Reddit reviews Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943, Revised Edition (Brassey's Aviation Classics)

It's cool to hear what happened to her. I read about her in the Ploesti linktobook book, but that only covers the one mission. On a side note, you will never read a more exciting book than that one, about a low level bombing raid over the most heavily defended city in the world.

The planners of the Ploesti strike might disagree with you.

Before they flew the mission.

Afterwards, they would also agree with you.

Germany had armored flak trains during WW2. One in particular instance that stands out is the air raid on the Ploiesti oil refineries in Romania in 1943. The mission is infamous for its extrodinary high casualty rate.

In order to fly deep into Axis territory at this stage of the war, the bombers flew very low, sometimes 100ft or less above the ground. Some of the planes flew their approach parallel to the rail lines. As fate would have it , this rail line had a disguised flak train on it running in the same direction towards the already attacked refinery. This led to something from a movie or videogame where bomber formations only 100ft in the air were exchanging gunfire with a moving train.

The History Channel used to run a documentary about this raid and the mental image has always stuck with me. I tried to find the name of the documentary but was unsuccessful. However, the first review of this book about the raid is mentions the incredible air/train battle.