Notable missions of the Oil Campaign of World War II included bombings of the Ploesti Concordia Vega refinery on 18 May 1944, the marshalling yards and oil refinery at Vienna on 8 July 1944 (1st DUC), and the Pardubice oil refinery and nearby railroad tracks on 24 August 1944 (2nd DUC).
Serving in North Africa during World War II, he was promoted to Master Sergeant, and on August 1, 1943, he flew in Operation Tidal Wave, a bombing raid on the Romanian oil refineries of Ploeşti, which were a major source of oil for the Nazi war machine.
The Ninth Air Force (98th and 376th Bombardment Groups) was responsible for the overall conduct of the raid, and the partially formed Eighth Air Force provided three additional bomb groups (44th, 93rd, and 389th).
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The mission was Operation Tidal Wave, in which 179 B-24s took off on an 18-hour, 2,400 mile round-trip mission to destroy the largest of the Nazi-held oil refineries at Ploieşti, 30 miles north of Bucharest, Romania.
Because of the major importance the Ghoukasian Oil Refineries and the other surrounding oil refineries had on the war, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill worked with General Jacob E. Smart at the 1942 Casablanca Conference to discuss Operation Tidal Wave.