1 Group was to be the wartime home of all the Polish squadrons to serve with Bomber Command. And it was courage and determination like this which was to win them the admiration of their contemporaries. ‘They were all, simply, mad buggers. I’m just glad they were on our side,’ one Bomber Command veteran was to tell the author many years after the events at Hemswell that night.
Faldingworth 1944: a 300 Squadron crew in a posed picture with their Lancaster. (D. Lyons)
In September 1939 the Polish Air Force had been destroyed in a matter of days by the Luftwaffe. It was outnumbered four-to-one, its aircraft were outclassed but it was certainly not out flown. Relatively few Polish fighters were shot down by the Luftwaffe while those that were accounted for a creditable number of German fighter, bomber and reconnaissance machines. Most of the Poles’ aircraft were to be destroyed on the ground.
Before the war the British air attaché in Warsaw, G/Capt A.P. Davidson had a very high regard for the men of the Polish Air Force and, in the days before Poland capitulated, there had been some preliminary discussions on the formation of Polish units within the RAF if events led to Poland’s capitulation. As the Germans swept eastwards to meet the advancing Russians, many of those in the 10,000-strong Polish Air Force fled to neutral Romania, a country which quickly found itself under pressure from the Germans to intern the Poles and from the French and British to let them go. The Romanians appear to have done both: interred the airmen and then turned a mostly-blind eye to their escape. By now the Polish government had set up camp in Paris and provided fake documents which were taken into Romania by a team of special couriers whose task it was to speed the repatriation of Polish soldiers and airmen. The first shipment of some 800 men, crammed onto a small Greek ship, left the Black Sea port of Balchik on October 15, 1939 heading for Beirut. Once there they switched ships and the following day were on their way to Marseille.
Times for a break for a 300 Squadron crew at Ingham. (Peter Green Collection)
In France the airmen quickly began to be assimilated into the French Air Force, but not without some misgivings. General Sikorski, who was to lead Polish forces until his death in a plane crash off Gibraltar in 1943, wanted his men to go to Britain as he had a much higher regard for both the RAF and the aircraft it flew. He was not alone. His men found the level of bureaucracy in the Armee de l’Air ‘terrifying’ and, after seeing the French forces at first hand, gave them little chance if the Germans chose to invade.
Eventually three Polish fighter squadrons were formed within the French air force and by May 1940 there were some 7,000 Polish Air Force personnel serving in France. They continued to be appalled at the quality of some of the French aircraft and, in particular, at their poor maintenance and the tactics they were told they would need to adopt. The Poles themselves repeatedly warned their French hosts what would happen if aircraft were left unprotected, parked in neat rows on airfields. But even after the Blitzkrieg began and whole swathes of aircraft had been destroyed on the ground, the French insisted on lining up their replacements in just the same way. Because of this, the Poles lost a third of their entire fighter strength in just one Luftwaffe attack on May 10, 1940 at Luxeuil. Within a few days Sikorski was preparing to order his men to leave for Britain.
The British, in the meantime, were still somewhat wary of the Poles. The first contingent had arrived in Britain in December 1939, having chosen not to fight with the French. Instead they found themselves subject to a military diet of endless parades, form-filling, medicals and English lessons.
In June 1940 a formal agreement was reached with the Polish government (which had moved yet again, this time to London) to form two Polish squadrons in Bomber Command, to be paid for by the Poles through a loan from the British. It was agreed they would be subordinate to a British station commander, quartermaster and paymaster and would serve subject to King’s Regulations. They would receive the same pay as their RAF counterparts, wear the same uniforms – with a ‘Poland’ flash on the sleeves – and their aircraft would carry RAF markings with a small red and white chequer on the fuselage. Those first two squadrons, 300 (Masovian) and 301 (Pomeranian), were formed at Bramcote in Warwickshire in July, 1940 and were to be followed by two more, 304 (Silesian) and 305 (Ziemia Wielkopolska), the following month. 300 would serve with 1 Group until the war ended, 301 was disbanded in 1943 because of a shortage of Polish aircrew while 304 later transferred to Coastal Command and 305 to the 2nd Tactical Air Force. The missing number in that sequence, 303 Squadron, became perhaps the most famous fighter squadron in the Battle of Britain and was to forever cement the Poles’ reputation in Britain as tough fighting men.
