Topic summary
Oil campaign of World War II
Kingdom of Hungary- Richard Peirse(1940 – 1941 (Dec))
- Carl Spaatz(1942 (May) – 1945)
- Arthur Harris(1942 (Feb) – 1945)
Ion Antonescu
Paul Pleiger
15th Air Force
RAF Bomber Command
The Alliedoil campaign of World War II was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by the RAF and the USAAF against facilities supplying Nazi Germany with petroleum, oil, and lubrication (POL) products. It formed part of the immense Allied strategic bombing effort during the war. The targets in Germany and in Axis-controlled Europe included refineries, synthetic-fuelfactories, storage depots and other POL-infrastructure.
Before the war, Britain had identified Germany's reliance on oil and oil products for its war machine, and the strategic bombing started with RAF attacks on Germany in 1940. After the US entered the war (December 1941), it carried out daytime "precision bombing" attacks – such as Operation Tidal Wave against refineries in Romania in 1943. The last major strategic raid of the European theater of the war targeted a refinery in Norway in April 1945.
During the war the effort expended against POL targets varied, with relative priority moving between the other objectives within the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive such as to defeating the German V-weapon attacks, the destruction of the German air force, or to attacking transport links in preparation for the invasion of western Europe in 1944.