Halifax W7776 near Goldsborough, Whitby.
Halifax W7776.
This 138 Squadron crew were part of the SOE / SIS effort, their work involved the dropping of agents and supplies into occupied countries and helping their various
resistance networks in these countries. 138 Squadron was reformed near the start of the War with a large number of Polish airmen along with airmen of other nationalities.
On the night of 1st / 2nd October 1942 three 138 Squadron Halifaxes left Tempsford for an SOE flight, these were W7774, W1229 and W7776 and all aircraft had Polish Resistance fighters on board to be dropped in Poland. This aircraft, W7776, had taken off at 18.00hrs and its crew was briefed to locate Drop Zone RAK 206, which was one kilometre to the south of Siedlce, Poland; this was also an operation flight known as "Operation Chisel". The aircraft also carried some bombs and incendiaries to top up it's maximum allowed weight. All appears to have gone well outbound. The crew took a slightly longer time than planned to find this drop zone, it was located and the agents and equipment were dropped. The bombs were released over railway targets in the area, the Halifax then made for home. During the return flight the aircraft must have strayed of course slightly and by the time they reached the Yorkshire Coast it was about out of fuel having certainly crossed the coast too far north than was intended. The lack of fuel prevented the crew from locating an airfield and infact the aircraft was so low on fuel that the engines stopped as the pilot began to carry out the forced-landing in a field over looking the North Sea near Goldsborough, to the north of Whitby at 07.30hrs. The aircraft had been in the air for almost thirteen and a half hours. The landing was not 100% successful, it ended up in two pieces but the airmen were all safe with no injuries reported. Two of the crew would be awarded DFC's after this incident though they appear not to have been awarded to them in person because given that both were killed less than a month later, the assumption is made that both received their awards as a result of this trip for bringing the aircraft back to England. This is still to be learnt however.
Halifax W7776 was built to contract B73328/40 by Handley Page at Radlett. It was initially allotted to and then taken on charge by Tollerton, Controller of Research and Development (C.R.D.) on 15th July 1942. Exactly why it went there is not yet confirmed but Tollerton CRD was a Ministry of Aircraft production site in the early part of the war and dealt soley with modification of Handley Page Hampdens. With Hampdens being fazed out they may have required a Halifax to test new equipment. They had it for a couple of months. It was taken on charge by 138 Squadron at Tempsford on 13th September 1942 although the Unit did not officially start operating Halifax Mk.II variants until October 1942. As a result of the crash at Goldsborough on 2nd October 1942 the damage assessment was initially asssessed as being repairable Cat.B. It appears to have been transported to Handley Page for consideration for repair but on 29th October 1942 it was re-assessed and Re-Cat.E with it then being struck off charge.
Pilot - F/Sgt Stanislaw Klosowski PAF (P/780172).
Pilot - W/O Franciszek Zaremba PAF (P/780216).
Navigator - F/O Mariusz Marcin Wodzicki DFC PAF (P/76627).
Wireless Operator / Air Gunner - F/O Franciszek Pantkowski PAF (P/1571).
Bomb Aimer - F/Sgt Zdzislaw Nowinski PAF.
Flight Engineer - Sgt Czeslaw Kozlowski PAF (P/784220).
Air Gunner - F/Sgt Tadeusz Madejski PAF (P/780420).
Lt Eugeniusz Witold Kaszynski "Nurt". Born 22nd September 1909, died 24th March 1976 in Ealing, London.
Lt Artur Linowski "Karp".
Lt Adam Trybus "Gaj". Born 3rd August 1909, died 4th July 1982 in Poland.
Lt Waldemar Szwiec "Robot","Jakub". Born 13th August 1915 in Chicago, USA, died Poland 14th October 1943.
Some of the crew of W7776 who force landed at Goldsborough, their names are unknown except second from right - F/O Pantkowski PAF. My thanks to Marek, whose relation, Franciszek Pantkowski, was on board Halifax W7776. It is him I have to thank for supplying the full crew list for this flight as well as some of the other information shown on this webpage. Second left of this photograph is possibly W/O Wodzicki.
I have yet to locate the exact location of the crash near Goldsborough although the description of it puts it in one of these fields.
