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...participants the Americans, Soviets, and British, "In reality, only the British and their partners made significant contribution." Twenty years earlier, Neil Orpen made a similar observation: "I [first] realized the extraordinary nature of the Warsaw airlift of 1944, which I have since regarded as the most shining example of selfless courage in all my experience and research." (2)
Indeed, the Soviet contribution to the Poles should be left to Soviet propagandists. (3) The Americans, inveigled in major political and long term strategic policy issues, did make one major effort but only under great political pressure from the Polish-American Congress and strenuous urging by Winston Churchill. (4) In fact, while belated, the American effort produced significant results, both material and moral. Thus, equating Soviet and American contributions is preposterous. Further, Professor Davies, leaves the reader with the impression that it was the Royal Air Force that made "a significant contribution." This is grossly unfair to the one major American effort and a cavalier dismissal of the Polish Special Duties Flight 1586 and crews of the Royal South African Air Force. (5)
It should be emphasized that supply flights to German occupied Poland had been run more or less continuously since a Polish Special Duties Flight 1586 had moved to Italy from their RAF Tempsford base in the United Kingdom in late 1943. (6) The official establishment of the Polish flight was six crews plus two in reserve. In fact, the number of Polish crews slightly exceeded this number, limited only by the number of available planes, which consisted of American B-24 Liberators and Halifaxes. These long, arduous flights were conditioned not merely on favorable weather, but also sufficient darkness (i.e. moonless nights) since such missions were subject to visual interception by German fighters. These missions carried Polish military and political couriers as well as specialized sabotage and communications equipment. (7) In one of the last flights to Poland in December 1944 the Poles flew in the British Military Mission. (8)
But until the Warsaw Uprising, and after its tragic demise, the drop zones for all flights were isolated rural areas, as far as possible from German concentrations. With the Warsaw Uprising the potential drop zone gave a new and very dangerous dimension to such missions since the crews would be expected to fly to a burning city and attempt to parachute supplies from a low altitude so that the supplies could be fairly concentrated on the drop zone. Now such flights had to contend with the presence of the German fighters around the City and heavy Anti Aircraft (AA) defenses in addition to all the prior hazards, such as changing weather, icing and the too frequent malfunctions...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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