The Axis Air Forces: Flying in Support of the German Luftwaffe by Frank Joseph

Author:Frank Joseph [Joseph, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-28T08:02:00+00:00

At the side of the glorious armed forces of the National Socialist Greater German Reich, the Romanian folk has entered the war for right and justice, for freedom and civilization. If history is just-and it can only be just-it will honor us in the anticommunist crusade of the Axis powers and in the struggle of that great fighter and creator, Adolf Hitler, as a gift to our civilization and to Europe.

-Ion Antonescu, Romanian Prime Minister'

On the morning of August 1, 1943, Consolidated B-24 Liberators attached to the IX USAAF Bomber Command were winging their way over the Eastern Mediterranean Sea toward Romania. Their target was supremely important, so much so, its obliteration could drastically affect the entire course of the European War. Ploie~ti was the enemy's chief source of petroleum, averaging 450,000 tons per month. If production could be curtailed, the Wehrmacht on every front must grind to a halt.

The Romanian oilfields had been struck once before, almost a year to the day earlier, when a dozen Liberators flying from Fayid, Egypt, staged a dawn raid that caused negligible damage, but the Americans suffered no casualties. Ground fire had been weak, and no defending aircraft were encountered, leading Allied strategists to conclude that Axis personnel and equipment were almost entirely engaged in fighting on the Eastern Front. German forces at the time were embroiled in the gigantic and distant Battle of Kursk, so no serious opposition was anticipated. Sufficient numbers of heavy-bombers were not available for follow-up raids on Ploie~ti until after the close of the North African Campaign in May 1943, when planning for Operation Tidal Wave could begin. It called for a sustained aerial offensive that must level the Romanian city before the Luftwaffe could recall enough of its fighters from Russia to put up an adequate defense. The Romanians themselves were dismissed as an insignificant, pre-industrial people incapable of offering real resistance.

Liberators of August 1943 approached the Romanian border with Bulgaria, drawing close to combine their firepower and dropped down into a low-level attack mode for maximum accuracy. Ploie~ti had no sooner come into view, however, when the most ferocious ground fire they ever encountered erupted within their formation. Before they reached the target area, 15 bombers had been shot down in rapid succession, and many others were damaged, some too seriously to proceed.

As the remaining B-24s initiated their bomb run, they were beset by Messerschmitt-109G fighters of the I./JG 4 and twin-engine Bf 110s interceptors from a Romanian night-fighter squadron. Joining the fray was an aircraft new to the Americans, and some of them guessed it was a variant of the Luftwaffe's Focke-Wulf-190. It was not a German fighter, however, but the Romanian-designed and manufactured Industria Aeronautica Romana 81, or IAR 81, the foremost bomber-killer of the Fortelor Regal ale Aeriene Romana (FRAR), the Romanian Air Force. Although not particularly fast at 317 mph, the IAR 81 could climb to 16,400 feet in just six minutes and was exceptionally maneuverable at low altitudes.

The IAR 81s and

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