Author Topic: Raid on Polesti (Read 4806 times)

Ball · « **Reply #60 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:02:05 PM »

I cant remember which book it was i read, but it was about the Ploesti raid where the pilot actually had to pull up in order to avoid someone in a corn field...

Will try and dig it out.

Ball · « **Reply #61 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:11:04 PM »

this is a great pic: -

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/050524-F-1234P-021.jpg

hubsonfire · « **Reply #62 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:18:10 PM »

The view from the plane nearly obscured by the huge fireball in the background would be impressive, to say the least. I cannot imagine.

Ball · « **Reply #63 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:20:46 PM »

Quote

Walter Stewart had Utah Man down "... so low, I was pulling up over hedges. There were little round haystacks; one tipped over and there was an 88mm gun. A chicken coop was sitting there. The top went back and the sides went down, and now there were pompom guns. My top gunner fired at another chicken coop, and hens and feathers flew out; he got a real one!" Utah Man was heavily hit on the run in, but Stewart held the bomber steady and flew on, opening the bomb-bay doors, after which "there's no evasive action." His leader did the same but did not make it through the target. Stewart saw that the number-three engine of Hell's Wench was on fire and remembered Baker's statement of the day before: "If I go over that target in flames, I'm going over." The last Stewart saw of Hell's Wench, it "... tipped to the right and flew into a great big building."

by Air Vice-Marshal Ron Dick

Copyright Air Age Publishing Apr 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

That is one i have found, i know there are plenty more.

Ball · « **Reply #64 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:25:43 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Nowhere in any of the combat photos are the planes anywhere under 150 feet. The ONLY one that's under 100 feet is a training photo (and we all know that missions go off 100% exactly as they are trained for, right? Right.

LOL i have just read this...

I love the justification that they did it in training but not in combat... yeah, better not take risks in a combat situation, that is what training is for, right?

Krusty · « **Reply #65 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:29:13 PM »

No question about it, that is a good picture. Were it color I might set it as my desktop background. However, don't confuse "close to the bottom of the frame" with "close to the ground".

Green between the camera angle and the black plane shows the perceived distance between the aircraft and the bottom of the frame. As you can see in the photo itself, the plane is about one plane's length from the bottom of the frame. We know the plane is about 18 feet tall and about 60 feet long. However, if you look at the front-view I drew up quickly, you have no idea where the frame of reference is. You could be 300 feet up, and it looks like 10.

When you look at the photo, you see many trees. They look fairly large, compared to the river and the hills/rocks around them. Saying the tree itselt is 50 feet would be on the low side. I had a 2-year old tree that was 30' tall (we planted it ourselves) but still so young it barely had a 2.5" diameter trunk. The trees in the photo look more mature and much older. If the ground were really where the photo ended, those trees wouldn't even be taller than the b24 itself. They'd be a measely 18', and an 18' tree is barely a sappling (no really, go out and look at trees). Hell my living room is about 18' wide. Imagine a tree laying on its side only going from one side of your room to the other, then stand it upright. It's a pretty pathetic tree.

If we say that the trees are at least 50' (I'd say 60-75, rough guess), then there's no way the plane is close to the ground, because even the closest trees are a much smaller scale than the b24 in the foreground.

Krusty · « **Reply #66 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:31:08 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by hubsonfire
The view from the plane nearly obscured by the huge fireball in the background would be impressive, to say the least. I cannot imagine.

Indeed, if the trees in the photo are 60 or so feet (probably more) than that fireball stretches several hundred feet into the air! My GOD, can you imagine being anywhere near that?

Was that bombs ALONE, or did they set off an oil tank, or what??

Ball · « **Reply #67 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:33:53 PM »

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3:00 P.M. (Ploesti Time)

Colonel Compton's Liberandos were flying southeast at heights of 5-10 feet above the rolling farmlands of Romania, when the Orthodox church spires of the Bucharest appeared in their cockpit windows. After conferring with Compton, General Ent broke radio silence to order the correction, turning the lead flight back north. The mission commander knew that his bombers were no longer lined up to cross the city from the west and attack the assigned target of Romana Americana (Target White 1). He and Compton again conferred and decided to lead the twenty-six remaining Liberators in an attack on Astra Romana (Target White 4) south of the city.

