To the TW researcher community:
I found a (postwar) account from a TIDAL WAVE veteran who was badly burned in the crash of his ship just outside Ploesti. He stated that just-captured TW prisoners of war (presumably the bombardiers, who would have been the only crewmen with the technical knowledge) were forced to disarm time-fused bombs in Ploesti. Since his German captors had refused him medical treatment at the time this incident purportedly occurred (he didn’t receive medical treatment until turned over to the Romanians about 72 hours after his capture).
This obviously would have been a massive violation of the Geneva Convention, and if it really happened there should be additional evidence. None of the German or Romanian official files mention this, perhaps for obvious reasons, but I’ve never read a hint of this in any other contemporary accounts by US airmen either. In fact, both German and Romanian documents state some bombs were disarmed by GERMAN bomb disposal experts, and in fact at least two were killed when the bomb they were working on exploded.
Do you have information on this? Please email me at support@Low-Level-Ploesti.org.
Thanks!