1944.09.01 "He Bagged a Big One" by Paul R Carmack

1944.09.01 “He Bagged a Big One”
by Paul R Carmack (1895-1977)
11 x 15 in., crayon and ink on board
Coppola Collection

Paul Carmack was a staff cartoonist for the Christian Science Monitor.

The massive oil refinery complex at Ploesti, Romania, 35 miles north of Bucharest, supplied up to a third of the fuel used by the German army. The US targeted Ploesti, including a massive bombing run on August 1, 1943, called Operation Tidal Wave. Unfortunately, the Germans had broken the code and were ready for the attack, which only lasted 30 minutes and in which the US lost 52 of its 178 aircraft. 

On September 1, 1944… on the 5th anniversary of the start of WW2… Soviet forces captured the Ploesti oilfields in Romania. This event, following a series of Allied air raids on Ploesti, significantly weakened the German war machine, which heavily relied on Romanian oil. The Soviet capture came after repeated Allied bombing campaigns and the weakening of German control in the region.