Halifax W7776 near Goldsborough, Whitby.
Halifax W7776 which crash-landed at Goldsborough (photograph via Mr Jim Rutland).
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 1st October 1942 three Halifax's left Tempsford for such SOE duties, W7774, W1229 and W7776. All of them had Polish Resistance fighters on board and they were all to be dropped off in Poland. This aircraft, W7776, had taken off at 18.00hrs and its crew was briefed to locate Drop Zone RAK 206, which was 1km to the south of Siedlce, Poland. An operation known as "Operation Chisel". The aircraft also carried some bombs and incediaries 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 and almost certainly cross 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, the aircraft ended up in two peices 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 prior to this trip, given that both holders 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 being researched however.
Halifax W7776 was built to contract B73328/40 by Handley Page at Radlett and delivered to RAF MU in July 1942. After acceptance it was issued to 138 Squadron believed to be in late September 1942 although the Unit did not officially start operating Mk.II Halifaxes until October 1942. It was written off in the above incident with Cat.E2/FB damage on 2nd October 1942.
Pilot - F/Sgt Stanislaw Klosowski PAF (P/780172).
Pilot - W/O Franciszek Zaremba PAF (P/780216), aged 28.
Navigator - F/O Mariusz Wodzicki DFC PAF (P/76627), aged 27.
Wirless Operator / Air Gunner - F/O Franciszek Pantkowski PAF (P/1571), aged 24.
Bomb Aimer - F/Sgt Zdzislaw Nowinski PAF.
Flight Engineer - Sgt Czeslaw Kozlowski PAF (P/784220), aged 33.
Air Gunner - F/Sgt Tadeusz Madejski PAF (P/780420), aged 24.
The Polish Resistance fighters on this flight, but not on board by the time it came to crash-land in Yorkshire were.
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, whos 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 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.
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 later moved to Detriot, USA. It is possible that he became a well known poet and painter and possibly died 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 nightfighter, 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. It is of 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.