Here is an article from 1943, the year everything changed for the Axis. The article explains all that was involved with the stout-hearted raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania. 177 American bombers were sent to do the job.
"From Ploesti, the Nazis extracted oil and oil products which maintained the entire German and Italian fleets, and third of the whole German air force in Russia. Around the Ploesti installations, the Germans had raised a forest of antiaircraft guns of large and small calibers. They had built blast walls around plants' vital parts and spotted airdromes from which fighters could rise to intercept our bombers." This is an amazing article that recalls the open-all-night cities that were the B-17 bases in Britain during World War Two. Such were the lives of the ground crews, who worked all night and then found sleep impossible - preferring to stay-up and stare at the skies in anticipation for their returning bombers.
"A crew chief stumbles past you on his way to the hangar. He's been going seventy-two hours without taking his shoes off; his face is unshaven, and his eyes look like holes burned in a blanket." An article by the W.W. II war correspondent Martha Gellhorn (1908 - 1998) who rode with the crew of a P-61C Black Widow Night Fighter one evening as they made their rounds over what remained of Hitler's Germany:
"Collier's girl correspondent sat on a wobbly crate and flew over Germany looking for enemy planes at night. Her nose ran, her oxygen mask slipped off, her stomach got mad, she was scared and she froze. They didn't down any Germans, but otherwise that's routine for the Black Widow pilots."
Click here to read additional articles about the war correspondents of the Second World War.
Click here to read Martha Gellhorn's article about what she saw at Dachau.
Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.
Flying home after bombing Tunis, the B-17 All-American with a full crew of ten onboard was sliced open at the rear by a nazi fighter plane that nearly severed her tail. How the craft stayed up in the air was anybody's guess. "On March 10, 1945, a group of Superforts crossed Japan's coast line. Behind them came another group, and another in a line stretching far back toward Saipan. In a long, thin file they roared over Tokyo. They flew low and out of their open bellies spilled bombs of jellied gasoline. When they hit, they burst, spewing out billowing, all-consuming fire. The flames leaped across fire lanes, swallowed factories, destroyed skyscrapers."
Click here to read about August 28, 1945 - the day the American occupation began.
"Comparing the American [daylight] raids with the RAF [nighttime] incursions, it was certainly a great shock to Berliners to find their city now open to round-the-clock bombing."
"We don't mind the Yanks who come when the sun shines and it's warm. It's the Tommies sneaking in at night that we don't like so much."
Click here to read about the harried everyday life on a U.S. bomber base in England...
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