US Army Air Force

A series of broad campaigns

484th BG

B-24 Liberator of the 49th Bomb Wing’s 484th Bomb Group, 15 th Air Force, based at Tortorella, Foggia Airfield Complex, Southern Italy, during a strategic mission. During his 18 months of existence, the “Fifteenth” fought four broad campaigns: against enemy oil, enemy air force, enemy communications, and enemy ground forces. The most famous oil target of the 15th AF was the Ploesti complex of refineries, which contributed about 30% of the entire Axis oil supply and an equal amount of gasoline. Ploesti was a heavy protected target with German and Rumanian fighters and Flak. The attacks of the 15th AF, in collaboration with the RAF bombers, began April 5, 1944 and continued until 19 August of same year. “Fifteenth” and RAF bombers flew 5,287 sorties, dropping 12,870 tons of bombs. At the end of the campaign the refineries were reduced to only 10% of their normal rate of activity and during the entire period from April to August the average production rate was reduced by 60%. But the cost was high: 237 heavies bombers (15 of them RAF), 10 P-38 and 39 escorting fighters, more than 2,200 American Airmen lost. The Fifteenth followed up the Ploesti attacks by dropping 10,000 tons of bombs in attacks on three synthetic oil plants in Silesia and one in Poland, reducing their combined production by February of 1945 to 20% of what it was in June of 1944. Other campaign: the attacks against the great German fighter manufacturing complexes of Wiener Neustadt and Regensburg (by May 1944, estimated actual production stood at 250 aircraft a month within range of the Fifteenth against a contemplated production of 650 aircraft per month), the raid over the enemy communications and transportation systems far behind the front lines, disrupting supply movements from industrial centers over an 800 mile radius from the Italian airfields, raid over Salerno, Anzio, and Cassino in the Rome campaign. On 15 April 1945 the Fifteenth put up a record smashing 93% of its available aircraft to soften up the approaches to Bologna in one of the final missions of the Italian campaign. Just after the war the 15th AF’s duty was rescue and repatriation of air crews shot down in enemy territory: 5,650 personnel by air, surface vessel and on foot through enemy lines. In more than 300 planned "reunion" operations, men have been brought back safely from Tunisia, Italy, France, Switzerland, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria and Germany. Victor Sierra