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Operation Most III (Polish for Bridge III) or Operation Wildhorn III (in British documents) was a World War II operation in which Poland's Armia Krajowa provided the Allies with crucial intelligence on the German V-2 rocket.
From November 1943 onwards, the Intelligence Division of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) obtained parts of the V-2 rocket, which was being tested at a missile launch site near Blizna, central Poland. The availability of parts increased from April 1944, when numerous test rockets fell near Sarnaki village, in the vicinity of the Bug River, south of Siemiatycze. On the night of 20 May 1944 a particularly intact rocket fell into the swampy banks of the Bug. Parts of the rocket were secured by the Armia Krajowa, and analyzed at its secret laboratories in Warsaw. The analysis was performed by Professor Janusz Groszkowski (radio and guidance), Marceli Struszyński (fuel), Bogdan Stefanowski (engine), Antoni Kocjan, and others.
On the night of July 25, 1944, just past 10:00 p.m., a Royal Air Force (RAF) Dakota KG477 transport plane of No. 267 Squadron lifted off from Brindisi in southern Italy bound for an abandoned airfield in Poland near the village of Wał-Ruda. This airfield was code-named Motyl. The transport plane, which had been fitted with additional fuel tanks for a flight endurance of up to 18 hours, was piloted by a New Zealander, Flight Lieutenant Stanley G. Culliford, and co-piloted by a Polish native, Flight Lieutenant Kazimierz Szrajer. The plan was to land the plane in territory surrounded with German military units retreating westward under pressure by the Soviet army and obtain the V-2 missile components. At just past midnight, the Dakota circled above the landing location and the partisans (who had been previously informed through encrypted codes over BBC radio) recognized the transport plane. Upon the plane's landing, the partisans emerged from the woods nearby pulling carts with key V-2 components. Once the cargo was loaded, the pilots attempted to take off, but the wheels of the plane were lodged in the muddy ground.
Hastily, the mud was shovelled away and another attempt was made to take off, but the wheels of the plane had sunk even deeper in the mud. Attempts to lodge sticks under the wheels were unsuccessful. Some partisans began digging around the wheels with their bare hands while others found wooden slats in the nearby woods that were subsequently wedged underneath the wheels. Finally the plane pulled out of the mud and was able to take off with the V-2 components before detection by German military units. [1]
Two days later the Dakota arrived in London. British scientists began devising a way to interfere with the guidance of the V-2 missile using radio waves, but it was discovered that the V-2 mechanism was not designed to "react to countermeasures by radio." [2]
On the outgoing flight from Brindisi the aircraft had 4 passengers: Kazimierz Bilski, Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, Leszek Starzyński and Bogusław Wolniak.
On the return flight, Jerzy Chmielewski, Józef Retinger, Tomasz Arciszewski, Tadeusz Chciuk, and Czesław Miciński were ferried from occupied Poland to Brindisi, Italy. It was intended that Antoni Kocjan (who had personally studied parts of V-2 missiles) would take part, but he was arrested by the Gestapo and therefore was replaced by Jerzy Chmielewski.
The aircraft's crew included: F/Lt S.G. (George) Culliford (Captain), F/O Kazimierz Szrajer (Co-pilot and translator) (Polish), F/O J.P. Williams (Navigator), F/Sgt J. Appleby (Radio-operator). [3]
Security for the operation was provided by Armia Krajowa group “Urban”, which included Adam Gondek 'Kruk'. The security commander of the Motyl landing site was Captain Wladyslaw Kabat ps.'Brzechwa'.
Other participants were : Kpr. Franciszek Nowak 'Pomidor', Dr Jan Deszcz 'Wacek', Kpr. pchor. Władysław Bysiek 'Morena', Józef Lupa 'Czarny Sęp', Ppor. Franciszek Kuczek 'Deska', Por. Mieczysław Czech 'Jurand', Por. Paweł Chwała 'Skory', Ppor. Jan Gomoła 'Jawor'.
Dramatisation of the events was published in the book They Saved London written by Bernard Newman in 1955. The book was later turned into a feature film Battle of the V-1 .
The operation was featured in the 1977 BBC TV series The Secret War , episode 3, "Terror Weapons", which included Janusz Groszkowski's memories of the operation.
Operation Most III was one of the major plot elements in Frozen Flashes ("Gefrorene Blitze"), a GDR movie about the development of the V2 and the history of the resistance movement in Peenemünde during the Second World War and its attempt to sabotage the V-2 programme.
The Peenemünde Army Research Center was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (Heereswaffenamt). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.
The V2, with the technical name Aggregat 4 (A4), was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities. The V2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.
In World War II, the Polish armed forces were the fourth largest Allied forces in Europe, after those of the Soviet Union, United States, and Britain.[a] Poles made substantial contributions to the Allied effort throughout the war, fighting on land, sea, and in the air.
The Home Army was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.
The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and as a space interceptor to sabotage enemy satellites. The program ran from October 24, 1957, to December 10, 1963, cost US$660 million, and was cancelled just after spacecraft construction had begun.
Blizna is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Ostrów, within Ropczyce-Sędziszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It lies approximately 12 kilometres (7 mi) north of Ostrów, 12 km (7 mi) north of Ropczyce, and 34 km (21 mi) north-west of the regional capital Rzeszów.
The Aggregat series was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany's Army (Heer). Its greatest success was the A4, more commonly known as the V2.
Henry K. Millicer, AM born Henryk Kazimierz Milicer, was a Polish-Australian aircraft designer and pilot.
Antoni Kocjan was a renowned Polish glider constructor and a contributor to the intelligence services of the Polish Home Army during World War II.
In Poland, the resistance movement during World War II was led by the Home Army. The Polish resistance is notable among others for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, and providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies. It was a part of the Polish Underground State.
The 111th Fighter Escadrille of the Polish Air Force was one of the fighter units of the Polish Army. Created in 1921, immediately after the end of the Polish-Soviet War, the unit inherited the traditions of the famous war-time Polish 7th Air Escadrille, in which both Polish and American volunteers served.
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"Big Ben" was the World War II code name for the British project to reconstruct and evaluate captured German missiles such as the V-2 rocket. On 31 July 1944, after the UK agreed to exchange Supermarine Spitfires for the wreckage of a V-2 in Sweden during World War II, experts at Farnborough began an attempt to reconstruct the missile.
The 113th Fighter Escadrille of the Polish Air Force was one of the fighter units of the Polish Army at the beginning of World War II.
The 121st Fighter Escadrille of the Polish Air Force was one of the fighter units of the Polish Army in 1939.
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Military intelligence on the V-1 and V-2 weapons developed by the Germans for attacks on the United Kingdom during the Second World War was important to countering them. Intelligence came from a number of sources and the Anglo-American intelligence agencies used it to assess the threat of the German V-weapons.
The Polish Fighter Squadron, also known by its designation GC I/145, was the largest fighter unit of the Polish Air Forces in France. Formed of Polish pilots who evaded capture by the Nazis and the Soviets in the aftermath of the Invasion of Poland of 1939, the unit was initially earmarked to be sent to Finland as part of the aborted plan of Allied intervention in the Winter War. Eventually it took part in the Battle of France defending the French skies along with the allied armies.
The Blizna V-2 missile launch site was the site of a World War II German V-2 missile firing range. Today there is a small museum located in the Park Historyczny Blizna in Blizna, Poland. After the RAF strategic bombing of the V-2 rocket launch site in Peenemünde, Germany, in August 1943, some of the test and launch facilities were relocated to Blizna in November 1943. The first of 139 V-2 launches was carried out from the Blizna launch site on 5 November 1943.