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Praetorium Honoris

Monday, August 12, 2019

OOPS! Forgot a couple

I don't know if y'all visit all the websites on Sarge's sidebar.  I know I don't for various reasons.  However I do visit most of them.  Several multiple times a day.  Others once in a while.  One of my favorites is This Day in Aviation.

Mr. Swopes (I have never met him nor communicated with him) puts together a fascinating array of trivia about events that have happened on any given calendar day in the world of Aviation.  First flights, tragedies, space flight, birthdays of aviation greats.  You name it (aviation related), you can almost guarantee it'll be there.

No, I'm not getting paid by him.

In any case, on August 1st, I realized I'd made a grievous mistake in my Air Force Medal of Honor postings.  I was on that site that day and recognized it as the 76th anniversary of Operation Tidal Wave, the USAAF's attach on the German oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania.  177 B-24's took off from Libya, flew the mission to attempt to destroy the refineries .   18 hours later, 88 returned to base, and 55 of those had battle damage. 310 crewmen were killed, 108 were captured, 78 were interned (lost for the duration of the war) in neutral Turkey.  All in all a huge loss to the Americans.  Damage to the refineries was repaired within weeks.

There were 5 Medals of Honor awarded for actions taken during this battle, 3 of them posthumously.  I have written about 3 of them (here and here if you're interested) and completely forgot about the other two until I read the citations on This day in Aviation.

So...

Let me rectify that.*

Let me introduce you to 2LT Lloyd H. Hughes. The H is for Herbert, but, evidently, he went by "Pete".  As you can see from that link, he graduated from Texas A & M (Whoop!).

Lt Hughes became a qualified B-24 Aircraft Commander in June of 1943.  Ploesti would be his fifth mission.  His aircraft was the last B-24 in the formation.  While still en-route to the target, his bomber was hit by AAA (now you know why I hiss) which caused aviation gas (typically higher than 120 octane...meaning more flammable than the stuff you put in your car) to stream from the wings and bomb bay.  Lt Hughes could have crash landed the bomber in fields prior to the target.  However, he elected to continue on the attack.  Flying at an altitude of 30' above the ground, he dropped his ordnance on his target.  Unfortunately, fires from previous attacks started the leaking fuel on fire.  At this point, he attempted an emergency landing, but the flight controls burned through and the aircraft crashed.  Lt Hughes and 6 other crewmen died in the crash and explosion.  An eighth crewman survived the crash, but died later of his wounds.  The remaining two crewman survived and were captured by the Germans.

These B-24s are well above 30'
Source
OK, What can I say?  5th mission.  Last aircraft over target,  damaged en-route and  losing fuel.  (barely enough fuel to make it home when they took off, now they're leaking it?).  30' in the air?    My Lord, did he clank when he walked.

Lt Hughes was the First Aggie to be awarded the Medal of Honor.  

Lt Hughes Citation:
For conspicuous gallantry in action and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. On August 1943, 2d Lt. Hughes served in the capacity of pilot of a heavy bombardment aircraft participating in a long and hazardous minimum-altitude attack against the Axis oil refineries of Ploesti, Rumania, launched from the northern shores of Africa.

Flying in the last formation to attack the target, he arrived in the target area after previous flights had thoroughly alerted the enemy defenses. Approaching the target through intense and accurate antiaircraft fire and dense balloon barrages at dangerously low altitude, his plane received several direct hits from both large and small caliber antiaircraft guns which seriously damaged his aircraft, causing sheets of escaping gasoline to stream from the bomb bay and from the left wing.

This damage was inflicted at a time prior to reaching the target when 2d Lt. Hughes could have made a forced landing in any of the grain fields readily available at that time. The target area was blazing with burning oil tanks and damaged refinery installations from which flames leaped high above the bombing level of the formation.

With full knowledge of the consequences of entering this blazing inferno when his airplane was profusely leaking gasoline in two separate locations, 2d Lt. Hughes, motivated only by his high conception of duty which called for the destruction of his assigned target at any cost, did not elect to make a forced landing or turn back from the attack. Instead, rather than jeopardize the formation and the success of the attack, he unhesitatingly entered the blazing area and dropped his bomb load with great precision.

After successfully bombing the objective, his aircraft emerged from the conflagration with the left wing aflame. Only then did he attempt a forced landing, but because of the advanced stage of the fire enveloping his aircraft the plane crashed and was consumed.

By 2d Lt. Hughes' heroic decision to complete his mission regardless of the consequences in utter disregard of his own life, and by his gallant and valorous execution of this decision, he has rendered a service to our country in the defeat of our enemies which will everlastingly be outstanding in the annals of our Nation's history.
Rest in Peace, Warrior!

*I'll cover the fifth and final recipient General Leon Johnson next week.

23 comments:

  1. “intense and accurate antiaircraft fire”

    That’s sort of an understatement. I’ve heard that it was possible to sight a bomber with the “mk i eyeball down the bore” technique and still score hits. (I don’t know where I heard this, and it seems ... implausible.)

    Though I did recently (yesterday) tour the Collings Foundation’s B-24 “Witchcraft” which was neat. One of these years I’ll cough up the dough for a flight. (Have flown on their B17, which, you should do if you get the chance.)

    Spoke once with an elderly Romanian lady who saw the raid from the ground and remembers what the pilots looked like, and that at least one waved back at her. There was a crashed one nearby, but the local men shooed her away (the crew was either KIA, or KBAM (killed by angry mob) it was unclear to me and I didn’t press).

