This 1939 Buick is the very car owned by the Concordia Vega Oil Refinery in Ploesti, Romania and driven by Cornell's dad. It is the one he used during the bombing air raids over Ploesti during WWII to rescue the United States Airmen who were shot down from 1941 to 1945.
After the fall of the Communist Regime, this car was owned by several parties, the last of which was the Chaplain of the USS Missouri. Through a miracle of events, it was rediscovered again in New Jersey in 2006 and sent to Cornell in California.
Cornell worked on it for two years, restoring it from the bottom up at a cost of about $35,000. He is proud to present this treasure which survived the most bloody air battles in the history of the United States Air Force.
On August 1st, 1943, the Low Level Mission resulted in the loss of almost 1000 men and 177 airplanes in one hour. Only nine B-24 Liberators made it back to Ben Gazi Air Base in Northern Africa. For that battle, there were presented five Congressional Medals of Honor. This had never happened before nor has it happened since. By the time WWII ended, the US Airforce lost 3,000 men over Ploesti. In addition, there were 12,000 POW's, many of whom were wounded. The United States dropped over Ploesti 57.8 million tons of bombs in order to destroy Hitler's oil supplies which fueled his War Machine.
Special thanks to Gerard Ferrandez for this fantastic slide script. Please visit him at: codepen.io/ge1doot/
