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, Southeastern Italy, to attack oil refineries around Vienna, Austria, and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. After Romania, Austria was the biggest Axis crude oil producer,…
Crete, Eastern Mediterranean · May 20, 1941 With the start of marathon German operations against the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, a month away, Adolf Hitler needed to ensure that his Romanian oil supplies in and around Ploiești would not come under bomber attack from stationary bases in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most likely source…
Budapest, Hungary · January 4, 1945 In March 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) to occupy his wavering Axis ally Hungary, whose Nagykanizsa (German, Grosskirchen) oil reserves and fuel storage tanks southwest of the capital Budapest in the Lake Balaton (German, Plattensee) area had grown strategically more important to the German war…
Bucharest, Romania · November 23, 1940 In September 1940 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the German high command, announced that Wehrmacht troops were being sent to Romania “in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.” Early the next month German troops entered the country ostensibly to train and rebuild the Romanian…
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…
Berlin, Germany · September 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 the chief of the German high command, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, announced that Wehrmacht troops were being dispatched to Romania “in case a war with Soviet Russia is forced upon us.” The next month German troops entered the country ostensibly to train and rebuild…
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…
Crete, Eastern Mediterranean · May 20, 1941 With the start of marathon German operations against the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, a month away, Adolf Hitler needed to ensure that his Romanian oil supplies in and around Ploiești would not come under bomber attack from stationary bases in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most likely source…
Budapest, Hungary · January 4, 1945 In March 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to occupy his wavering Axis ally Hungary, whose Nagykanizsa (German, Grosskirchen) oil reserves and fuel storage tanks southwest of the capital Budapest in the Lake Balaton (German, Plattensee) area had grown strategically more important to the German war machine—this following punishing…