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Special Units · Invasion of Poland, 1939
The Bomber Brigade
The Polish commander in chief’s bomber reserve flew its modern Łoś and older Karaś bombers low over the German armored columns from 2 September 1939, at a cost its crews understood.
- Polish military aviation
- Częstochowa to the San
- 2–17 September 1939
A striking force for a slower war
When Poland mobilized, most of its military aviation went to the field armies. The rest formed two brigades held by the commander in chief, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły: the Pursuit Brigade to defend Warsaw, and the Bomber Brigade (Brygada Bombowa) to strike at the enemy’s advance. The bomber brigade was commanded by Col. Władysław Heller, an observer officer. It had been formed just before the war and had not reached full readiness when the fighting began (Belcarz and Pęczkowski; Cynk).
It had four squadrons of two escadrilles each. X Squadron (211th and 212th Escadrilles) and XV Squadron (216th and 217th) flew the PZL.37 Łoś (“Elk”), 36 aircraft between them. II Squadron (21st and 22nd) and VI Squadron (64th and 65th) flew the PZL.23 Karaś (“Crucian carp”), 50 aircraft. The 55th Independent Bomber Escadrille, also with Karaś bombers, is listed with the brigade in some reports, and it had 21 support aircraft (Belcarz and Pęczkowski, White Eagles, pp. 159–160).
The two bombers belonged to different generations. The Łoś, designed by Jerzy Dąbrowski and first flown on 13 December 1936, was a fast, clean twin-engine monoplane with a crew of four, a top speed of about 412 km/h and room for up to 2,580 kg of bombs, a remarkable load for its size. Only 36 were in combat units on 1 September. The single-engine Karaś of 1936, with a crew of three and up to 700 kg of bombs, was the workhorse: 114 served in the front line, 50 of them in the brigade (Cynk; IPN).
The brigade had been meant to strike at the German army’s rear, its railheads and supply columns, in a war that developed more slowly than this one did. Instead it was thrown almost at once against the armored spearheads breaking through in the southwest (Chapter 4).
From the meadows
Like the fighters, the bombers left their peacetime bases in the last days of August for improvised rural airfields. The move saved them from the Luftwaffe’s opening raids, which fell on hangars, trainers and reserve machines. The bomber base at Małaszewicze, near Brześć, where the bomber training group and reserve Łoś bombers were kept, was caught unprepared and lost seven Łoś in the first raid, with 12 soldiers killed and 35 wounded. Over the campaign 18 unfinished, training or reserve Łoś were bombed there and at the Okęcie factory in Warsaw (dlapilota.pl, after Pawlak and Cynk; Cynk).
The field airfields had a price of their own. A Łoś at full load needed a long, hard runway. From short, soft grass its crews usually took off with about 800 kg, typically eight 100 kg bombs, less than a third of what the aircraft could lift. The designers had planned for rough fields to a degree, with independently sprung main wheels, but about 20 Karaś bombers were wrecked in crash landings on improvised strips. Fuel, bombs and orders all came by truck and telephone line, and every German advance cut some of them (Cynk; IPN).
Against the panzers
The Karaś squadrons went into action first, on 2 September. Polish accounts credit a single Karaś of the 21st Escadrille with bombing a factory at Ohlau (Oława), near Breslau, that day, the first air attack of the war on a target inside Germany (Cynk). The main effort went against the German columns. The Karaś crews attacked at low altitude, the only way to hit moving vehicles with their simple bomb sights, and that put them within range of every machine gun and light flak gun in the column.
The Łoś squadrons began their attacks on 4 September. On that day and the next they bombed the German XVI Army Corps, the motorized corps whose 1st and 4th Panzer Divisions were driving through the Łódź Army’s southern flank toward Piotrków and Warsaw, and hampered it near Częstochowa and Radomsko (Cynk). Some Polish accounts claim that the bombers knocked out up to 30 percent of the vehicles they attacked and delayed the corps by days. Such figures are hard to check against German records and are probably too high. Later targets included German forces near Kamieńsk, Piotrków Trybunalski, Różan on the Narew, and Jarosław and Radymno on the San (IPN).
The Łoś had been designed to bomb from medium altitude in formation. In September it flew in sections of three or fewer, usually without fighter escort, against fleeting targets for which it had never been intended. After 10 September, flying from fields in Volhynia with bombs and fuel running short, its crews flew mostly reconnaissance and only a few bombing missions.
