Originally Posted by
Rami
Kurt,
Many thank yous! I look forward to flying this. One thing caught my eye...when I did the 20th Fighter Group, there were some lines of intersection with your 354th Fighter Group campaign, and on this one, I noticed that some missions involve the Ukraine.
So I'm curious...
I know that during Operation Frantic, after the disaster on June 21st-22nd, 1944 when Poltava was decimated by German bombers, that the focused shifted to Lightnings and Mustangs flying from the Foggia area to the Ukraine, performing missions (sometimes attached as escorts for the 15th Air Force) such as fighter sweeps over Budapest, (July 2nd, 1944) an escort to Arad, Romania, (July 3rd, 1944) a sweep over the Romanian airfields in the Budapest-Ploesti sector, including Ziliesta and Buzau as part of an escort mission to Ploesti, (July 22nd, 1944) a fighter sweep over Poland to attack the airfield at Mielec, (July 25th, 1944) a fighter sweep over the Bucharest airfields, (July 26th, 1944) and another sweep over Kecskemet, Hungary. (July 29th, 1944)
The most interesting one was on August 4th, 1944, when the Lightnings and Mustangs focused on the airfield at Foscani, Romania, and pilot Richard E. Willsie was shot down and force-landed in a field. Another pilot, Flight Officer Richard T. Andrews, landed to get him and Willsie climbed into the cockpit and they both reached Pyratin. These fighters flew one more mission on August 6th, attacking a railyard at Craiova, Romania before returning to Foggia.
At this point, the 8th Air Force returned to their missions with Mustang escorts from England.
Any crossovers here?
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