WORLD WAR II
When, we moved from Vallejo to Fairfield, a little over a year ago, Mary, Joan and Sue cleaned out our home and garage, and made managerial decisions on which of our “toys, souvenirs and keepsakes to “save”. They filled a public storage with beaucoup plastic bins. This was to be a short term solution - to avoid a tedious and time consuming chore of perusing and decision making - “keep - Goodwill - or “deep six”.
How time flies! I haven’t been to the storage facility, to interrupt my procrastination, until yesterday. Joan took me out to the storage place to start my “search and destroy” mission. Joan did all the heavy lifting, but I started to enjoy renewing memories of days and activities past - during the sorting process. This can really slow down the mission. It was warm (a bottle of water day), and the heat from the metal shed didn’t help. We did make a dent in the pile - not through making many disposal decisions, but what I wanted to keep. I brought some of that stuff back with me. We were probably there an hour and a half, before I ran out of gas.
One of the things I brought back, was a five book- set published by the Postal Service:
1941: A WORLD AT WAR
1942: INTO THE BATTLE
1943: TURNING THE TIDE
1944: ROAD TO VICTORY
1945: VICTORY AT LAST
I don’t remember looking through these books before, but when I started reading them tonight I found some notes that I made after reading the 1943 volume, which brought back recall! My first note was about the infamous air raid on the Ploesti (Romania) oil fields, as follows:
I lost many classmates from my Bombardier School in Victorville (CA)- (Class of 42-15) on this raid. I remember talking to a survivor, who said of the 200 B-24’s that set out to bomb the oil refinery on
August 1,1943 from North Africa - a very long mission, up and back, over the Mediterranean. We lost 50 planes, and 500 crewmen. That was an unacceptable 25 %! Loss ratio.
The refinery was in a hollow. On the rim above, the Germans had positioned 88mm guns. This was a very effective weapon. They used the guns as anti-tank weapons as well as anti-aircraft guns. They could be mounted on barges, or on land, as anti aircraft guns. When so used, the guns were not only radar controlled as to your course and speed, but the guns set the fuses to trigger an explosion at your altitude, if they didn’t strike a plane first.
During the Ploesti raid, the 88’s were firing “down hill“, as the B-24’s were flying below the gun batteries - about 50 feet off the deck. Many of the losses were due to the poor bomb run execution, rather than enemy fire. Some of the B-24’s flew the wrong routes in the target area. Their bombs had fuse delays so that the bomber had time to clear the area, before the bomb exploded. Then, when another wave of B-24’s flew over that same area (their correct course and target) on their bombing runs, they were blown up by the explosions of the previously erratically dropped bombs!
Other notes to follow.
RCL - 6-3-09.