One hundred seventy-eight B-24 Liberators took off from Libya on August 1, 1943, headed for Ploesti, Romania — nine oil refineries producing a third of all fuel for Hitler's war machine. The plan was to fly twelve hundred miles and bomb them at treetop level. Two hundred feet off the ground.
Lieutenant Colonel Addison Baker, thirty-six, led the ninety-third Bomb Group in a Liberator called Hell's Wench. His copilot, Major John Jerstad, twenty-five, had already finished his combat tour. He could have gone home. Instead, he volunteered for a seat in the lead aircraft.
When the lead formation turned the wrong way toward Bucharest, Baker broke formation and pointed his group at Ploesti alone. Then his aircraft caught fire — with a safe field right below him and thirty-six bombers following his lead.
He had three minutes to decide.
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