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Those Brave Crews: The Epic Raid to Destroy Hitler's Ploesti Oil Fields

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Those Brave Crews: The Epic Raid To Destroy Hitler's Ploesti Oil Fields by Ray Ward is a work of poetry that closely follows American aircraft on their daring and often lethal mission against the crucial Ploesti (Romania) oil fields during bleak and lethal years of World War II. Vintage black-and-white photographs, biographical notes, and dramatic free verse lyrics combine to impressively commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of determined aviators in this unique and unforgettable work. In stormes fast-breaking on the hills/Which lead into Ploesti's field's/Those guns-once there-resound and flash;/And ever on, in test of wills,/That tidal wave of bombers dash./And none may die who therein fly,/Who linger, timeless, in the sky./Nor need is there for shroud or grave/For any man with Tidal Wave.

This book was written by one of our countries heroes about the heroes who took part in the famous Tidal Wave mission to bomb Ploesti Romania. This is a priceless collectible.

Author and poet Ray Ward gave our nation something quite extraordinary in "Those Brave Crews" -- an epic poem commemorating the low-level attack by five groups of American B-24 bombers against the oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943.

"Ploesti" and "Schweinfurt" were the two great and tragic missions of 1943 that demonstrated the resolve of the U.S. Army Air Forces to deeply penetrate Hitler's Europe to cripple the German war machine. The common resolve of the bomber crews was "never turn back from the target."

In Operation Tidal Wave, 178 bombers carrying 1726 airmen (the "Brave Crews" of the title) took off from bases in Libya. In the mission to cripple the oil production in Hitler's Europe, more than 50 bombers were lost, and 681 members of the crews were killed, missing, prisoners of war, internees, or wounded -- a casualty rate of nearly 40 percent. The mission and the series of misfortunes that led to the high losses are still taught and analyzed at the Air Force Academy and other Air Force professional schools.

Whatever the after-action reports or studies concluded about tactics and execution, no one has expressed anything but awe at the courage of the airmen who flew the mission, and this Ray Ward's focus. This is an American poem that celebrates the "Greatest Generation" in the age of technology and flight. Here and there Ward casts the airmen in terms of the ancient epics. The Ploesti mission was, for instance, an "air anabasis" after the famous retreat of Xenophon's 10,000 Greeks to the Black Sea. There are passages that recall the Charge of the Light Brigade and Gettysburg. These are allusions that place the airmen who flew into the dark clouds from burning oil among the great heroes of mankind.

Epic poems seem not to be in fashion, and it's easy to be a critic. In this, like any long poem, there are passages that take wing, and those that lumber down the runway. I am confident that the great American authors of long poems -- Barlow, Longfellow, Kantor, and Benet, for instance -- would recognize what Ward has accomplished.

There are two editions of this poem. The publisher of the first edition (1989) put the poem together with Ward's extensive collection of photographs in a large format. The size and formal printing of the second edition (2003) better suits and dignifies "Those Brave Crews" as a work of literature, but the first edition has its own satisfactions.

Among dozens of memorable lines, memorize these:

If Freedom's flags be only brightened rags of cotton,
Then haul them down. But, if -- in fluttered flags you hear
Your country's voice -- then all is well for Liberty.
Safe is the land where vigilance is ne'er forgotten,
Defense ne'er cheapened, thus a nation least to fear
For both its honor and its future history.

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