Luke Truxal: „Railway infrastructure, the target of precision bombing in 1944 at Ploiești”

What was the state of railways in Europe, and particularly in Romania, prior to the World War II? How great was the importance of railways in the region once the conflict had commenced?

Europe as a whole prior to the Second World War had a great railway system that was interconnected. When we look at central, southern, and western Europe this was a crucial element to military operations. So much so that the first major economic system that the Americans decided to strike in the lead up to their 1944 offensives in Europe was the European rail network. Most American scholars like to focus on Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision to prioritize the Transportation Plan, which targeted western European railroads as a part of the pre bombardment for Overlord. However, there are two major offensives against Axis transportation that occur in Europe at the same time as the one used in the pre bombardment phase of Operation Overlord. One was in Italy, Operation Strangle, which played a crucial role in the success of the Allied summer offensive in Italy in 1944, Operation Diadem. This ultimately resulted in the liberation of Rome. The other, targeted the Romanian rail network starting on 4 April 1944 with the raid on the Bucharest rail stations. From the perspective of the Americans, the European rail network was so large and vital to Axis success that they prioritized its constant bombardment from March 1944 till the end of the war.

To further highlight the importance of these rail lines, one of the biggest ironies for the Americans is that the success of their own attacks impeded their advance after they broke out of Normandy in July and August 1944. After the breakout the Allies ran into a number of logistical issues in no small part caused by the destruction of Axis rail lines in France and western Europe. While the bombing had been effective at limiting the ability of the Germans to counter-attack in Normandy in June and July 1944, as the Allies pushed further away from the beaches their logistics were strained by the loss of these railroads which partially contributed to the culmination of the Allied summer offensives in France and the Low Countries in 1944.

With regards to the rail network in Romania, the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF) based in Italy identified this rail network as uniquely vulnerable to aerial bombardment due to the geography of the Balkans and Romania. An intelligence officer for the MAAF, Group Captain JCE Luard, devised a rail bombardment plan targeting the entire Romanian rail network along with adjacent Balkan countries. In his 24 April 1944 memo “The Balkan Situation-The Possibilities of Air Attack,” Luard wrote, “The Russian capture of Cernauti [Chernivtsi, Ukraine] severed the main German lines of supply to the southern sector of the eastern front. The result was that it threw practically the entire burden of supplying German and satellite troops now fighting on that front on the Hungarian and Rumanian rail systems-confined between the Carpathians on the north and the Danube on the south and moving through bottlenecks at both the eastern and western termini.” Luard believed that the Romanian rail network was more vulnerable to an aerial offensive than other European nations in large part due to the geography of the country. So the Allies saw a real opportunity here to hurt the Axis Army Group South Ukraine, which depended on these rail lines for logistical support and troop movements. Allied commanders hoped they could replicate the success of the previous two rail bombing campaigns in Romania. They soon discovered that a number of factors that had gone in their favor in the previous two campaigns were not present in Romania. Most importantly, those two rail bombing campaigns took place as shaping operations before a large ground offensive. Whereas with the First Iași-Chișinău Offensive, the Soviet Second and Third Ukrainian Fronts had already conducted extensive offensive operations in Ukraine and were in the midst of a pursuit when both the bombing and ground offensive took place.

 

The development of the „Tidal Wave”, in the oil region of Ploiești, created a precedent in damaging the Romanian railways. How did the attacks in 1944 come to target and affect primarily the railway network?

One of the problems with how Americans today view the air war against Romania is that we typically only think in terms of specific missions or the equipment used in an operation. Those are the means to achieve a strategic aim. We see this today in the reaction to the recent Ukrainian strike against the Russian Federation’s strategic bomber fleet. Many Americans have chosen to focus on the drones and the mission itself. Those are the means to achieving a strategic and operational goal; not necessarily the goal itself. They do the same with Ploiești. Most of what Americans know about the bombing of Romania is the Tidal Wave mission and the B-24s. As most Romanians know due to their history, the bombing was far more extensive. So it is always best to understand what the strategic aims of the Allies were going into the air campaigns against Romania before diving into the means themselves.

