Operation Most III

On the evening of 25 July 1944 a twin-engined Douglas C-47 Dakota of No. 267 Squadron RAF took off from Campo Casale airfield near Brindisi in southern Italy. A few minutes after midnight it landed in a meadow near the village of Wał-Ruda (PL), a dozen or so kilometres from Tarnów, in the German-occupied General Government. At the landing ground, which the Home Army had given the codename “Motyl” (“Butterfly”), sacks of parts of the German V-2 rocket, Polish intelligence reports and five passengers for London were waiting for it. The aircraft sank into the sodden ground and for more than an hour could not take off, but it returned to Italy before dawn. It was the third and last successful Operation “Most” (PL) (“Bridge”; Wildhorn III in British documents) and one of the most famous actions of the Polish underground.

A rocket on the Bug

For a long time the German rocket programme was a puzzle to the Allies. The first successful flight of the A4 rocket, later the V-2, took place in October 1942 at the experimental centre at Peenemünde on Usedom, headed by Wernher von Braun. The British grasped the significance of this work in 1943, partly thanks to Home Army intelligence reports, and on the night of 17-18 August 1943 the RAF bombed Peenemünde in Operation Hydra. The Germans then moved production underground, into the Harz mountains, and test firings out of range of British bombers, to the SS “Heidelager” training ground in the Sandomierz Forest, near the villages of Blizna and Pustków (PL) near Dębica.

The first rocket was fired at Blizna at the turn of October and November 1943; sources give 27 October or 5 November. In all, more than 200 rockets were fired from there. The target of the tests was an area on the Bug, near Sarnaki (PL) in Podlasie, about 300 kilometres from the range, but according to Polish studies about 80% of the rockets did not reach that far, and many exploded just after launch. The range was observed from the start by Home Army intelligence, and the wreckage of rockets was collected by underground soldiers and local peasants, getting ahead of German search teams. The municipal commandant of the Peasant Battalions (PL) from Niwiska, Michał Kasza, collected and handed to the Home Army a dozen or so rocket parts, for which he received thanks from headquarters.

The breakthrough came in the spring of 1944. On 20 May, near the village of Klimczyce (PL) near Sarnaki, a rocket that had not exploded fell on the bank of the Bug. Home Army soldiers hid it from the Germans, dismantled it and took the most important components to Warsaw. They were examined in clandestine laboratories by scientists working with intelligence: the radio engineer Prof. Janusz Groszkowski (PL) took on the guidance systems, the chemist Prof. Marceli Struszyński (PL) the fuel, and the investigation also involved, among others, the engine specialist Bogdan Stefanowski and the glider designer Eng. Antoni Kocjan (PL), who had worked for Home Army intelligence for years. The fruit of their work was a roughly 30-page “Special Report 1/R No. 242. Rocket Missiles”. There was reason for haste: on 13 June the first V-1 missiles fell on England, and London had to reckon with a much more dangerous weapon arriving soon.

Bridges from Brindisi

The rocket itself, however, was hard to get to the West. Supply drops for the Home Army went only one way, by parachute, from England and later from Italy, and heavy Halifaxes could not land on Polish meadows. Only twin-engined Dakotas with extra fuel tanks made possible so-called two-way flights with landings. They were prepared by Section VI (Special) of the Commander-in-Chief’s Staff together with the British Special Operations Executive, and on the Polish side the landing grounds were chosen and protected by the Home Army’s air section.

The first Operation “Most” took place on the night of 15-16 April 1944 at the “Bąk” landing ground near Matczyn, about 35 kilometres from Lublin; the Dakota brought two Cichociemni and took to London, among others, Gen. Stanisław Tatar. The second, on the night of 29-30 May, used a meadow by the Kisielina stream near Wał-Ruda. The same “Motyl” was designated for the third operation. Its main purpose was to carry V-2 parts and the documentation of their examination to London.

The plan almost collapsed at the last moment. On 2 June Kocjan, who was to fly in person with the rocket parts and explain them to the British, was arrested by chance by the Germans together with his wife and imprisoned in Pawiak. He was replaced by Lt Jerzy Chmielewski, “Rafał”, a Home Army intelligence officer who, like Kocjan, was a former Auschwitz prisoner. Things were not good at the landing ground either: downpours had waterlogged the meadow, and German units were stationed in the area. According to the account of the deputy commander of the landing ground’s guard, Officer Cadet Zdzisław Baszak, “Pirat”, German aircraft had landed in the same field the day before.

