London, England · September 21, 1944 On this date in 1944 some 147 of 154 dispatched B‑17 Flying Fortresses bombed the synthetic oil plant at Ludwigshafen, an industrial city on the Rhine River in west-central Germany. The sortie was one of seven (for a total of more than 1,400 B‑17s) that unloaded high-explosive and incendiary bombs on…
Foggia Airfield Complex, Southeast Italy · June 16, 1944 On this date in 1944 nearly 600 B‑17 Flying Fortresses and B‑24 Liberators from the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force took off from bases in Foggia, Italy, to attack oil refineries around Vienna, Austria, and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. After Romania, Austria was the biggest Axis crude oil producer, sending…
Savannah, Georgia · January 28, 1942 On this date in 1942 the fledgling U.S. Eighth Air Force was activated at Savannah Air Force Base in Georgia. Second-in-command Brig. Gen. Ira Eaker was sent to England to form and organize its bomber command, the VIII Bomber Command. An advanced detachment was established at RAF Bomber Command Headquarters in…