Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 Read Online Free PDF

American built bombers against the Germans."
     
     
The Turkish internees did not slump into the comfortable life. They wanted

back in the fight. Charles Davis met a Turk who offered to further this

ambition. On certain nights, after the day's parole was over, Davis

let pairs of airmen out of his hotel window on a knotted rope, into a

courtyard, from which the Turkish friend put them on the Taurus Express

for Allied Syria. In order not to embarrass Turkish border controls, the

escapees detrained short of the boundary and were escorted across it on

foot by another anonymous friend. Three who escaped in this fashion --

Red Wicklund, Lieutenant William Zimmerman and Sergeant John E. O'Conner

-- were destined to fly to Ploesti again on a terrible raid.
     
     
Pilot Eugene L. Ziesel often took his crew to Ankara airport to see that

the new owners of his Liberator were treating her well. Turkish airmen

gathered around Ziesel for lectures on the prodigious contrivance. Ziesel

said, "I'm worried about the engines. They'll deteriorate unless they

get regular warm-ups. And it helps to keep a little gas in the tanks

or they got raunchy." The Turks rationed out gas for Ziesel's frequent

warm-ups. The day after Christmas Ziesel's flight engineer said, "I think

we got enough." Ziesel took off and landed on Cyprus with one engine. The

Turkish Government protested the theft, and the United States solemnly

returned the airplane sans crew. Ziesel and two fellow escapees were

killed over Naples a week later.
     
     
The Turks asked some of the internees to teach Turkish pilots to handle

the Liberator. It was inevitable that, during one of the early lessons,

a monster flying machine buzzed Ankara from end to end, panicking people

in the streets.
     
     
During the winter Charles Davis continued to mete out prisoners on the

knotted rope until the Turkish Government tired of the charade and offered

Britain, Germany, the U.S.S.R. and the United States a clearance sale

of second-hand fliers. By April they were all back with their commands,

except the Russians, whose government would not treat for them. They

continued to play chess in their hotel on Attaturk Boulevard.
     
     
The Halpro men came back to Egypt and found the power of the Liberators

growing. Big plans for the adolescent force were shaping in Washington,

where the Joint Statistical Survey, a group of elderly sages who reported

to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was talking of Ploesti as "the most decisive

objective of the war." The Statistical Survey had studied enemy economics

and all known industrial targets whose destruction would hurt Hitler

most. Ploesti was number one.
     
     
Denying oil to Hitler satisfied the Second Law of Strategy: to deprive

the foe of, or seize from him, the means of making war. It also conformed

to Frederick the Great's maxim, the Strategy of Accessories: When a

belligerent is unable to engage the main armies of his adversary, he

sends expeditions to destroy his communications and storehouses. It was

secondary, alternative thinking, but that was all that seemed possible

to the beleaguered free world at this period of the war. Another mission

to the deepest target, even more daring than Halpro, was in the making.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
It is an approved maxim of war never to do what the enemy wishes
you to do.
-- Napoleon
     
     
2 PLOESTI: THE TAPROOT OF GERMAN MIGHT
     
     
Ploesti was an oil boom city at the foot of the Transylvanian Alps,

35 miles north of Bucharest. Frequent showers account for its name,

which means "rainy town." Its 100,000 inhabitants lived far better than

the average lot of Romanians -- in acacia-shaded white villas with Roman

atriums, along colonnaded streeets redolent with lilacs and roses. The

Arcadian city was incongruously fenced by the source of its prosperity

-- the smoking stacks, cracking towers, pumping stations, tank farms

and noisy rail yards of eleven huge