    She’d later marry an SS officer and consequently do *hard* time in a Soviet coal mine.

    Unfortunately she was the great-aunt of an ex, so I never got to speak with her more than once. Hopefully her story’s written down somewhere for posterity...

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    1. That would be an interesting story, a bear. A for the Mk 1 Eyeball...I know a Thud Pilot who spent time under the kind care of the North Vietnamese who was shot down by a bunch of guys with automatic rifles lying on their backs with the guns pointed in the air. He came over a ridgeline and saw a guy waving a yellow flag as he got over him, the guy started waving a red flag, the next thing he knew he was in the chute. Quantity has a quality all of its own.

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  2. I cannot imagine... There were 10 men in that aircraft. And his decision sealed the fate of them all. That is some weight on the shoulders of one man.

    Your Duty: you can't do more, you should never settle for less. I learned that from one of my old WW2 mentors.

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    1. A 22 year old 2LT on his fifth mission no less. Fortunately (I guess) he didn't have to ponder the decision very long. The "woulda, coulda, shoulda" thoughts might be difficult if he were one of the two survivors.

      Good lesson to remember.

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  3. The tenacity, courage, and skill involved in that mission are something to be remembered throughout the ages.

    Bets on how many of today's population have the slightest clue about this mission and the hundreds of others American men and women have accomplished over the time of this country's existence? Yeah, me too.

    Great post juvat, the men of Ploesti definitely clanked when they walked.

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    1. I'll take "Not as many as darn well should" for a thousand, Alex (I mean... Sarge)

      Thanks.

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  4. That raid is a great example of 'Follow the Leader No Matter What' training. Which usually worked okay at the time. But not in this instance. They were taught to follow the leader no matter what, that solo was a no-go. So they stayed grouped (for the most part.)

    Too many new ideas, too ambitious, too few trained crews. And yet they fought to drop on target.

    Shocked me when I first read about it at 11yoa. Still shocks me now thinking about it.

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    1. That's about the first time I read about it also. As with most military operations, you've got to do the mission as it was planned and briefed until the mission leader says otherwise. Most of the Charlie Fox'd missions I've encountered was when this did not happen. Some of those became quite scary (A pre-strike RF-4 coming nose to nose with me as I crossed a ridge line comes to mind. He had decided that instead of in South, out North as I'd briefed for the Red Flag mission, he was doing the opposite. That debriefing was entertaining, and two wing commanders got involved.)

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    2. Yep! I learned early to never use the word standard unless all present were from MY squadron and I'd flown with them previously. Assume does, in fact, make an A$$ out of U and Me.

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  5. In the early 80's, when I started out in the California State Military Reserve, We had a couple of spry 60-something year old gentlemen join our unit. Both were WWII vets. One was infantry in France and Germany. The other was a B-24 waist gunner who flew on Operation Tidal Wave. Sadly, I can no longer recall their names.

    The gunner came home and spent many years with the California Highway Patrol as a motorcycle officer in the far reaches of northern California. According to him, when the survivors returned to base, he witnessed an aircrew member (I don't recall who) walk up and punch Col. Kane in the face.

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    1. While I can understand the feeling, since Col Kane was on the mission with him, I think he was an unfortunate target. Now, the officers who planned the mission, but didn't actually fly it on the other hand....

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  6. Sad ending for his crew. And yes, blind obedience was the 'norm' rather than the exception on those missions. They had been told the horror stories of lone acft that 'never got home'... One thing I have never been able to locate in my research was any abort criteria for a lot of those missions, which makes me wonder if there WERE abort criteria ever published. I also have problems with Brig. Gen. Uzal G. Ent's comment about 100% losses being acceptable, then HIS decision to not have the airplane he was on press the attack due to the defenses.

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    1. There certainly didn't appear to have been any official abort criteria for Operation Tidal Wave. For those of you unfamiliar with General Ent, here's the story. The sentence about 2/3 of the way through that begins with "Known as..." pretty well sums it up.

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    2. Damn, just damn. The kind of officer we sergeants tell the young'uns about to scare 'em. Damn sure they scare me!

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    3. I will say that the Navy, even in WWII had abort criteria, figuring it would be better to reuse the pilot, crew, and airplane again. Although some of the Black Cats kinda pushed the limits to complete missions...

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    4. The only aborts for USAAF bombers was if the target was obscured by weather, if I remember.

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    5. Beans, I'm not sure even that was enough. Precision bombing, doncha know. Time Heading and release. It was Germany!

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    6. OldNFO, I pushed the limits on some "operational" sorties in Korea. Always regretted that decision.

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    7. Sarge,
      Yeah. It may take a while before I get the fifth's story written. I may have to fast forward to next subject.

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    8. juvat. Most missions had a primary and secondary target, because not being able to check wind conditions over the target due to cloud cover would screw up the semi-precisionness of the bombing.

      Which is what doomed Nagasaki. Not primary target, that was socked in. So switch to secondary target and history was written.

      Very few, like Ploetsi, had no secondary target. All or nothing, which was reflected in the death toll.

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  7. I was also about 11 when I first read of Ploesti - the famous/infamous footage, taken from above, of the B-24 taking a AAA hit in the wing root and having that wing immediately disintegrate was shocking and is still a haunting piece of film. God bless all those aircrews that didn't come back from Romania and other targets.

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    1. It's always haunting when you see a picture where you KNOW the people in it are moments away from meeting their maker. Amen to the last.

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