Interview with Julian Michalski
Title
Interview with Julian Michalski
Description
Julian Michalski escaped from Poland at the age of twenty. He joined with other Polish evacuees in France and escaped when that country also fell. He went to North Africa and then to the Middle East before volunteering for the RAF. After arriving in the UK he was selected for navigator training in Canada.
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00:59:46 audio recording
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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VMichalskiJ[Date]-01
Transcription
Interviewer: That’s recording now. Just putting that a little bit [pause] There we go. Could you, could you remind us again please what your, what your full name is please.
JM: My name is Julian Michalski.
Interviewer: And Julian could you just tell me a little bit possibly about your early life before you came to Britain please.
JM: Well, my early life was very short part of my life. I left Poland when I was twenty years old so that’s, apart from that I haven’t been to Poland very much apart from a short visit. So, I spent most of my life or three quarters of it outside mainly around England or Canada. But it was I left Poland for good when I was about twenty and then spent most of my, most of my life in a foreign country.
Interviewer: I remember when we last spoke you told me about your journey to get to Britain and you went all the way down through Spain, across the Mediterranean into Africa and I think it was, was it Nigeria that you ended up getting either a plane or a boat. But you went to several didn’t you? You went across the Sahara. I don’t know if you, would you like to tell me the story because you do it a lot better than I do. I can’t remember all that you said to me but —
JM: Well, I have had many journeys during my travels abroad. The first one when I left Poland. It was when the Russians attacked Poland from the east and we were forced to escape abroad. That was we went with a group to Hungary first for a short time and then we were told by the Polish Embassy in Hungary to travel to France. Well, in France of course there was quite a lot of Polish immigrants mainly workers in the coal mines so that was a base. So they were hoping to, created a sufficient number of volunteers to create a Polish Army. So that’s why we went from Poland to Hungary and then of course through Italy to France. And when we went to France, when we arrived in France we were joined with the rest of the French people, French soldiers being formed in large numbers because France was at war then. It was in ‘39. So something about nine months training I was attached to the Polish Army Division. This was in the French Army and we were sent to the northeast part of France ready to meet the Germans. Well, at that time the French defence was mainly based on the Maginot Line. They were hoping that that was strong enough to prevent the Germans attacking France. But the Germans managed to get across the Maginot Line very quickly. Each time they went past it and when they got into France proper most of the French Army had to retreat towards Paris. Well, we did the same and after that France quickly collapsed and we could have stayed in France as prisoners of some sort but we wanted to carry on fighting on. And the only place you could do that was either in the Middle East or in England because England was still at war but not occupied of course. So we, the unit I was in was ordered to travel to Morocco from France across Spain to Morocco and the idea was that we could either go to the Middle East where there was an awful lot of Polish soldiers from Poland at the same time who arrived in the Middle East from the east. Went to Eastern European countries from there. They travelled to Egypt and then to Palestine and they started forming, forming a Polish Army there. So in a few months’ time the Polish refugees from Poland and some were instructed from another part of Europe. You know, where there was an organized Polish Army. But I was, I went the other way and went west and straight to France and when France collapsed of course we had to go and travel to Morocco. Now, the idea was that at that time there was quite a lot of [pause] part of English Navy who were still there and then their duty was to pick up any, any suitable fighting ex-servicemen and bring them to England. And of course France had quite a lot of good Navy which they were hoping to bring some to join with the English Navy in England but that never happened. France refused to join the English Navy and eventually they were at that [pause] the English were very frightened the Navy could get, the Germans could get their hands on the French Navy and of course most of the German plans were really strong anyway as far as England was concerned. Well, we who were Air Force personnel especially flying personnel the British would take us. Originally take us to England. Some people managed to get to England from France proper somehow but we didn’t. We didn’t do that so we were faced either staying in Morocco and possibly be interned as ex, ex-fighting troops or possibly forced to join the German Army. Well, that didn’t appeal to us very much but we knew then that there was Polish Army units being formed in Palestine. Well, unfortunately, Palestine was quite a long way east.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: And it was a long way across the Sahara Desert but there was no possible means of travelling there right from wherever. The only possible way was to travel through the English colonies in Africa and from then somehow we had to get through the Middle East to Palestine. But it was a crazy idea. Nobody would think of that. Travelling across Africa without really any proper support. All we had was passenger cars and nothing else. Well, we fortunately, one of our people who were with us was a Polish officer who before the war went to Cannes training. His father was a general so he had a possible job being sent to France for training. Well, he knew French quite well and he picked up quite a lot of contact with the French people. So with these we found these people and they, we explained to them that we wanted to travel to the Middle East and they got some papers for us to travel as tourists. Not to the Middle East but to the French colonies —
Interviewer: Tourists.
