“Operation Wildhorn”, The Daring Flight into Nazi-Occupied Poland

Next week I’ll be making a presentation on the Andrzej Pomian papers, held at the Hoover Archives, at the conference on “Documents of the Polish Underground State, 1939-1945” at the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw. Andrzej Pomian was one of the directors of the the Home Army’s Bureau of Information and Propaganda. In 1944, the decision was made to extract Pomian along with other high-ranking members of the underground in a daring mission into occupied Poland. On the night of April 15, 1944, an unarmed, Douglas Dakota aircraft, modified with 8 auxiliary fuel tanks, took off from its base near Brindisi, Italy. The plane flew over the Balkans and Carpathian mountains into Poland where it landed in a beetroot field 22 miles from Lublin, south-east of the capital, Warsaw and 800 miles inside of enemy-occupied territory. The field had been marked by bonfires and guarded by soldiers from the Home Army who had lost dozens of men in a bloody, 40-hour firefight with Nazi troops to secure the site. In a period of 6-10 minutes the aircraft was unloaded of its cargo of passengers, documents and bags of U.S. dollars meant for the underground resistance, and five high-ranking passengers boarded the plane for the return flight. One of the departing passengers handed the pilots a bottle of scotch in gratitude. Despite the wet and uneven condition of the field, the plane was able to take off, making the return flight to Brindisi. Within 24 hours the passengers, via Gibraltar, would safely arrive in London. Planning for the operation had started in early 1943, but competition over aircraft and unfavorable weather and logistics put off the mission until 1944. The “Wildhorn” or “Most” (“Bridge”) operation was of great importance to the Polish underground and the Government-in-Exile, based in London. In January 1944 the Soviet Red Army had entered pre-war Polish territory. Within months of the operation the Home Army would begin operation “Burza” (“Tempest”) by attacking German forces as they retreated from the Soviet advance. The culmination of “Burza” was the Warsaw Uprising which was meant to liberate the capital from the Nazis, but ended in tragedy. The passengers who were evacuated from Poland along with Pomian included: General Stanisław Tatar, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Home Army, the Head of Courier Operations and several government delegates. These individuals were to brief the Government-in-Exile on the situation in Poland in advance of the resistance operations planned for the coming months. The success of the first “Wildhorn” mission led to two more such operations, the last of which (“Operation Wildhorn III“), just a week before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, successfully retrieved a disassembled V-2 rocket which had been recovered by the Home Army. For more detailed information on the “Wildhorn” missions, in addition to commemoration ceremonies held in 2008, check out these links: –Operation Wildhorn (Operation Mosty or Bridges) –Operation Wildhorn