Now It Can Be Told

The R.A.F. last week told the story of how it dropped supplies to General Bor's forces in Warsaw (see above). Ordered by Churchill in August, the assignment fell to two British units and one Polish flight of the Balkan Air Force. Though they had had months of experience in dropping arms to partisans in enemy-held territory, this job made the airmen blanch. It meant flying 900 miles each way over hostile territory; part over Czechoslovakia, through some of the heaviest flak in Europe. Fighter cover was impossible and all the way back Nazi night fighters would lie in wait for them. Over Warsaw, they had to turn southwest to a certain bridge over the Vistula, fly so many blocks, and make their drops on a particular side of a given street. To do so they had to fly over Warsaw at only 500 ft., only 150 miles an hour, making them easy targets.

The first flight, Aug. 12, was lucky. Not a plane was lost. Then the Germans caught on. On later missions the chances of survival were figured at less than 50-50. In 70-odd sorties, the Polish flight lost 17 planes and crews; the British lost at least ten. But 100 tons of supplies were flown in.

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