JM: In West Africa. That was enough for us and we managed to get ourselves a permit as well which allowed us to get some extra petrol. So with only that support we decided to travel with two cars and there were the two Polish officers and it so happened that one of these officers was a permanent residence in Morocco before the war. He had, he had a business there importing something from Poland. Well, he took, he had a wife with him as well and the other officer Captain [unclear] as he was moving out of Poland he came across a group of refugees and alongside them was his wife. But he didn’t want to leave his wife in Poland under occupation so somehow he managed to bring her as well. When, when we eventually got to France she was a very useful member of this group because before the war she was, she was working. He was part of the consulate, Polish Consulate, the Embassy working in France and she knew French very well and she knew some people.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: We knew there was some possibility to get support from the French people to travel to, at that time we were officially travelling from the French colonies in West Africa. Once we got to French colony so the plan was not to stay there but to move east. Travel east and go to Nigeria which was a French colony there and it was [pause] we had no official permit to go there which at that time it was chaos, more than chaos. Nobody bothered us very much. We could go. We didn’t represent any threat to anybody so we could go wherever we wanted to. So we turned to the east. Got as far as the [unclear] in the centre of Africa. The trouble was that there were no proper roads essentially. It was tracks used by the local inhabitants because they had no cars and there was no proper roads. Well, we had the difficulty in moving but fortunately we had these two cars. Citroens. And they were, they were, they had front drive which made them easy to drive on the roads because from the front. It was easier to get a grip on that bad road. But that, when we, the local people they were sort of amazed to see us. They didn’t expect white people to go there. They didn’t know what we, where we came from, where we were going so they let us go you see. We managed to pass the workmen of Egypt and Nigeria somehow. In some cases with quite a bit of help from the local affiliations. Then we would have to cross across wet areas. They made, they started to get a number of logs and we used that as rafts. So we travelled with these rafts. We travelled east and eventually we got to the, to the ground which was good enough to drive so we moved from there and we found after that was [unclear] part of the English colony in Nigeria. And so then we moved to, the plan then was Nigeria which was under British control. Well, at that time there we no telephones that we knew and I managed the communications. But somehow the authorities in in [unclear] which was part of the town in Nigeria under English control and they knew that we were coming but they didn’t know who we were. But I suppose they suspected some sort of invasion from the English side where we prepared and in our case there was a sort of a defence unit ready to fire at us in case we were sort of part of the invasion. Invading force. But the news came to the authorities that were two women as well. Well, they had enough sense to realise two women and two men is not a strange invasion force at all. So, they let us go until eventually we got to [unclear] and then we had an English commissioner. Met an English commissioner and he realised that it was, we were genuine refugees and there was no danger. They said, ‘Well, we will look after you here but first of all we have to find out exactly who you are.’ So they got in contact with the Polish people in London. And then we gave them our names and of course the officers, especially Captain [unclear] who was a former serving officer in the Polish Army and they knew him. So at that stage they said that we are genuine Polish people and could we, could they give us help to move to the Middle East? That meant putting us on a train from [unclear] to Lagos which was the then capital of Nigeria. So we travelled on this train for about two days. It was quite a distance to Lagos and when we arrived we had to wait for a couple of days, a week I think to meet the English convoy which was taking soldiers to the Middle East from England. So we joined that convoy and then the trouble was that at that time we didn’t speak English very much. Mrs [unclear] knew French and a bit of English because she had travelled during the, well with the Polish authorities before the war. She spent some time in London researching something so she knew a bit of English and she could explain what we were and make it easier. Well then once we joined this transport with these soldiers we arrived to join some units, British units in the Middle East. So we travelled along the coast of Cape Town in South Africa and then down again off to Egypt. We arrived in Egypt. They were already hearing this, all the Polish, Polish units formed in Palestine and in Egypt so we joined that and spent about [pause] a few. It was, that was nothing was happening very much in that. The fighting in Europe but not in the Middle East. So we get, we sort of got organised and eventually they formed a Polish brigade of two companies who were part of the brigade and then they sent us to defend Tobruk. Tobruk was [unclear] because it was from people who had travelled from Malta to Egypt. Egypt was partly under British control and so was Malta as well. Travelling there we had to stop halfway and Tobruk was a convenient spot. So of course at that time there were a lot of soldiers already. Our