For the Allies in 1944, they started by assessing Romania at the strategic level and trying to understand the key contributions it made to the Axis war effort. The most important strategic asset that Romania brought to the Axis alliance was crude oil. In addition to oil, Romania had an excellent air force, and a sizeable army. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the importance of the Romanian rail network to the sustainment of German operations along the southern end of the Eastern Front in April 1944. Using Luard’s own estimates based on photo reconnaissance, he believed that Romania had 2,600 train wagons alone at Ploiești. He also emphasized that Ploiești was a major hub for Axis forces in Romania. Luard called the Ploiești junction “indispensable.” So when the Americans hammered Ploiești in 1944, it was not always the refineries they targeted. They struck the rail lines because of their importance to the defense of Romania. So those are the main reasons why Romania was important to the Axis. It is not entirely about the oil, but the oil is the most important strategic asset that the Axis needs in the war.

With that in mind, the Allies approached attacking Romania from the standpoint of trying to remove those strategic elements like pieces on a chess board. About 80 percent of German crude oil came from Romania. That is the strategic element that the Allies want to eliminate off of the board. On 1 August 1943 they tried to eliminate oil in one decisive air raid, codenamed Operation Tidal Wave. Tidal Wave was a disaster for the Americans on a number of levels. I won’t go into the details here because plenty has been written on that subject. However, what I will say is that the Americans learned some important lessons from Tidal Wave. The refineries could not be destroyed in a single decisive raid and that any aerial bombardment of the refineries was a temporary solution. The best method to remove Romanian oil from the chess board was by supporting the Soviet advance to eliminate Romania entirely from the war itself. The refineries could be repaired and were. In fact oil production increased in part due to the nature of the Tidal Wave repairs. Going into 1944 the Americans are dead set on eliminating Romanian oil. That is the strategic goal. Everything else was a means. This includes attacks on the Romanian rail network.

So in the spring of 1944 an opportunity presented itself with the Soviet advance towards the Romanian border after the collapse of Axis forces in Ukraine. With limited consultation with the Soviets, the Allies decided to support the Soviet ground advance through attacks on Romanian transportation targets including the rail network. This is how we get the 4 April attacks on Bucharest and Ploiești. Now some scholars will argue that the 5 April attacks on the Ploiești refineries were a backdoor into carrying out an offensive against the refineries since the Oil Plan had yet to be approved. That is not true. The basis of that argument is that the rail lines sit next to the refineries and therefore the American bombs will hit the refineries. I don’t see that in the documents. It is an assumption since some of the bombs did hit the refineries. Precision bombing in 1944 for the Americans involved getting the bombs within 1,000 feet of the aiming point. The target was the rail lines at Ploiești, which they hammered. In fact the Allied Oil Plan, a continental wide aerial offensive against Axis oil, did not officially start until 8 June 1944.

Another reason why the rail lines were prioritized from April until Romania’s defection to the Allies on 23 August 1944 is they were the main method used by the Romanians to export their oil to Germany. Naturally, as the rail lines came under constant attack by the American Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy, the Axis started to export more oil on the Danube River because of the damage to the rail network. This led to a series of aerial mining operations along the Danube River by RAF 205 Group during the summer of 1944. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the attacks. I should point out these attacks continued off and on against Romanian rail targets from 4 April to 23 August 1944.

 

How did the refugees almost overwhelm the railway system in Romania?

When it comes to the strategic implications of the refugee crisis on the Romanian rail network I should begin by saying that both the bombing and the refugee crisis never completely shut down the rail network. It did put significant strain on the system. The network was never in danger of a complete collapse which is something that the Allies later found out when their bombings did not lead to a collapse of the Romanian state as they had hoped. So the refugees never overwhelmed the Romanian rail network, but they did put it under considerable duress.

