The Fortele Aeriene Regale ale României (FARR, Royal Romanian Air Force; also known as Aeronauticã Regalã Românã, Royal Romanian Aeronautics) was still rebuilding when war began. Outnumbered and inadequately equipped, its pilots fought for Pyrrhic victories, and its antiaircraft ground crews inflicted most of the damage incurred by enemy aircraft. Approximately 500 Romanian flyers died in the war, a proportionally heavy total. The Industria Aeronauticã Românã (Romanian Aeronautical Industry) works at Brasov produced several serviceable aircraft, notably the IAR-80 and IAR-80A. Based, in part, on the Polish PZL-24, the IAR-80 was among the best European fighters when it entered service in 1939, but it soon lagged behind newer designs.

A reluctant Romania officially joined the Axis powers on 23 November 1940, and German Luftwaffe advisers trained and reorganized the FARR along German lines. Romania participated in Operation BARBAROSSA, the invasion of the Soviet Union, and in the August–October 1941 Odessa Campaign, fighter strength dropped by a fourth as spare parts for older British, French, and Polish aircraft were depleted. Planes of German or Romanian manufacture replaced them. FARR fighters and bombers aided the Romanian army’s victories against the Soviets in Bessarabia and at Odessa in 1941, losing 862 men in less than 10 months, including ground-support and antiaircraft crews. Romanian pilots flew some 4,000 sorties in the Battle of Stalingrad from October 1942 to January 1943. The FARR lost 79 planes, most of them abandoned when airfields were overrun, while destroying 61 Soviet aircraft. Romanian women pilots of the Escadrilla Aviatie Sanitare won Red Cross medals for braving Soviet fighters and intense flak to airlift out casualties during these campaigns.

FARR pilots blunted the Soviet bombing of Romania, but a stronger enemy appeared beginning on 12 June 1942, when, in Operation HALPRO, U.S. bombers made Romania’s Ploesti (Ploiesti) oil fields their target. When 178 unescorted American B-24 heavy bombers swept over Ploesti at low level on 1 August 1943 in Operation TIDAL WAVE, FAAR pilots claimed 20 of the 54 raiders shot down and lost just 2 fighters. Defending Romania’s oil fields and cities then became the FARR’s top priority. After Romania changed sides in September 1944, FARR pilots flew 4,300 missions for the Allies and dropped over 1,000 tons of bombs on its erstwhile Axis partners.

Romania’s top-scoring ace of the war was Cãpitan Aviator de Rezervã Constantin Cantacuzino, with 43 confirmed and 11 probable victories; FARR’s practice of awarding additional points for shooting down bombers raised his total to 69. Despite limitations in both the quality and the quantity of its aircraft, the FARR had been one of the most powerful eastern European air forces. By August 1947, however, Soviet-imposed restrictions reduced its postwar strength to fewer than 75 aircraft.

References

Axworthy, Mark. Third Axis, Fourth Ally: Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1841–1945. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1995.

Bernád, Dénes. Rumanian Air Force: The Prime Decade, 1938–1947. Carrollton, TX: Squadron/Signal Publications, 1999.

Butler, Rupert. Hitler’s Jackals. Barnsley, UK: Leo Cooper, 1998.

Tarnstrom, Ronald. L. Balkan Battles. Lindsborg, KS: Trogen Books, 1998.