Typical of the Polish airmen who flew with 1 Group was Zygmunt Bednarski, a student at Krakow University before the war, where he was studying electrical engineering. During his time there he was called up for national service and chose the Polish Air Force. From an intake of 240 he was one of just six to qualify as a pilot.
Polish aircrew pictured at Hemswell in 1942. In the background are some of the officers’ married quarters, buildings still there today incorporated in the new village of Hemswell Cliff. (D. Lyons)
His period of national service was due to end, by some cruel irony, on Friday September 1, 1939. Five days earlier, as the noises from neighbouring Germany grew ever more menacing, the Polish armed forces were put on a war footing and Bednarski was told to forget about demobilisation. By that time he was flying Czapla RWD-14s, single-engined, high-winged reconnaissance aircraft which, in Polish terms, was modern, having only entered service earlier that year. But they were slow, equipped with only a pair of machine guns and were hopelessly outclassed by everything in the Luftwaffe arsenal.
The Polish air force had just 35 Czaplas in service, spread over seven squadrons. Within days they had all gone, 24 shot down or destroyed on the ground while the remainder were flown to either Romania or Hungary.
Zygmunt Bednarski survived the German onslaught and together with the remainder of his unit ended up in the east of the country where they fell into the hands of the Russians, who had taken the opportunity to stage their own invasion of Poland.
Many of those around him were relieved to have been captured by the Russians but Bednarski, who was multi-lingual and fluent in Russian, was not so sure. When he and thousands of his fellow officers were ordered to board trains heading for Smolensk and told they were being taken east for ‘interviews’ he became deeply suspicious. He and another Polish airman cut a hole in the floor of their railway truck and, as the train slowed, dropped onto the track and made for the nearest woods.
A 300 Squadron Wellington which made it back to Ingham from Bremen in September despite intensive fire damage. (D. Lyons)
Later they came into contact with some Russian peasants who gave them food and advised them to stay well clear of any young Russians they came across because all, they were told, were committed Stalinists. The two men headed south and eventually found their way into Romania where they were promptly arrested and accused of spying. Neither had identification papers, which had been taken by the Russians, and, despite their protestations, were taken to a prison camp near Ploesti.
Both were determined young men and within days were on the run again, this time making it as far as Bucharest where they were arrested a second time, this time as they attempted to get into the French embassy. They were sent to an internment camp where conditions were simply awful but security was lax. The two young Poles were there only a matter of days before they escaped again, this time knocking out one of the guards and later evading a search party by hiding in a river, up to their necks in water, as the banks were searched.
The pair later came across a railway line and managed to smuggle themselves onto a train hauling timber from the nearby forest. When the train halted near a village they went into a small cafe in the hope of finding something to eat. The local police were quickly alerted but a local woman took pity on them, hiding them, providing them with fresh clothes and
eventually helping them onto another train, this time heading for the Black Sea port of Balchik. There they came into contact with a Romanian who was able to provide them with fake passports and identity documents and they were able to board a ship bound for Marseille. On board were a number of other Polish escapees and once in France they were quickly recruited into the French forces, desperate for men as the German invaders were sweeping aside the country’s army and air force. Days later France capitulated and the Poles were gathered together and told: ‘La guerre et fini’. But Bednarski and his colleagues had not travelled thousands of miles just to end up in a German prisoner-of-war camp and decision to join the fledgling French Resistance movement.
