Operation Tidal Wave: The Bloodiest Air Battle in the History of War

by Vincent dePaul Lupiano

Overview

Operation Tidal Wave tells the story of the bloodiest air battle in the history of war. It is about 1700 airmen who set out to bomb the oil refineries surrounding the city of Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943. Success, they thought, would be a force in ending the war. Success instead was extremely limited and 500 airmen were killed, wounded, captured, or interned. Negligible damage resulted at the Ploesti refineries, and a few months later they were operating at one-hundred percent capacity. To show the asperity of the raid, five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded, two posthumously.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493053735
Publisher:	Globe Pequot Publishing
Publication date:	12/01/2020
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Vincent Lupiano is a specialist in corporate communications and speechwriting. For ten years, he was a speechwriter at IBM for senior executives and a script writer/film producer director for IBM corporate films. He was also a senior editor for an IBM management publication.

Vince spent four years in the United States Air Force. During that time, he was an aircraft accident investigator and learned much about airplanes and how the military functions. While stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, he flew several missions between Clark and Vietnam helping to move loads of ammunition. He was writer/producer/announcer at Clark’s Armed Forces Radio and TV station. In this capacity, he flew three combat missions over Vietnam in F4 Phantom and F105 fighter jets, carrying a tape recorder and writing and narrating stories of his experiences for home town radio stations.

He lives in Franklin Lakes, NJ.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Chapter 1 Great Council of War 1

Chapter 2 The Ladder 9

Chapter 3 HALPRO 18

Chapter 4 "The Smart Plan" 25

Chapter 5 Lumbering Lib 40

Chapter 6 Black Gold 52

Chapter 7 Eine Falle 60

Chapter 8 The Sandman Would Live Forever 69

Chapter 9 The Defense Did Not Rest 77

Chapter 10 Spies 86

Chapter 11 Smart Descends 91

Chapter 12 Secrets 96

Chapter 13 The Courage 103

Chapter 14 "Hit Them for Six!" 109

Chapter 15 Everything Will Change 117

Chapter 16 Fortune's Wheel 123

Chapter 17 Crumble and Crackle 134

Chapter 18 Flak-Zug 143

Chapter 19 "Wrong Turn! Wrong Turn!" 155

Chapter 20 Wings of Madness 165

Chapter 21 And This They Did for Country 181

Chapter 22 The Sandman Redux 192

Afterword 199

Coda 211

Acknowledgments 225

Bibliography 227

Index 231

In Color Acknowledgments 240