Quote

On the ground below, General Gerstenberg watched the three flights weaving delicately at top-speed in the confined and flak-filled space over Ploesti. He shook his head in amazement at the tactical prowess of the American attack, never realizing that the airmen were improvising after their plans for a single-formation, two-minute orderly assault by five waves, had fallen apart.

Quote

3:15 P.M. (Ploesti Time)

Johnson's "A Force" of the Eight Balls and John Kane's Pyramidiers emerged from their smoke-shrouded targets on the south side of Ploesti while the remainder of Johnson's bombers, the Eight Ball "B Force" neared its own. Their route south from the final I.P. at Floresti put their flight path three miles west of the city, beyond many of the major defensive positions. As they approached Brazi however, they were met by a withering hail of anti-aircraft and machine gun fire.

Twenty minutes earlier when Colonel Addison Baker had broken away from Compton's lead force to attack Ploesti, his Flying Circus had over-flown the very refinery Lieutenant Colonel Posey's twenty-one Liberators now targeted. The gunners around the Creditul Minier were well-prepared. It was these very guns that had taken such a heavy toll Addison Baker and his men, and the Axis gunners were eager for more.

Posey's Eight Balls executed their precision bombing on eleven pin-point targets in four waves, the valiant gunners raking enemy gun positions as 1,000 pound bombs hurtled into key buildings and boiler houses. "We were too low to miss," recalled bombardier George Hulpiau flying in D for Dog in the second wave assault. "We were five feet above the target." (The bombs were fitted with delayed action fuses to prevent them from exploding on impact only feet below the Liberator dropping them.)

Enemy fire was as heavy as it had been earlier and most of the bombers took multiple strikes. Posey's lead ship V for Victory, piloted by Captain John Diehl, took a direct hit from a 37-mm ground gun that tore away part of the bomber's tail and killed gunner Truett Williams. Similar damage was wreaked upon other bombers in the four waves, but in a manner that may well have validated Colonel Smart's original concept for the low-level mission, Target Blue suffered 100% damage beneath the bombs of twenty-one airships, without the loss of a single aircraft over target. Diehl climbed to 250 feet to clear the smokestacks, then dropped back down to low-level flight with the other pilots following. "We left at a very low level," he recalled. "People ask me what I mean by low level. I point out that on the antennas on the bottom of my airplane I brought back sunflowers and something that looked suspiciously like grass."

http://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part2/09_ploesti.html

Need i go on?

Ball · « **Reply #68 on:** December 19, 2006, 01:37:01 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Was that bombs ALONE, or did they set off an oil tank, or what??

it was a raid on a ****ing oil refinery, what do you think they were setting off?

this is a photo of the oil depot which exploded near london last year.

judging by those 60 foot or more tree's, that guy must be 30 feet tall.

Krusty · « **Reply #69 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:05:18 PM »

Ball, your sarcasm just proved my point. Obviously depth (or, distance) changes the size and relation to everything in the picture. This is what nobody has pointed out, and what I have tried to show you.

1 - You KNOW the height of a man

2 - you KNOW the rough height of a tree, or can guess.

3 - you KNOW that things further away look smaller.

so, using your existing references, you can TELL that in that photo, the person is a HELL of a long way away from the trees, and they are way the freaking hell out there.

Using the SAME system you can try to figure out how far the b24s are from the ground in some of the photos above. Only, with the bombers, you don't always have the spot of ground (the point you are measuring to, directly below the bombers) in the photo, so you can estimate but not be sure. In the top-down angle on the smokestack photo you have a much easier time of it.

A lot of folks see a bomber a fraction of an inch over trees and think "my god that's low!" but don't stop to look at the photo and realize the trees are way the frak off in the distance which means they're much further away. That type of deal.

It's like a logic lesson. Folks can reason for themselves, but sometimes when you point out the process they think "ooooh, I know that" -- they just didn't use the knowledge until it was pointed out.

Ball · « **Reply #70 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:13:49 PM »

I was joking... i never claimed that picture was below 150 feet anyway. I just said that it was a "great pic", you took that upon yourself to prove it's height.

I liked your little MS paint pic, one almost worthy of me, needs more "nook" tho.

lol.

