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On August 1, 1943, U.S. Army Air Force B-24 Liberators took off from bases in Libya for an audacious raid on one of the Nazi military's most valuable resources.
Operation Tidal Wave was meant to destroy Nazi-controlled oil fields and refineries at Ploiești, north of Bucharest, Romania. The campaign was unprecedented in scale, with 1,725 airmen taking off in 177 bombers.
The attack on Ploiești, a sweeping, low-level bombing raid, took a heavy toll on the U.S. airmen involved: 225 of them were killed, earning the day the grim nickname Black Sunday.
Many of those fallen airmen were not immediately recovered or identified.
Three-quarters of a century later, the U.S. Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has been using archival research and modern forensics — including DNA analysis from exhumed skeletal remains — to account for airmen still missing from the 1943 mission.
The “Ploiești Unknowns Project,” which began in 2017, has so far identified remains of 19 Tidal Wave airmen and notified their descendants.
In the last three months alone, the Pentagon has announced the identification of five Ploiești airmen: Sgt. Elvin L. Phillips, 23; 1st Lt. Louis V. Girard, 20; Lt. Col. Addison E Baker, 36;…
