Long-Delayed TIDAL WAVE Book Progress Update!

It’s been a really long time since I published an update on the progress of my TIDAL WAVE (TW)/Ploesti book & documentary project, which is probably in the running for longest gestation period of any book in history.  My goal is to offer you an interesting and in-depth picture of the TIDAL WAVE attack, its context, and aftermath, told through engaging text and carefully selected photos and maps.

This note is quite long, but will bring you up to date on what I’ve already accomplished and still need to accomplish before what one deeply knowledgeable friend consistently calls my “Sistine Chapel” is done.  LOL!

The good news is that I’ve made MASSIVE progress since my previous update.  My research is nearly complete and I’ve begun writing some of the more technical portions of the book. 

To remind: This will not be simply a “there I was at 20,000 feet, flat on my back, with Messerschmitts to the right of me and Messerschmitts to the left” re-hash of the war stories covered so well in the original and currently best TW book, Dugan & Stewart’s 1962 Ploesti, The Great Air-Ground Battle of 1 August 1943 (which is still in print 63 years later!). 

It has certainly been the seminal work on the battle, and although I need to cover some of the same ground, I have access to considerable documentation not available to them (the Romanian archives were behind the Iron Curtain and most of the captured German archives were unavailable as they were being packed up to return to Germany), which changes important parts of the story.

In particular, I’ve spent a great deal of effort and a ton of money researching the Axis side of this event, which has never been told in English-language publications and barely touched in German and Romanian publications. 

You’re aware from my previous notes that I’ve spent considerable effort on obtaining official documents from the Romanian archives and German Militärarchiv.  Recently I’ve become aware of several crucial reports in the Bundesarchiv Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (Political Archive of the Foreign Office).  I’m working to obtain them now, and if they contain what I expect, could fundamentally change our knowledge and perspective on the German view of what happened during TIDAL WAVE.

I also have a lead to Alfred Speer’s 19 Aug 1943 report on the attack and its consequences to the Reich economic engine.  If I’m able to actually find this report, it too could fundamentally change our understanding of how the Germans responsible for their war economy assessed the attack and its impacts.

I cannot write a superficial examination of the event and its context, as has been the case with every book and article published since Stewart and Dugan.  You’ll discover both the broad sweep of relevant historical events and context, a minute-by-minute accounting of the actual attack, and the real outcomes of the bombing on the Americans, Germans, and Romanians. 

After General Leon Johnson (who earned the Medal of Honor leading his 44^th Bomb Group into the inferno of the Ploesti refineries) told me in 1985 “what really happened at Ploesti,” and “now you go prove it,” I eventually embarked on this journey to tell not only “what really happened” during the battle but also the context.  A few of the issues I’ll deeply researched and will cover are:

CONTEXT

• Why was Romania, particularly Ploesti, important to the Axis (the truth, not the simplistic explanations previously offered)?
• Why was Ploesti attacked in the summer of 1943, and not later, once bases in Italy were available at about half the flying distance compared to launching from Benghazi?
• What impacts did the 12 June 1942 (1942) HALPRO attack have on the evolution of air defenses in Romania?
• How did the Germans and Romanians cooperate in the defense?  Who contributed what?  Who controlled what?
• What was the degree and nature of cooperation between the Germans and Romanians before the attack, and did it change after? 
• What are the details of the actual defenses and how prepared were they to repulse a bombing attack?
• Who were the primary actors in this event, it’s leadup, and aftermath?  What were their backgrounds?  Were they prepared to fulfill their duties?  How did they perform under extreme pressure?
• For a supposed “all American” activity, why were the British so deeply involved?

PREPARATION

• What, exactly, did the Germans know prior to the attack, and why was Romanian information lacking?
• What was the Axis Order of Battle and what were its strengths and weaknesses?
• Who was Generalmajor Alfred Gerstenberg (Befehlshaber der Deutschen Luftwaffe in Rumänien)?  How was he qualified to command Luftwaffe forces in Romania?  What was his connection to a famous fighter pilot of World War One (you’ll be amazed!)?
• What were the Allied objections to the mission, and who objected?
• What did the most senior air force leaders expect from this mission?
• Was there any truth to the claim Churchill offered RAF lead crews and Lancaster bombers to lead TIDAL WAVE?  Was any testing done to see whether B-24s and Lancasters could fly in the same formation?
• Was 617 Squadron, RAF, (the Dam Busters) involved in this low level mission that occurred only 2-1/2 months after their famous low level attacks on the Ruhr dams (Operation CHASTISE)?  How?
• What planning information was actually available to the TIDAL WAVE planners?  What was useful?  What was wrong or unhelpful?  What crucial or important information was not available to them?

EXECUTION

• What and when, exactly, did the German early warning system report to fighter and Flak headquarters in Bucharest prior to the attack, and what did the Romanian observer corps report?  In short, what current information was available to the defenses leading up to the actual attack?
• What did the Germans and Romanians tell themselves during the approach and actual attack?
• Why were the defenses confused about the attacking force?
• Why did the Flak forces perform so well and the fighers forces so poorly?  What elements of the defenses worked well and what parts did not?
• What was the real role of electronic defenses (radar) before, during, and after the attack?
• Were Luftwaffe Helferinnen involved in the event?  How?
• What was the status of the German and Romanian military leaders at the beginning of the attack?  Where were they located and what, if anything, did they contribute to directing the defenses?
• What happened during the mission, minute-by-minute, on BOTH the American and Axis sides?
• What events that caused the US formation to be broken into two parts, two groups to make an early turn towards Bucharest, and failure of one bomb group to attack?  Were these mistakes, or simply “fog of war?”
• What did Col Jack Wood, 389^th Bomb Group commander, successfully do that Brig Gen Uzal Ent, leading the mission from the front aircraft, did or could not?
• Why were the 98^th Bomb Group’s losses so much higher than any other attacking unit (nearly 50%), and why did the 93^rd Bomb Group experience high losses (almost 40%)?
• Why did the 98^th Bomb Group drop so few bombs on their assigned target (WHITE IV, Astra Romana)?
• Did just three B-24s from another unit exceed the 98^th’s results at Astra Romana?
• How many bombers were shot down by fighters and how many by Flak?
• Who were the heroes and villains of this event, and why—and Dave, you’d better present damned good evidence!

