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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The first book on the Ploesti attack -- some minuses, some strong pluses,
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This review is from: Low Level Mission (Wings of War) (Hardcover)
The 1957 first edition of "Low Level Mission" was published soon after American television viewers saw the dramatic footage of the 1943 attack against the oil refineries in Ploesti, Romania, in "Target Ploesti," which premiered on CBS as part of the "Air Power" television documentary series on January 6, 1957. Indeed, author Leon Wolff's brother Perry had produced the television series. This is the 1991 "Wings of War" reprint.
The first book on the raid, it told only some of the tale. There are only a few of the stories of horror and heroism over the target. "Low Level Mission" did not have inputs from the German and Romanian defenders. The flak train and the stories of the American POWs in Romanian captivity are not included. It lacks detailed maps of the attack as planned, and as executed. Still the book has its virtues, and it needs to be read by anyone studying the attack. The prose is wonderfully vigorous. The introduction by Colonel John R. "Killer" Kane addresses some of the controversies, and it is a moving tribute to those who flew the mission. The maintenance preps for the mission are very well told. Wolff's evaluation of the mission's effect is even-handed and hard-headed. There are chapters on the subsequent 1944 high altitute attacks on the same target. The long early chapters on the growth and development of air power are not an uncritical paean to the founding generation of the Air Force, and they have a lot to say about shortsighted American politics, civilian and military, between the world wars. With the final chapters evaluating the mission, Wolff gave us a spirited essay in air power historiography. And -- looking at the arts of printing and binding -- this is a very handsome book to hold in one's hand, and to have on one's shelf. -30-
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