Also on this trip but in another aircraft were other members of the Goldsborough incident crew. Flying in Halifax W7773 "NF-S" were Sgt Kozlowski, F/Sgt T Madejski,
P/O Pantkowski, F/O M Wodzicki and W/O Zaremba. They were also undertaking Operation Pliers, to dropzone Kw407 at Rogow, Lublin, Poland. They were to drop arms and despatch
three Polish Army personnel, Lt Stanislaw Hencel, Lt Wieslaw Szapowicz and 2nd Lt Jerzy Bichniewicz. The aircraft failed to return and all were reported as missing.
In 1943 the International Red Cross Comittee reported that this aircraft had been shot down over Southern Norway killing all the crew and the Army passengers. They were all
initially buried at Egersund Cemetery, Norway but since then their remains were interred in a communal grave at Vestre Gravlund (Western Cemetery), Norway in a grave with
twenty four Polish citizens. Less than a month after their landing at Goldsborough, many of the crew had been killed.
F/O Franciszek Pantkowski PAF. He was later awarded the DFC but was killed on 30th October 1942 as detailed above.
Mariusz Wodzicki (pictured above) was born on 12th May 1915. He had begun his airforce training in Poland in 1937 and flew there operationally in 1939. He escaped
Poland and arrived in England, through France in December 1939 to join a bomber unit. He flew his first operational flight on 19th September 1940 with 301 Squadron.
In November 1941 he trained on Halifax's prior to joining 138 Squadron. He was awarded the DFC on 11th April 1942 after completing twenty five operational flights. He
was killed on 30th October 1942 when Halifax W7773 crashed in Norway and was twenty seven years old.
The Polish Resistance fighters on this flight, but whom were not on board by the time it came to crash-land in Yorkshire.
Stanislaw Klosowski was regular pilot of Stanislaw Król's while at 1586 SDF in Poland and both men flew in the same aircraft on many times while in England. Klosowski
undertook a number of similar operational flights to the one described above, some of these other flights almost certainly had members of the "Goldsborough" crew flying
with them. On 29th October 1942, Klosowski, Krol and Wasilewski and crew were tasked to attack Gestapo HQ at Warsaw flying Halifax W7774 "NF-T", they took off from Tempsford
at 17.54hrs on 29th October. The trip was coded "Operation Pliers". All went well outbound and the crew made three attempts but would not drop their bombs, it was elected
not to drop their bomb load over the HQ was they feared that they may hit their innocent Countrymen if any of the bombs went astray. Homebound they dropped the bomb load
on the airfield at Okecie. On their return they were attacked by two Me110s off the Danish coast. The crew finally ditched at 06.40hrs and were picked up off the Norfolk
Coast by the Sheringham lifeboat "Foresters Centenary".
Zdzislaw Nowinski almost certainly served with 301 Squadron in 1941 with Stanislaw Klosowki. He survived the War and by October 1948 he was a
clock and watcher repairer living in Melverton, Shropshire. He may also have later moved to Detriot, USA where someone of that name became a well known poet and painter and possibly died there in 1981.
In mid-November 1942 Klosowski was posted to Malta but he returned to the Squadron in 1943 and survived two landing accidents whilst instructing fellow Polish pilots,
one on 19th June 1943 when his Halifax had a bad landing. Later, on 9th November 1943 Kloswoski dropped three agents into Poland including the only Polish women to be
dropped into her homeland, Elzbieta Zawacka, again his aircraft was attacked after the drop by a night-fighter, this time they made it home although damaged. It is
believed Klosowski survived the War but was possibly killed in a car accident in the 1950's or 1960's. I also note that Elzbieta Zawacka had an extremely distinguished
career during the Second World War as a military instructor of women, she fought in the defence of Lwów, and in the Polish underground. As the courier "Zelma " or "Zo"
as she was famous throughout Europe for her journeys and bravery and was later arrested by the Communist Security Forces in 1951.
On 9th April 1941 Franciszek Zaremba was serving with 301 Squadron and was the pilot of Wellington R1365 flying an operational flight without the aid of any wireless equipment on the return leg of the flight. The crew managed to reach Brackley airfield where they landed but as they touched down the aircraft struck airfield floodlighting. Minor damage to the aircraft resulted. On 9th December 1941 he was flying in Wellington W1232 with 18 Operational Training Unit when the aircraft suffered the tail wheel collaping on landing at Bramcote, a series of earlier heavy landings was believed to have caused the joint to weaken.
See also "http://niebieskaeskadra.pl" for more information on this crew.