AFTERMATH

• What role, if any, did Soviet prisoners of war play in the aftermath?
• What real and perceived impact did this attack have on the Romanian leadership?
• Did TIDAL WAVE’s results affect German high command thinking or behavior?  If so, how?  If not, why?  Did they affect other components of the German war economy?  How?
• Did TIDAL WAVE change the Axis plan for defending Ploesti?  If so, how?
• What was the actual damage and effects on oil processing?  Were deliveries to the German war machine affected?
• What was the effect on morale in the bomber encampments after the mission? 
• Were any parts of the Army Air Forces’ official 1944 report (AAFHR-3) on the mission wrong, misleading, or actual cover-up?
• Who did General Johnson believe deserved the Medal of Honor, and whom did he believe did not deserve the award?
• Details on POWs.  Did any POWs collaborate with their captors?
• Details on losses
• What lessons were (or could have been) learned from the attack (both attackers and defenders), and are any applicable to today’s military?


• And much, much more!

(If you have other questions not mentioned, be sure to contact me ASAP at support at Low-Level-Ploesti.org so I have time to do any additional research necessary to answer your concerns.)

The above are in addition to the specific details about how the mission was planned and executed, what happened to the crews and planes, details of air combats, the saga of the Hadley’s Harem crew that ended up ditching just off the Turkish coast*, etc.

* I have the complete archives the surviving crew of Hadley’s Harem assembled after the war, including tapes of their reminiscences, and the unpublished original manuscript about their experiences written by former crewman Roy Newton, in collaboration with the other Hadley crew survivors.  Unfortunately all the Hadley crew members have now passed away.

And speaking of tapes, I have the post mission audio recordings of crewmen’s experiences made by Army Special Services soon after the mission.  These were recorded on several wax phonograph records that amazingly survived in decent condition until today.

Since my previous note I’ve obtained almost 35,000 pages of documents from the Air Force Historical Research Center at Maxwell AFB, AL.  Not all are relevant to TIDAL WAVE, but a surprising number of pages reveal previously unknown facts and insight directly or generally related to the mission.

Altogether I’ve translated around 9,000 pages of Romanian and about 7,000 pages of German documents related to TW.  Most are contemporary official letters, memos, messages, and reports, while a few are books or articles relevant to the event or larger war situation.  Needless to say, this has been a massively time-consuming but fascinating exercise.

I expect you’ll find interesting the Romanian civilian eyewitness accounts of the attack and its aftermath, which I discovered in Romania.  Another is the Romanian passive defense commander’s report of the attack and its aftermath (very roughly equivalent to the old American Civil Defense organization). 

These kinds of documents also revealed a great many heretofore-unknown facts and have given deeper meaning to things we thought we already understood.  Here’s a great example of what original research in contemporary documents has revealed:

For several years I’ve had the official Romanian report of the first major meeting to assess the attack, it’s results, and necessary future improvements held in Bucharest on 3 August 1943 (48 hours after the attack).  Present were General Antonescu, Romanian leader, General Gerstenberg, commander of the Luftwaffe in Romania, and principal staff and operational officers of the Romanian General Staff and Luftwaffe staff in Romania. 

The report goes into considerable detail about what was currently known, partially from documents captured in downed American bombers; how the German and Romanian defenses performed, currently reported damage to the refineries and other government, commercial, and private structures in Ploesti and Campina; preliminary thoughts on what corrections and improvements needed to be made in the defenses, etc.  Lots of detail.

A couple of weeks ago I got Generalmajor Gerstenberg’s report about the same meeting to General Jeschonnek (Luftwaffe commander).  Wow.  Comparing the two reports makes you wonder whether the two sides (German and Romanian) were on the same planet, or even in the same universe!  I’ll go into a detailed comparison of the reports and their future impact on German-Romanian relations and defense activities.

(The letter to Jeschonnek reached him only 10 days before he committed suicide.  It will remain forever unknown whether the report of this near-collapse of German-Romanian relations contributed to his suicide, and of course he was already under massive pressure, particularly from Göring, for Luftwaffe failures at Stalingrad, Mussolini’s deposal (at which time his aide had to take a pistol away from him to prevent him committing suicide on the spot), the Schweinfurt bombing mission the same day of his suicide (17 Aug 43) and the RAF’s bombing of Peenemünde that night…his aide found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot the next morning.  Speculation, of course, but the Gerstenberg report surely wasn’t good news.)

To wrap this up: I have only a few specific matters remaining to research, which could take several months.  I’ve started writing some technical sections, which are unlikely to change in light of yet-to-be-discovered new information.  I’m not going to speculate on when my manuscript will be ready for peer review or sending to the printer since too many variables can (and have!) cause more delay.  I hope nothing impedes my sprint to the finish, but it could happen…

Dave

p.s.

I’m definitely interested in your suggestions and questions, and please get them to me right away.  Address them to me directly at support at Low-Level-Ploesti.org.