The night at “Motyl”

The Dakota took off from Campo Casale on the evening of 25 July, according to Polish studies at 7.28 p.m. Until dark it was escorted by a Liberator of the Polish 1586 Special Duties Flight. At the controls sat the New Zealand RAF pilot F/Lt Stanley George Culliford and the co-pilot, the Polish airman Lt Kazimierz Szrajer (PL), who was also the interpreter; the crew was completed by a British navigator and wireless operator. The partisans had been warned of the flight by a coded phrase in a BBC broadcast. After midnight the aircraft landed, according to Polish sources 23 minutes past midnight, on its second approach.

The landing ground was guarded by Home Army units from the Tarnów area under Captain Władysław Kabat, “Brzechwa”, and a large group of local people; years later Baszak estimated the number of helpers at about 400. From the aircraft stepped out the Cichociemni Lt Kazimierz Bilski, “Rum”, Maj. Bogusław Wolniak, “Mięta”, Officer Cadet Leszek Starzyński, “Malewa”, and the emissary Jan Nowak, “Zych”, the future director of the Polish Section of Radio Free Europe. A dozen or so suitcases and packages of supplies were unloaded. On board went Chmielewski with the seven most important rocket parts and the intelligence report, the political adviser of the late Gen. Sikorski, Józef Retinger, the PPS veteran Tomasz Arciszewski, the courier Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt (PL) and Czesław Miciński. The rocket parts, hidden earlier in barns in nearby Przybysławice, were brought to the landing ground by cart, under hay.

The stop was meant to last a few minutes. When the pilots opened the throttle, the wheels did not move: they had sunk into the soft ground. The crew at first thought the brakes had locked and cut their hydraulic lines, but it made no difference. The partisans dug the earth from around the wheels, also with their bare hands, cut away turf and laid boards, and for a time the machine was unloaded. Burning the aircraft and evacuating the people was already being considered. Only on the next attempt (the third according to dzieje.pl, the fourth according to other accounts) did the Dakota lift off. According to Polish sources it spent about 65 minutes at “Motyl”; according to an account cited by the British embassy, about an hour and twenty minutes.

The return flight was risky too. The damaged hydraulic system did not allow the undercarriage to be retracted; the crew topped up the fluid with whatever they could (according to Polish accounts, even tea from thermos flasks) and only then, over the Tatras, retracted the wheels. The autopilot did not work either, so the pilots took turns at the controls. In the morning, according to Polish sources at 5.43, the Dakota landed at Brindisi without brakes. The rocket parts and documents flew on to Britain; according to Polish studies they reached London on 28 July.

What “Most III” brought

In Poland it is said of the value of the parts carried that they “saved London”. That is an exaggeration: knowledge of the V-2’s construction did not make it possible to stop the rockets, which flew at supersonic speed and against which there was no defence. But the Polish parts and analyses, together with the remains of the rocket that fell in Sweden on 13 June, gave the British an idea of the new weapon’s construction, propulsion, fuel and guidance systems a few weeks before its first use. For the flight to Poland Culliford received the Virtuti Militari.

The operation coincided with the approach of the front. On 13 July the Lwów-Sandomierz Offensive began, and in July the Germans evacuated the Blizna range to Pomerania, to the Tuchola Forest. In the Home Army’s Kraków District, in whose territory “Motyl” lay, Operation Tempest had been under way since 23 July. The people brought from Italy had their tasks in this new world. Jan Nowak reached Warsaw and reported to Home Army headquarters on 29 July; he warned against an uprising, but two days later the command gave the order to fight for the capital. Tomasz Arciszewski, who had flown out from Wał-Ruda, became prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile in November 1944.

Antoni Kocjan did not live to hear of the success of the operation he had prepared for. Tortured by the Gestapo in Szucha Avenue, he was murdered on 13 August 1944 together with the last prisoners of Pawiak. The first operational V-2 fell on Paris on 7 September 1944, and by the end of March 1945, according to Polish studies, about 2,900 rockets had fallen on London. The memory of the night at “Motyl” is kept alive by annual ceremonies in Wał-Ruda and by the Operation “Most III” museum in nearby Zabawa.