In 1943, crude and refined oil from the Ploesti oil fields provided about 35 percent of all Axis oil supplies, five times what runner-up Austria provided. Strategic planners concluded that the destruction of the Axis oil industry held the key to the Luftwaffe’s defeat, and that of Germany as well. In this photo oil storage tanks at the Columbia Aquila refinery, one of eleven in the Ploesti refinery complex, burn after the raid by Libyan-based B-24 bombers of the US 9th Air Force, assisted by Liberators from the 8th Air Force based in England.