Krusty · « **Reply #71 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:17:50 PM »

I realize you didn't, but everybody before you did. I was thinking about doing it before, but nobody gave a crap about using their mental faculties, so I left the thread. Then I came back and found Bodhi (again) spewing trash talk from his rear-end. I figured maybe I really had to just spell things out with crayons for him

EDIT: by the way, way to mis-quote me by leaving out the "if I recall" in my original line, in your signature.

Ball · « **Reply #72 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:26:04 PM »

Since you were commenting on the photo, i took a closer look. As nice and as colourful as your MS paint one is... it is wrong.

Check out the angle of the photo, and where the tree tops in the foreground are. I wonder what took the photo? Maybe a Romanian farmer was climbing a tree and had his camera ready as those B-24's passed over?

Whatever it is... it is much lower than the aircraft in the picture

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
EDIT: by the way, way to mis-quote me by leaving out the "if I recall" in my original line, in your signature.

You wrote "For Your Information:" I took it as my information.

Masherbrum · « **Reply #73 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:30:24 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
Indeed, if the trees in the photo are 60 or so feet (probably more) than that fireball stretches several hundred feet into the air! My GOD, can you imagine being anywhere near that?

Was that bombs ALONE, or did they set off an oil tank, or what??

Yeah, even at 400 feet of alt, it was commonplace for a B-24 to be seen flying over a target. Damn that is so HIGH!!! Imagine if they flew at 20,000+!!!!zOMFG!!!!111!!! Bombers don't drop bombs, they dropped leaflets on Ploesti while Voss and his "band of commandos overwhelmed the perimeter guards who gazed at the low level B-24's in awe while the commados set explosive Composition B on the oil tanks."

Quote

Originally posted by Krusty
I had a 2-year old tree that was 30' tall (we planted it ourselves) but still so young it barely had a 2.5" diameter trunk.

NO TREE on this Earth, can reach 30' in only 2 years (outside of Bamboo or Royal Empress, which are BOTH non-existant in the Region in question). I'm sorry but you bought a "Burlap bulb tree sapling" that was already in the process of growing for the previous 2-3 years. So you're AT LEAST looking at 5 year+ of growth. All of the Miracle-Gro in the world CANNOT allow a "tree to grow 30' in two years." No way in hell, and for the record I have a decent amount of horitcultural knowledge. The picture you are dispelling has your typical Evergreens (ranging from 25-35' tall and small Broadleafs (15-25' tall Maples that are NOT mature). The LARGEST trees are the Maples or Oaks near the center of the picture which appear around 40' tall. Then look at the bomber to the immediate left of the foreground bomber, and you can see that it is ONLY 50-60' above the tree. Also, the "box of buffs" will vary between altitudes and the foreground bomber, is the LOWEST in the picture (around a 100-150ft). It does NOT require much common sense to relate the "camera angles" to "very good estimates of altitude". Also, take note of the two treetops below the foreground bomber, about the same apparent distances.

What you are missing is that the "height vantage point you are dispelling", is actually negated because you are not taking into view, the DISTANCE behind the Foreground Bomber. Looking at the provided picture that Bomber is CLOSE to ONLY 100' off of the ground, which is impressive for a HEAVY BOMBER.

Furthermore, you're pissing on "Veterans" EYEWITNESS accounts and looking like a tool. Krusty, you can debate the point all you want with your "picture depth perception" opinions. But who would the "one with common sense" believe? Someone who WAS THERE or has studied this raid a VERY LONG time, or you? I'd have to go with the former.

Krusty · « **Reply #74 on:** December 19, 2006, 02:31:08 PM »

I also said "if I recall"

You are wrong, actually. The trees aren't foreground. Foreground would be the bombers. The trees are behind them. Also it looks like they are not treetops, but entire trees. The ground angle comes up fairly quickly (low angle) if you compare the point of the explosion with the trees around the river and the trees nearest the planes.

Also I did see those trees, and they were the trees I was using when I said "the closest to the bombers" Assuming they extend a little further past the frame of the photo, they are still barely taller than the height of the closest B24. The B-24 we know is 18 feet when on the runway, so a little less without gear. The tree we know (again, frame of reference for trees) is much more, yet they both appear to be about the same height, which means the tree is much further away.

EDIT: I did say FYI, but the FYI was that the bombers were NOT 30 feet. The "3-4k" had its own "if I recall". Don't mis-quote me to myself, please