic, 48 1st Fighter Group P-38Js of the 27th, 71st and 94th FS flying escorts will join them. One after another over southern Italy, nearly 100 P-38s take wing and climb to altitude. Their target: Ploesti-the major oil refinery complex in Europe and more than 600 miles away across the Adriatic Sea and over the mountains of Yugoslavia. The mission: to dive-bomb the Romano-Americano oil refinery, which is the primary producer of high-grade aviation gasoline for the Luftwaffe. It will be recorded as the blackest day in the history of the American fighter forces in WW II. For Germany, access to and control of oil supplies were crucial for victory. Modern warfare ran on an ocean of oil, and there was none in Germany. The German synthetic-fuel industry-based on extensive coal deposits-could provide some petroleum products, but for warfare on the scale envisioned in Hitler's plans, the control of major oil resources was of maximum importance. Conversely, the destruction of Germany's oil supplies would lead to military defeat faster than the destruction of any other strategic target. The largest oil fields in Europe were in Romania, at the western end of the Black Sea-now known to hold some of the largest oil reserves on the planet. In 1939 and 1940, as Europe went to war, Romania remained neutral, as it had in WW I. Following the fall of Poland, the Soviet Union took Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania. While the British dithered over an alliance with a nation now run by the fascist government of Gen. Ion Antonescu, the Germans romanced the Romanians with every "gift" they could think of. On October 12, 1940, Luftwaffe fighter squadrons arrived to provide air defense for the oil fields around Ploesti, and Romania joined the Axis powers on November 23; Hitler had secured his oil supply. The Allies were well aware that if Ploesti could be knocked out, the German war machine would soon grind to a halt. The problem was that the oil fields were out of flight range. Only after the Allies had gained control of North Africa in the summer of 1943 did Ploesti come within range, and even then it was a stretch. On August 1, 1943, the American 9th Air Force launched Operation Tidal Wave-a strike by B-24s flying from Libya to Romania. Although the raid was spotted by German radar, the low-level attack caught the defenders off-guard; the Romanian and German air defenders spotted the attackers as they bombed the oil refineries. In an hour-long battle, 36 of 130 B-24s were shot down-10 by Romanian Bf 109Gs and IAR 80 fighters, seven by the Luftwaffe and the remainder by flak. Numerous other Liberators were so badly damaged that they were shot down over Bulgaria and Greece, crashed into the Mediterranean, or crashed on landing back in Libya. Tidal Wave was declared a success, but it was a short-lived victory inasmuch as the Ploesti oil refineries were only moderately damaged and production was resumed within a few weeks. More important, the joint Romanian/German air defense was reorganized and reinforced. The Allies knew that the next round would be even more difficult, particularly when Oberst Eduard Neumann (formerly Kommandant of JG 27 in North Africa) was named commander of the defending German and Romanian fighters in March 1944. By April 1944, the USAAF had bases for B-17s and B-24s around Foggia, Italy. The 15th Air Force had been created during November 1943 as the MTO equivalent of the 8th AF. With the P-51 Mustang only just starting to replace the Spitfires of the 31st and 52nd Fighter Groups as well as the P-47s of the 325th FG, the P-38-equipped 1st, 14th and 82nd FGs were the most experienced long-range bomber escorts in the command. The campaign against Ploesti began again on April 5, 1944, when 91 German and 81 Romanian fighters scrambled against the U.S. bombers hitting Ploesti and claimed 14-close to the nine B-24s and two B-17s admitted by the USAAF. 
As the Soviet armies closed in from the northeast, the Romanians had to send the experienced pilots of Grupul 7 Vanatoare-the Bf 109-equipped 7th FG-to meet this threat. The primary defense of Ploesti was now the responsibility of Grupul 6, which was equipped with IAR 80/81 fighters; Grupul 1, with Bf 109s, occasionally joined them. In total, the defenders had no more than 30 Bf 109s and 70 IAR 80s. The IAR 80-the only domestically designed Romanian fighter to see service during the War-was obsolete compared with the P-51 Mustangs and P-38 Lightnings flown by their U.S. opponents. The cannon-armed IAR 81C was, however, particularly effective against the bombers, and in the eight raids flown against Ploesti between April 5 and June 6, 1944, the bombers averaged an unacceptably heavy seven-percent loss rate. Because of the tenacity of the defense and the effectiveness of the smoke generators based around the oil fields, the most valuable target-the Romano-Americano oil refinery-had escaped serious damage. It was too important to leave; something different had to be tried in an effort to knock it out.
"For whatever reason, that refinery led a charmed life," he recalled. "So, some bright guy at headquarters decided that since the heavies couldn't hit it from 25,000 feet, we would dive-bomb it from 10,000 feet. We had been practicing this on an island off the Italian coast for a week, and we felt we were good enough to have a chance of being successful." Willsie by that time had been flying with the 82nd for nearly a year and was the senior man in the squadron in missions flown. "There were 46 of us with bombs, and 48 P-38 escorts from the 1st Fighter Group," Willsie explained. "The strategy was that we would join up while crossing the Adriatic and fly over Yugoslavia until we got to the mountains, at which point we would go into Romania on the deck-and I mean we were to remain at 50 to 100 feet altitude when we came out of the mountains." Low-level formation flying is difficult under the best circumstances, let alone when two, three-squadron formations are flying on the deck under radio silence for two-and-a-half hours. Unfortunately for the Americans, the German air-defense radar spotted them over Yugoslavia before they entered Romanian airspace. This negated the value of the difficult low-level penetration, since they had lost the element of surprise. To cap things off, shortly after coming out of the mountains, the two groups had been separated. Both accelerated into their attack as they punched off their drop tanks over fields..
Within minutes, Capitan Vizante and Grupul 6 were in position. Moments later, the P-38s of the 1st FG passed Popesti-Leordeni airfield and spotted four Do.217s attempting to land. Three flights of the 71st FS broke off to attack these aircraft. Moments later, they were bounced by the diving IAR 80s of Grupul 6.
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