A good way to look at the role that refugees played in putting strain on the Romanian rail network is to look at it as an additional factor that impacts traffic and rail capacity. These refugees are fleeing the front line. For perspective, 82,580 Romanians fled Bessarabia during the spring of 1944. Even in peacetime that would be hard for the trains to keep up with capacity. Additionally, in January 1944 Romania exported 125,824 tank cars of oil alone. Many of those rail lines run through the same lines that are being used by the refugees and passengers. The Ploiești-Bucharest line is under considerable pressure when you consider the oil shipments, civilian traffic, and refugees. Finally, you have the military traffic which needs to go through the same towns and cities. They need to move soldiers, weapons, supplies, and ammunition. Sometimes heavy equipment like tanks. This is the logic behind why the Allies see this as a key node in the Romanian economy. They believe if they can hit it hard enough and flood the cities with refugees then the Romanian government will collapse under the pressure. Shockingly, the Romanians found a way to keep the lines running despite the damage.

One thing that I think did prevent the Romanian rail lines from undergoing a complete collapse has to do with the problems facing the Fifteenth Air Force at this time. The Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy under the command of Major General Nathan Twining, had been asked to do more than the American Eighth Air Force with less. Let me be clear that is no criticism of the Eighth Air Force, but they do not have as diverse a mission load as the Fifteenth Air Force. The Fifteenth Air Force during this period carried out operations in southern France, Italy, Germany, and the Balkans. From my perspective, they don’t have the capability due to their demands for the necessary follow up strikes to collapse the Romanian rail network. Had the Fifteenth Air Force been able to dedicate the time and energy that the Eighth Air Force did to the rail networks in western Europe, then I think a collapse of the Romanian rail network was quite possible. The problem is that it is not feasible for the Fifteenth Air Force to conduct that kind of sustained campaign in addition to its other missions in Europe.

With that said, we still see a significant impact on rail traffic. By the end of April 1944 seventy percent of Romanian crude oil shipments are being sent on the Danube River, whereas before the refugee crisis and bombing campaign fifty-three percent of oil exports were shipped by track.

With any strategic bombing campaign you always have to remember while it will achieve a strategic effect, that effect is never a war winner on its own. Strategic bombing is a supporting tool for the war, but it does not win the war by itself. Again, we can see this with both the Ukrainian and Russian strategic bombing campaigns in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The air war on its own can’t win the war but it can definitely create hardships for the state that makes fighting the war harder for those being bombed.

 

Is there any war-time story of railwaymen on duty that did stand out to you? Please, elaborate.

There is one conductor that sticks out to me. In April 2013 Radio România Internaţional did a great piece on the 4 April 1944 on the Bucharest rail stations. Conductor Emanuel Elenescu said of the destruction: “A tram still standing was leaning against a house, and the rail was bent. All the dead people were untouched by the bombs, all died from the shock wave.” The moment I read this quote it really resonated with me. If you read some of my pieces on Romania you will see that I like to quote it a lot. The reason this description of the aftermath haunts me is how he described the scene he saw after the raid. He described the chaos of trams thrown all around the rail yards and the conductor took time to note that many of the dead had not been touched by the bombs. They died of the shockwave. I have read my fair share of horrible accounts of Dresden, Hamburg, and other mass casualty raids, but that line has been seared into my memory once I read it. Elenescu’s description shows the brutality, unpredictability, and destructive power of the air war in just two sentences. It still sends a shiver up my spine as I answer your question.

On a more personal note, I should point out that I do have my own connections to railroads. My grandparents lived near a rail line in Texas. I used to see the trains traveling past their house and always imagined getting to ride on one. I collected trains when I was a child. I think my first actual passenger train ride across the country was in 2013 at the age of 25. It was a dream come true. My wife’s family has a deeper connection to trains and her grandfather was a conductor. So it is not lost on me when I research and write about the destruction of these rail networks that there is a human element to this story. There are many civilians being killed who are simply using those railyards to move away from the war. Whereas to me in 2013 trains always represented an opportunity for a new adventure, for the refugees in 1944 it was a lifeline to safety. Unfortunately that ended up not being the case when the bombs fell on those same trains. In a cruel twist of fate, what had been a lifeline to the refugees turned into their tombs.