Then a radio message was received telling them that all trained aircrew were badly needed by the British. A dozen Poles immediately volunteered, including Bednarski, and they were assembled on the coast where they were told they would be taken out to sea in small boats in the hopes of being picked up by a passing British ship.
The first party was intercepted by a naval patrol and their boat sunk by machine-gun fire. Bednarski was in the second vessel, a small fishing boat. It was to spend four long days adrift in the Mediterranean before they were found by a British tanker which later landed them in Oran. There they were told by the British consulate to make their way to Casablanca, some 400 miles away, from where they would be taken to England. When they asked how they were to get to Casablanca they were allocated a small truck, several cans of petrol and simply pointed in the right direction. With that they set off with no map or compass, in a hostile terrain with little or no knowledge of the local language in either Algeria or Morocco, their eventual destination. Three hundred miles into their journey they stopped at a roadside village to buy food only to find when they returned to their truck that all their petrol had been stolen. The hardy band of Poles completed the remainder of their astonishing journey on the backs of camels.
BH-G of 300 Squadron pictured during an air test, 1943. (Peter Green Collection)
Zygmunt Bednarski (centre) with his Lancaster and crew at Faldingworth. (Z. Bednarski)
Once in Casablanca they were found room on a British ship, the Arandora Star, bound for Liverpool. By now German U-boats were strengthening their grip on the shipping lanes and Bednarski insisted on spending the whole of the five-day voyage on deck. He was one of 6,200 Polish airmen to make it out of a total of 6,863 in France, an astonishing achievement of organisation, bravery and endurance.
He was later to spend time training in Scotland, at Cranwell in Lincolnshire and Hucknall in Nottinghamshire before being posted to 305 Squadron, which had flown with 1 Group from 1941 until 1943 before being transferred to the 2nd Tactical Air Force. He was to fly 12 operations flying Mosquito fighter-bombers on low-level operations over Northern France before being wounded when his aircraft was badly shot-up by a Me109. After a spell recuperating, he was posted to a Polish OTU as an instructor but quickly tired of that and volunteered for service in Bomber Command.
He went to the Poles’ own bomber training unit, 18 OTU at Finningley near Doncaster, where he teamed up with four other Poles, a Canadian of Polish descent and an Irishman as a Lancaster bomber crew. Later they made the short move to 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme and then to the last remaining Polish squadron in Bomber Command, 300 at Faldingworth.
There he and his crew would complete 22 operations before the war ended, a tour which included a hair-raising night over Kiel where he later recalled having to fly his Lancaster at low level like a Mosquito to escape the searchlights. On another occasion he landed his Lancaster on two engines at Manston and on a raid on Bremen suffered shrapnel wounds in his hand and leg but still managed to land his Lancaster back in Lincolnshire.
One of those who flew with him was wireless operator Eugene Kassakowski, a Canadian of Polish descent and the crew’s ‘interpreter’. He had lied about his age and had joined the RCAF at the age of 16 and flew with ‘Ziggy’ Bednarski during his time with 300 Squadron. ‘He was an absolutely great pilot and could do just about anything with a Lanc,’ he remembered.
Like many other Polish airmen and soldiers who served with the British, Zygmunt Bednarski was later to settle in England. During his time at Faldingworth he would cycle to nearby Market Rasen and then catch train to Cleethorpes where the sea front cafes, pubs and dance halls were popular with aircrew. There he was to meet a pretty young lady who told him her surname, Croft, was a very old Cleethorpes name. They later married and, when he was finally demobilised in 1948 (by which time he had over 3,000 hours in his RAF log book), they settled in Cleethorpes where he opened a small electrical business under the name John (‘because it seemed the most popular name’) Croft. Years later he added ‘-Bednarski’ to this, becoming a popular member of the large Polish community in the area, which included many former Polish airmen and soldiers from the Carpathian Lancers, which was disbanded in Grimsby in 1947.
