Arrival at Ankara

All that anyone would admit was that the planes had landed in Turkey. Three of the bug-bellied, four-engined B-24s settled snugly on Ankara's airdrome, disgorging 21 jubilant men & officers in U.S. Army Air Force uniforms. One crashed near Ismit, between Ankara and Rumania's Nazified oil fields, with a Messerschmitt on its tail and the marks of Turkish anti-aircraft fire on its seamed skin. The official report was that they ran out of gas.

Where these Army bombers had been could only be guessed. Where they were headed was clear enough: three other B24s flew safely over Turkey and on toward Syria. Said one of the officers in Ankara: "We accomplished our mission in the Black Sea"--a statement which could cover bombings of Rumanian wells, an attack on the German besiegers to relieve endangered Sevastopol, assaults on the Nazi-held Russian port of Odessa, or blasting Axis ships in the Black Sea to prevent German landings in the Caucasus. Correspondents hazarded all these guesses, with emphasis on the oilfield bombings. The U.S. has lately received specific information on the locations of the most productive Rumanian wells, and bombing from Syria was feasible. In any event, any "mission in the Black Sea" was certainly designed to give Russia tangible U.S. aid, and perhaps to accent the pledges given Molotov in Washington.

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