Operation Tidal Wave: The Bloodiest Air Battle in the History of War

by Vincent Depaul Lupiano

Operation Tidal Wave tells the story of the bloodiest air battle in the history of war. It is about 1700 airmen who set out to bomb the oil refineries surrounding the city of Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943. Success, they thought, would be a force in ending the war. Success instead was extremely limited and 500 airmen were killed, wounded, captured, or interned. Negligible damage resulted at the Ploesti refineries, and a few months later they were operating at one-hundred percent capacity. To show the asperity of the raid, five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded, two posthumously.

Genres: History

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2020

Reviews

[Bill Soyars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great history, full of details on a particular bombing mission over Romania. There are so many things happening, as you can image with a massive body of bombers trying to converge and hit a pinpoint target. And per Murphy's famous law, things can and will go wrong. The author skillfully weaves all these events into something the reader can understand. Has a bit of personal story behind the history, which was interesting. There is some general WW2 knowledge things that a reader may want to skim over, but that is fine. I learned a lot about the expert German defenses, which is an unknown part of this story that the author presented well.

[Nicholas Kokolakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a good read, but I found the author a bit verbose and rambling. There were several dives into historically insignificant rabbit holes, that I didn’t care for, but I throughly enjoyed his descriptions of crews over the targets. I thought the description of the German air defense commander was enlightening. I’d also never heard of the flak train, and what an interesting, devastating piece of history.

[McNeil Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detailed and compelling overview of the Raid on Ploiesti (Operation Tidal Wave), but the book is held back slightly by the clunky writing style. The author frequently uses the same phrases (like "totemic") to describe things and repeats himself in sections. The book would have benefited from some more extensive editing, but otherwise it's an outstanding story.

[Brad Huestis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a WW2 history buff and have no Air Force affiliation. Nevertheless, Mr. Lupiano’s wonderful book brought a daring, real-world air raid gone wrong to life for me. If you are a WW2 buff or have ever dreamt of flying, I highly recommend you add Operation Tidal Wave to your must read list.