Quote:
Originally Posted by drgondog
The most important target in Europe was Ploesti - which started without escort and continued until production was hovering around 10% when Red Army overran it. The first Major raid was the low level mission in August 1943.
The 'results' of the 8th and 15th AF missions to Rumania, Austria, Czechoslovaki and Germany had two major effects on Germany's ability to wage war. One, it killed the skilled core of the LW Day Fighter Command, including all the re-inforcements from Ost Front. Second it inflicted huge blows on rest of German petroleum/Chemical targets - all before D-Day. This was much more important than the Ball bearings, Transportation and aircraft factories.
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Bill, it was something different, what time line concern. Romania delivered 13 million barreal oil to germany during 1943 and in the first half 1944 again 7 million. IIRC the attack of Ploesti and mining of Danume did not affect seriosly the oil delivery to Germany until august. Only the attack in august caused strong damage of romanian oil industry. But from soviet point of view, these damages were not very helful. Oil reserves that could be used by soviets was already destroyed.
What the german oil industry concern, the before D-Day attack decreased the oil output some by 20% in may from the highest level of april(april 348tto, may 285tto). Therefore we could not speak about blows of oil/chemichals industry before D-Day. Only on 8th juni gen. Spaatz declare all oil related object as target number one. After that the 15th and 8th(from middle juni) air force started systematicaly distruction of oil objects. At that time the bulk of german fighter was already transferred to Normandy