Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan, Carroll Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

dispersed

them with jungles of flak and lured them to bomb phony target flares ten

miles away on a barren beach. Next time the pathfinders dropped flares in

the flak sites to guide oncoming B-24 trains with Norden bombsights. The

glare was too intense for the U.S. bombardiers, who once again hit the

false Benghazi. During a subsequent night raid Appold decided to pull

a counter-ambush on the flak men. He went over at 20,000 feet. Shells

ranged toward him and the Germans lighted the mock target. But Appold

dropped no flares. He crossed Benghazi, turned and deliberately flew

back over it, bringing more ground guns into action. On the third

pass every muzzle on the grounds was belching brightly, revealing the

complete geography of the antiaircraft positions, nicely picked out in

the dark. Appold flipped into a steep dive to 12,000 feet, throwing off

the fuse settings of the German shells, and distributed three tons of

high explosive and antipersonnel bombs on the exposed flak guns. After

that the Germans could not break the bomber array. The Allies took the

upper hand and systematicaily reduced the defenses.
     
     
     
     
From Bucharest, General Gerstenberg watched the enemy bomber bases

marching west in Africa. At Benghazi the Liberators were nearly 200 miles

closer to Ploesti than they had been in Egypt. The Protector also noted

Italian reports of higher, faster B-24's, whose markings revealed a new

bomb group operating from Benghazi. This was the 98th, the Pyramiders,

led by a sulphurous Texan, John Riley Kane, whose name began appearing in

Luftwaffe intelligence summaries as "Killer" Kane. He had come to fight,

loud on the intercom and hard on the power settings. "Every bomb on the

Axis!" Kane preached to his troops. Once he took the Pyramiders over

an Afrika Korps objective with his tail and top turret guns jammed.

He missed the bomb heading during spirited Messerschmitt attacks, and

went back over the target, calling on the open radio for his planes

to follow. The German pilots got on his frequency and drowned Kane's

commands with taunts. Kane yelled, "Get the goddamn hell off the air,

you bastards!" The Messerschmitt boys shut up, Kane bombed, and dodged

through them to get home safely.
     
     
Then Gerstenberg noted still another new group of Liberators entering

Mediterranean combat. Unlike Mickey McGuire's and Killer Kane's tawny

desert-camouflaged ships, these planes wore green and loam colors,

and they flew tight formation with well-disciplined gunners. This was

the 93rd Bomb Group out of England on temporary loan to the desert

forces. It was called Ted's Traveling Circus, after its commander,

Colonel Edward J. Timberlake, a West Pointer with a nose bent playing

football on the Plain. Timberlake was a ruggedly built, easygoing blond,

a style setter and an elegant manager of men. He spoke his own argot;

if he called a man "a good Joe," that man was in. "A joker" was out.
     
     
At this augmentation of enemy air power, Gerstenberg sent to Goering

for more men, guns and planes to defend Ploesti. He got a first-class

reinforcement, including an outstanding airman, Colonel Bernhard

Woldenga of Hamburg, who became Romanian fighter controller. Trim,

blue-eyed Woldenga was a former master mariner of the Hamburg-Amerika

Steamship Line. In the 1920's Hamburg-Amerika planned its own airline and

trained a half dozen of its ship captains, including Woldenga, as air

pilots. He joined the Luftwaffe in the mid-thirties, and after Hitler

marched in 1939, flew both bombers and fighters in Poland, Britain,

Greece and Russia. Gerstenberg especially welcomed Colonel Woldenga,

who came straight from eight months in North Africa managing fighters

against the B-24's of McGuire, Kane and Timberlake.
     
     
The quality of the enlisted technicians in Gerstenberg's new draft was

evidenced by Willi Nowicki, Waffenwart , or armament warden, in the

614th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion, which