RAID IN RUINS

Ploesti was Hitler’s oil supply, so it had to burn. In August 1943, 179 American bombers set out to do the job. A third of them would never return. The plan sounded simple enough on paper: have a swarm of B-24 bombers fly low over Ploesti, Romania, and blast away the Nazi-controlled oil refineries there. To the men who would be inside those B-24s, however, the plan sounded like a script for a one-sided bloodbath—with them on the wrong side. Resistance to the plan surfaced up and down the chain of command. In North Africa, 98th Bomb Group commander Lieutenant Colonel John R. “Killer” Kane—who would have to lead his men on the deadly mission if the orders came down—declared the idea the product of “some idiot armchair warrior in Washington.”

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