Marvel Comics Presents #79 (1991), story page 6 by Lyle and Rubinstein

"Rumanian Rumble Part 3 of 3: The Wages of Sin" by Doug Murray, early June 1991.

"Marvel Comics Presents...When Nick Fury and his men discover that their host and ally is in reality the most famous vampire of all time, they have a problem. Do they kill the monster - drive a stake into his black heart - or do they work with him, use a lesser evil against the greater Nazi menace? Which shall it be?"

Historical note: I like to think the last panel refers to the cumulative effect of bombing raids, not the first disastrous mission, on Ploesti oil refineries in Romania. Army Air Force generals targeted fuel production, frustrated that bombing of other key sectors such as electrical generators, ball bearing plants, aircraft factories and other targets hadn't brought German industry to its knees, according historian Stephen Ambrose. ("Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany," 2001).

B-24 Liberators, the planes depicted in the story, flew their first raid in 1943, flying from Libya to Romania to bomb at low level, 500 feet, in tight formation. Weather, however, broke up formations and radio silence prevented restoring them. They arrived mixed up and at 500 feet flew through not only flak but explosions from the ground and black smoke concealing balloon cables and chimneys. One third of the attacking force--54 planes and 532 airmen-- was shot down, according to Ambrose. "American losses were so heavy that the final judgment must be that the Germans won the battle."

Army Air Force continued to bomb Ploesti despite these losses, flying twenty, higher-altitude daylight missions that denied the Germans 1.8 million tons of crude oil. "When the Red Army took Ploesti, the Russians reported that the refineries were idle and ruined." (Ambrose, "Wild Blue")

Senator and Presidential candidate George McGovern flew 35 missions piloting a B-24 from a base in Italy about a year after the disastrous Ploesti raid. He and his crew barely survived their last mission over Germany in April 1945. Flak destroyed the hydraulics, taking out brakes and forcing the crew to manually crank down the wheels. They used their parachutes to help slow the plane on landing, according to Ambrose.