 

Tell us how the process of researching Romanian historical documents went through. Have you been confronting any challenges?

I love this question because I get to tell you how I got into this topic. So I have not actually used a lot of Romanian sources. The attacks against the Romanian rail network was something that I learned about while researching in the archives on the project that eventually became my book Uniting Against the Reich. So as I was looking through documents at the development of American bombing plans for the summer of 1944. There was this huge debate in the spring about whether to target oil production or transportation targets in the lead up to Operation Overlord. The commander of the United States Strategic Air Forces, Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, was an advocate of bombing Romanian oil production facilities. Most of Eisenhower’s staff favored attacks against the European rail targets. This led me to look at the documents in the Carl Spaatz Papers located at the Library of Congress.

As I examined the documents involving this debate I came across another set of documents in the same files about attacking Romanian transportation targets which eventually led to the infamous 4 April 1944 attack on Bucharest in 1944. This was done to support the Soviet advance into Romania during the First Iași-Chișinău Offensive. So I followed that thread and that is when I realized that the American bombing campaign against Romania was far larger than how we typically write about it in the United States. It targeted oil, rail, RAF 205 Group mined the Danube River, there was a massive air suppression campaign carried out against Romanian and German air forces, and finally there were attacks against civilians. So the first challenge that I face is trying to better understand the full extent of the American air offensive against Romania. I am still learning about missions that took place that historians have not covered. Also, there are proposed missions that never take place but are equally as important in understanding how the Americans viewed the air war. So understanding what the Americans are doing in their air campaigns over Romania is my first challenge.

The second issue that I struggle with is how to research and write about this topic. As an American with limited language skills, I feel more comfortable covering this from the American perspective. For the Romanian perspective of the air war, I need help from Romanian scholars and researchers. I have been blessed in this aspect of my work. To quote Andor, “I have friends everywhere.” First, Grant Harward has been crucial in helping me understand the Romanian perspective and pointing me towards resources to shed better light on what Romanians are dealing with on the ground. Furthermore, a lot of Romanians have published in English the personal stories of those under the bombs. This has been quite helpful in adding a crucial human element to my research. Anyone writing about an air campaign has to remember that civilians typically get killed in air campaigns as a result of collateral damage. A bomb is still a bomb no matter the targeting technology. This means that even if the bomb hits the exact target there is a high likelihood that those not involved in combat operations will be killed. It is the ugly nature of the air war. It can be tempting when writing about the air war to just get focused on the targets, but there are people working on the railroads, using them, and getting killed by the bombs. There are many who have nothing to do with the war such as refugees using the railroads to flee the fighting who die at Bucharest on 4 April 1944. Thanks to the work of Romanian scholars and those who publish personal histories of these events, I have been able to add the experiences of Romanians to my research.

A final challenge that I have is confronting my own limitations and biases as an American historian. As I mentioned before I did not intend to write about this topic initially, I stumbled across it. I knew very little about Romania when I started this research. I knew about their military contributions during the war at Stalingrad and the oil exports. So I have had to start learning more about Romanian history. Grant Harward has been most helpful and patient in catching me up to speed on the things that I do not know. Also, as I have done more interviews with Romanian media outlets, I have started to learn a bit more about Romanian culture. I love the diversity in the languages, food, religion, and people. This also gives me a chance to better understand the concerns that Romanians have through these interviews by the questions that are asked. For example, I had no clue that Romanians were very divided about NATO. As an American, I simply saw the logic in Romanians being in NATO as a deterrent to Russian aggression. Over time I have a better understanding as to the political divisions over that topic and how Romanians expressed their desires in the most recent election. This is a challenge that I like because as I try to overcome it I get to learn more about Romania and Romanians which has been enriching for me personally.