Date: 5 May 1944

MISSION #22

BASE: Castelluccio dei Sauri

TARGET: Ploesti, Romania--Marshalling Yard and Oil Refinery

SHIP: Jesse James …808

ESCORT: Thirty P-47’s escorted until the initial point of the bomb run. Thirty P-51’s (31st Fighter Group) flew high cover over the target. Forty-six P-38’s (82nd and 14th Fighter Groups) from thirty minutes after target to the Yugoslav coast.

BOMBS: 10 x 500 lb. General Purpose from 20,500 feet.

ENEMY AIRCRAFT: Fifteen to twenty ME-109’s

FLAK: Intense Volume, Very Accurate Aim, Heavy Caliber

RESULTS: Target was obscured by clouds but breaks in the cover allowed the bombardiers to make sighting. Our pattern was calculated to cover the marshalling yard and refinery.
Thirty minutes past the target a column of black smoke, extending to about 18,000 feet was observed, indicating a large oil fire--visible for two hundred miles.

SORTIES: 2 Total: 30

MISSION TIME: 8:00 Total: 146:15

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NARRATIVE: Most of the 15th AAF made the raid. We had to face the flak of Ploesti today. Always rough. We were in the stomach-churning flak a long time. There was a lot of flak coming from guns placed in open fields outside the city limits where the unseen German gunners four miles below filled the sky around our formation with black shell bursts. Our formation was hit hard by enemy fighters and by flak. Every airplane in the formation was hit. Just as we started the left rally away from the target we were jumped by ME-109’s who attacked at six o’clock out of the sun, singly and in pairs. Enemy fighters attacked through the flak because our escort wouldn’t follow them into it.

Several B-24’s and crews did not come back, including SHILAY-LEE (41-29239 of the 727th) and DEVIL’S DUCHESS (42-52094 of the 725th). Nine chutes seen to open from plane hit by flak and three from plane hit by fighters. JESSE JAMES had lots of holes, but we got back and my how sweet the ground is.