Ploesti

Pat Carry · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 9:56 am

Having just finished Donald Miller's book, "Masters of the Air" got me to wondering about Ploesti. Is oil still refined there today? How long after WW2 did it take to rebuild that place?

muddyboots · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:11 am

Quote:

Although badly damaged after the November 1940 earthquake, the city became the main source of oil for Nazi Germany's war effort during World War II, when Romania was Germany's ally. Thanks to its relative remoteness from airfields, Ploieºti was spared Allied attack until 03 August 1943, when the United States Army Air Forces mounted Operation Tidal Wave from Benghazi, North Africa, bombing the refineries in a massive low altitude strike by 178 B-24 Liberator bombers. Although the raid inflicted heavy damage on the ground, much of the damage was soon fixed. In April 1944, the Allies launched decisive attacks from captured airbases in Italy. The most-bombed city in World War II Romania was finally captured by Soviet troops in August 1944.

Following the war, the new Communist regime nationalised the oil industry, which had largely been privately owned, and made massive investments in the oil and petroleum industry in a bid to modernise the country and minimise the war damage.

wikipedia, of course

JimH · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:38 am

Google Earth the oil fields...they are still there and they look active...also if you get bored its cool match WWII strike photos with google earth. In alot of cases you can still see blemishes in the landscape from bomb craters...especially around German targets.

Jim Harley

Ztex · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 1:34 pm

JimH wrote:

Google Earth the oil fields...they are still there and they look active...also if you get bored its cool match WWII strike photos with google earth. In alot of cases you can still see blemishes in the landscape from bomb craters...especially around German targets.

Jim Harley

I have done that with quite a few strike photos that my uncle had in his collection...Pretty cool.

Toulon...

Chambery...

Bratislava...

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 3:38 pm

Awesome! I love "Then and Now" shots. GoogleEarth is also great for the 'tilt' views of those old targets ...

A long time ago I GoogleEarth'd 4th FG ace Kidd Hofer's place of demise, Mostar, Yugoslavia. I went so far as to plot known coordinates of the mission they flew on 2 July 44. They were part of the first 8th AF-flown FRANTIC mission, and that day they took off from Foggia. They formed up over a lake near Foggia (forgot the name) and then headed for Budapest.

On the way back, Hofer flew his "own" low-level Rhubarb, and looking at Google Earth Hofer approached the Luftwaffe airfields "blind", that is, he didn't see the twin Mostar Luftwaffe airfields (if he was flying low and approached it straight on) due to the mountains surrounding Mostar until his was right on top of them (in my opinion). As an aside, my sister and her husband have been missionaries in that region for years, and I asked about Mostar ... they confirmed that the area has high mountains.

The story unearthed by artist and historian Troy White is that Hofer was shot down by a gun emplacement and ended up crashing his Mustang into that same gun position! This is according to records Troy found in their archives over there. There's a painting in there somewhere ....

Wade

muddyboots · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 6:30 pm

A lot of what makes an old bomb crater show up is just turbation of the soil. When the soil in the pit gets mixed around, it's usually a different color than the surrounding, weathered soil. You can see old dig sites pretty easily this way, if you know what to look for.

Canso42 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:07 pm

Pat, I recently read "Masters of the Air" myself and found it informative -and quite sobering.

I have two copies of it. I bought it from MBC and my dad gave it to me for Christmas. Anyone want to horse-trade an airshow souvenir or something for one?
Doug

Canso42 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 05, 2008 10:18 pm

One of the Ploesti raid MOH recipients, Lt. Lloyd "Pete" Hughes was a family friend. That was before my time, but my mother and aunt were quite fond of him.

Doug

Sril · **Posted:** Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:48 pm

Hi

I lived in Brasov (the IAR80 factory was there, 100km north of Ploesti) two years ago. They still extract petroleum in the zone.

Romania wasn't captured by USSR. On August 23rd of 44, As The Moldavia and Bassarabia (1/3 of the romania) were invaded by russia, The king of Romania decided to change his prime minister (Marechal Antonescu) and turned in the allied camp. In one day the Romanian army changed of adversaries. In may 45 It was under command of Russians in Checoslovakia.
After the war the russians didn't retire from Moldavia, that became Soviet republic of Moldavia, but because of this allliance change, the Romanian took territories stollen in 1940 by Hungaria and Bulgaria.

I made short, but the history of this less known country is really interesting

Regards

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