The cost
The Institute of National Remembrance’s account of the Łoś in combat is sober. Its attacks, the IPN says, were chaotic: low-level runs by small formations against area targets rather than point targets, of limited effect and at heavy cost from flak and fighters. In all the type flew about 135 combat sorties, 25 of them reconnaissance, and dropped about 119 tons of bombs; its gunners claimed several German fighters, possibly five. For a bomber that cost as much as three fighters, the IPN calls the results “relatively very modest.” Of the roughly 46 Łoś that saw combat, counting reinforcements, the brigade lost 10 to fighters, 5 to anti-aircraft fire, 2 bombed on the ground and 10 to other causes (IPN; Cynk).
The Karaś units suffered more. About 120 PZL.23s, 86 percent of the whole inventory, were destroyed in 1939, but Cynk found that only 67 were lost to enemy action; the rest were wrecked on rough fields, bombed, abandoned or burned. The Luftwaffe’s heaviest single blow against the type fell on 14 September on the brigade’s Karaś bombers at Hutniki airfield. The brigade’s Karaś squadrons dropped about 52 to 60 tons of bombs in all (Cynk).
Set against the scale of the German advance, the bombing campaign did not change the outcome. Its crews knew the odds. That they kept flying low over the panzer columns day after day, in aircraft never meant for the work, is what Polish memory has kept.
To Romania, and beyond
The Soviet invasion of 17 September ended the air war. The remaining aircraft were ordered to fly to Romania, in part because aircraft from France were expected to be delivered there to re-equip them. They never came. Between 17 and 19 of the brigade’s Łoś crossed the border, with about ten more from the training units, and at least 21 Karaś in all (Cynk; IPN). Romania interned the crews and kept the aircraft, formally taking them over in October 1940. From 22 June 1941 the Łoś and Karaś bombers flew against the Soviet Union in Romanian markings.
Most of the men slipped out of the internment camps and made their way, many by ship from the Black Sea ports, to France and then to Britain. No PZL.37 Łoś is known to survive (Chapter 4; Chapter 9).
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. Real Łoś and Karaś escadrilles painted their own badges and tactical numbers on the fuselage sides beside the red-and-white checkerboard; the emblem drawn here is invented.
Timeline
- First flight of the PZL.37 Łoś prototype.
- The brigade, formed on the eve of war, disperses to improvised field airfields.
- German bombers hit Małaszewicze and destroy seven reserve Łoś on the ground.
- The Karaś squadrons go into action; by Polish accounts one bombs Ohlau (Oława) in Germany.
- Łoś bombers attack the German XVI Army Corps near Częstochowa and Radomsko.
- From fields in Volhynia the Łoś crews fly mostly reconnaissance.
- The Luftwaffe’s heaviest blow against the brigade’s Karaś bombers, at Hutniki.
- 17 to 19 of the brigade’s Łoś and surviving Karaś fly to Romania.
- Romania formally takes over the interned Polish aircraft.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 4: The Air War: The Pursuit Brigade, the Bomber Brigade and the Kościuszko Squadron
- Chapter 8: 17 September: The Soviet Invasion and the Last Battles
- Chapter 9: Occupation, Exile and Memory
- The Invasion of Poland collection and atlas
By the numbers
The Bomber Brigade by the numbers
How the Łoś were lost
PZL.37 Łoś bombers lost in September 1939, by cause (aircraft)
Source: Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War (1998) and Polish Aircraft 1893–1939 (1971); IPN article on the PZL.37 Łoś, via dlapilota.pl (2024). Separately, 18 unfinished, training or reserve Łoś were bombed at Małaszewicze and Okęcie, 7 of them in the first raid on 1 September.
What a bomber could carry, and what it did
Bomb loads in kilograms
Source: Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War (1998) and Polish Aircraft 1893–1939 (1971); IPN article on the PZL.37 Łoś, via dlapilota.pl (2024).
Bombs on the German columns
Tons of bombs dropped by the brigade’s two bomber types, September 1939. The Karaś figure is a range.
Source: Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War (1998) and Polish Aircraft 1893–1939 (1971); IPN article on the PZL.37 Łoś, via dlapilota.pl (2024).
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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Sources
- Bartłomiej Belcarz and Robert Pęczkowski, White Eagles: The Aircraft, Men and Operations of the Polish Air Force 1918–1939 (Hikoki, 2001), pp. 159–160.
- Jerzy B. Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War: The Official History, vol. 1 (Schiffer, 1998), and Polish Aircraft 1893–1939 (Putnam, 1971), as summarized in the Wikipedia articles “PZL.37 Łoś,” “PZL.23 Karaś” and “Bomber Brigade.”
- Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), article on the PZL.37 Łoś, republished by dlapilota.pl, 13 December 2024; IPN, Nie tylko Dywizjon 303.
- dlapilota.pl, “Zagłada baz lotniczych, część 1” (2016, after Pawlak and Cynk).
- Steven J. Zaloga, Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg (Osprey, 2002); E. R. Hooton, Luftwaffe at War (2007).