A 300 Squadron Lancaster undergoing maintenance at Faldingworth, 1944. (Peter Green Collection)
It was only long after the war that he realised how fortuitous his decision was to escape from that train bound for Smolensk. The men with him at the time were among the 6,000 Polish officers shot on Stalin’s orders and buried in the Katyn Forest.
Among the very first batch of Polish airmen to reach Britain was John Prochera. He had joined the Polish Air Force in 1938 and was a gunner on Krasa light bombers. His unit was destroyed in the early days of the fighting, most of the aircraft being destroyed on the ground. By February 1940 he was in England and, after passing through the Polish OTU at Bramcote, joined 301 Squadron, flying his first few operations on Battles. His Swinderby crew then converted to Wellingtons and he flew from there and Hemswell before completing his first tour of operations. John Prochera then did something unusual, he applied to serve in the Royal Air Force. He joined a crew of three Australians, a New Zealander, a Scotsman and an Englishman at 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme before being posted to the newly reformed 100 Squadron at Waltham, thus becoming one of the first Poles to fly in Lancasters. By October 1943 he completed his second tour of operations and was always to remember the friendliness and comradeship he found at Waltham, both on the station and in the local community. John Prochera was never to fully master the complexities of the English language (although his command of swear words was prodigious) but the welcome he was given at Waltham transcended simple linguistics and it was to stay with him for the rest of his life. After leaving 100 Squadron he had a spell instructing before volunteering for operational flying again, this time with the Pathfinders of 156 Squadron at Warboys. There he went on to amass a total of 93 operations and finished up as the squadron’s gunnery leader. After the war John Prochera left the RAF and decided to settle in Grimsby, renewing the friendships he had made in the area during his time with 100 Squadron. In later years he became a stalwart member of the Aircrew Association and ran a successful motor repair business. His command of the language improved only slightly but his affection for his adopted country never diminished.
It wasn’t just Polish men who served alongside the RAF in 1 Group. In 1941 the Soviet-Polish Pact was signed (perhaps two years too late for Poland) following Hitler’s invasion of Russia. This allowed for the freeing of large numbers of Poland’s armed forces from prison camps, including a large number of young women. They had been rounded up by the Russians and shipped to labour camps in the east. When they were freed many chose to join the British and were moved by train from Siberia to the Middle East. There 1,436 of them were recruited into the newly-formed Polish Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and brought to Britain where they were trained in all the WAAF trades, everything from cooks to parachute packers, from drivers to telephonists. Virtually all of these young women served with Polish squadrons first at Ingham and then Faldingworth.
Four holders of Poland’s equivalent of the Victoria Cross at Faldingworth. (Z. Bednarski)
They were not universally welcomed by t
he Polish air and ground crews as two years in labour camps had left both mental and physical scars and many of the Poles far preferred the more flirtatious and prettier British WAAFs.
The Polish contribution to 1 Group was significant. Their squadron numbers were limited by the shortage of replacements, a problem which grew more acute as the war progressed. Unlike other overseas squadrons, particularly the Australians and Canadians, there was no replacement pool to draw on the make up for those lost on operations. Towards the end of the war men like Zygmunt Bednarski switched from flying fighters to bombers to keep the squadron as near all-Polish as possible. The squadrons themselves were relatively small, never more than two flights, and certainly by 1943 the Poles of the final squadron in 1 Group, 300, felt they were being marginalised. They were the last to be re-equipped with Lancasters (not until the beginning of 1944, two years after the first Lancs went into service) and the last in the whole of Bomber Command to operate the ageing Wellington. In the autumn of 1943 as the bombing campaign reached its intensity they were relegated to mainly mining operations which proved intensely frustrating for the young Polish airmen desperate to kill Germans. Not even a glowing testimony to the effectiveness of their work from Arthur Harris could make up for not being able to drop bombs on Berlin.
But the Poles made their own history. They were to fly on some of the very first 1 Group operations against German invasion barges in the late summer of 1940 and the very last, to Berchtesgaden on April 25, 1945.
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