job then was settle there and prepare the defence of Tobruk in case Tobruk was going to be attacked. Well, eventually Tobruk was surrounded by Germans and Italian forces and our job was to defend it. The unit was spread around the perimeter and made sure that Tobruk wasn’t occupied by the Germans. It meant that the actual fighting meant that we had to do night patrols along there to see what the others were doing. Not actual fighting but occasionally we bumped into each other and of course there was a lot of land mines around as well so we suffered quite a lot of losses there. From about originally four hundred unit of men in two companies we lost about one hundred. So what we were [pause] eventually the, the British sent their force from Egypt to recover Tobruk and when they came, by that time we had spent about eight or nine months in Tobruk and we were due to go back to the Middle East and Palestine to join the bigger Polish forces who were forming there. Well, it wasn’t safe to travel at that time in that area during daytime because it was under the control of the German Air Force. So we got to travel, for safety we had to travel at night. On our plans for the night when you don’t see where we are going. We all said this was [unclear] So we didn’t go on the main road. It wasn’t much of a road anyway. We arranged the brigade in a column and all moved east with some stronger vehicles, lorries and [unclear] we went through the night and eventually when we realised in the morning we, we simply we thought we were safe from the German air attacks and I think in one case there was some German fighters came to attack [unclear] but fortunately we didn’t lose anybody. So we joined, eventually joined our forces in Egypt.
Interviewer: Could I, could I just ask how on earth, how did, what was the transition between you being in the Polish Army in Palestine to being with the RAF, with the Polish Air Force and the RAF in Britain because that seems —
JM: Well —
Interviewer: You were going further and further away.
JM: Yes. When we arrived in, first of all in Egypt, then we moved to Palestine where there were quite a lot of Polish refugees and ex-soldiers and they formed quite a large Army Corps having got a few divisions. The idea was that they would be sent eventually to fight in, in Italy because Italy was defended by the Germans and the British wanted to recover those. So the idea was to send Polish troops to Italy to get rid of the Germans there. Well, we didn’t know that at the time but we knew there were Polish Air Force forces, units being formed in England and also we heard about the exploits of the Polish fighters and how they were successful in fighting the German Air Force. So I got an idea working. Being in, in Army mainly in the deserts at the time as from the very beginning it was the better part, best part of three years in the deserts and the Army of course never appealed to me all that much. Being here in the Air Force also had a great appeal. So I asked Captain [unclear]. I came with him whether he could do something about me going somehow to England to join in the Air Force. Well, fortunately at that time there were [pause] at that time there were convoys of soldiers going from England to the Middle East and back. They were taking back wounded and they dropped out [unclear] back to England. So there was, there was transports from the Middle East to England but you have to have a reason why I should go there. Well, with the, with the fighting in the Middle East the British forces and the Polish forces fighting there captured quite a lot of prisoners. German and Italians. Well, they were being sent to England I think to work on the ground. But so what they wanted was an escort of some soldiers to keep an eye on these prisoners. Well, it so happened that I was always learning something whenever there was a chance of learning either language or science. I never sat down and played cards. I was always keen to learn. Well then after a few months I picked up enough English to be useful as a translator. So they attached me to one of these convoys that were going back from the Middle East to England taking a group of prisoners. Now that took quite a bit of time because we were going around the Cape and back to England. When I, when we arrived in England it was [pause] late 1941. I think. My first impression of England wasn’t very [pause] wasn’t a very pleasant one because of the weather. November in England is not the best part of the year to see England. Well because I had no choice. When I arrived they said yes [unclear] Polish from the Middle East but they said , ‘An Army Corps is being formed in Scotland and if you like we will send you there.’ And I said alright but at the same time [unclear] Army unit they were looking for people who would join the Parachute Brigade. Well, that was, from my point of view was quite attractive flying over there and jumping with a parachute but I wanted to, to fly proper. And then there was a commission that came to England and that commission was picking people setting off to Parachute Brigade. Well, the way they arranged it in this interview was put us in line and as usual in the Army the tall ones were at the top. The short ones like me were always at the end. They were just picking the names. They didn’t ask if you wanted to go to Parachute Brigade or not. They just asked your name and that was it. You go. Well when I realised what was happening I then quickly slipped out of there and went to the toilet. Well they came to my end and I wasn’t there. So they went without my name being chosen for the Parachute Brigade. The following day people from the Air Force came so I quickly went there [unclear] I was very keen on flying and he asked me a few technical questions. I realised that I knew a bit about maths and physics. So they said, ‘Alright, we will put your name down.’ So from then on I was attached to the Air Force and they examined me and they said that the medical examination, they said, ‘You’re alright. You passed. It’s okay but you are a little bit too short to be a pilot so we’ll send you to the navigation training.’ So they sent you for the first six weeks training in Brighton of all places during the war. [unclear] stayed and we learned the basic amount about navigation and it was that sort of thing. I passed that quite well and they said alright. At that time there was no navigation training in England because they were too busy fighting. So they had a very large organisation of training flyers, pilots, navigators in Canada and I was attached to a group of others sent to Scotland to join the transport going to Canada. On [unclear] and [pause] it was one of the transatlantic passenger ships. I think it was something like one of those luxury ships. When we, when I arrived near it they found that I spoke, I could speak a bit of English so they put me with the group of the Polish people. Again I got to be translator for them. Again it wasn’t easy for me but [unclear] we got a cabin and we had regular meals three times a day which each day consisted of sandwiches only. They were not cooked meals. There were too many people you see. But we didn’t complain. We arrived eventually in New York and at the first sight of New York was it was surreal because there was a lot of fog and the skyscrapers I saw again coming out from the fog. I didn’t know. It didn’t look like real at all.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: From New York they sent us to Canada and in Canada there was this training in Moncton, Ontario and I was part of the Polish unit. There were twenty of us and a few Canadians like a class doing navigation. Well, that took us about nine months I think and at the end of it I, I found out that I had the highest marks of all the [pause] so that was anything to do with mathematics and physics. So I really think that came easily to me and I had the highest mark. In one case I think I had a hundred percent in one of the exams. Well, it so happened that it was a practical help because when I came to England they looked at it as a navigation exam and they said, ‘Oh yes, you are very good. We need good navigators to fly over land.’ There was a Coastal Command whose job was to look for submarines. I was very good at navigation and that one there was a Polish squadron in the Outer Hebrides, Benbecula prior to that and I joined another group of Poles, the pilot and gunners and we formed a crew and our job was then to protect the convoys coming from Canada and America. Well, there had to be good navigation to find the convoy out in the Atlantic some one thousand miles away. But with good navigation we never missed any convoys. We were the ones there.
Interviewer: And —
JM: And —
Interviewer: Sorry, carry on.
JM: The problem was to find the submarine and attack it with depth chargers. Well finding the submarine wasn’t very easy because they kept submerged. But some of them had to look out to find where they were so they had the periscope sticking out and of course with the periscope we could realise that there was a submarine underneath and we would drop the depth charges on them.
Interviewer: So the periscope would just create a wake with the water would it? Leave a trail. Was that during the daytime or night time you were looking for the submarines?
JM: Well, all the time.
Interviewer: Right. Ok.
JM: But at night they were more brave. Sometimes they would surface to see where they were. In some cases we would manage to spot something that looked like a periscope and we dropped the depth charges on them and we had it confirmed on the submarine but at least being there it made life a bit more difficult for the submarines back with the other sail [unclear] They had to be careful and there was a [unclear] perhaps to attack very easily. So we spent a —
Interviewer: How long —
JM: A long time.
Interviewer: How long on average was each operational flight when you went out there? What was it?
JM: Well, the operation lasted about [pause] about twenty four hours.
Interviewer: Twenty four hours.
JM: We had long range tanks.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: So, it meant flying then, you could fly then a thousand miles and about [unclear] hours so that’s about ten hours. We spent about five hours when I was there and then another ten hours there. So it was quite a long, quite a long flight. Then towards the end of the war when Germany collapsed the job in Coastal Command there was finished so then they moved us to the south, southwest part of England to serve, there was still the war was going on and our job was to [unclear] our job was to look for submarines in the Bay of Biscay and in the Channel. So from flying across the Atlantic we had to fly the area around there. When eventually the war had ended we were moved to the Transport Command. That meant supplying essential supplies to the forces again in the Middle East [unclear]. At first we didn’t quite know what we were taking because we didn’t, we could carry in our flights aircraft, we had Warwicks instead of Wellingtons so it could carry quite a bit of weight. The amount of weight we had in our aircraft was very slow so we didn’t know what it was. Eventually we discovered that we were taking money to the countries in the Middle East. In Greece for example the new government was sitting there and they needed of course money to pay the to keep the economy going. So when we landed there there was always an armed guard outside the aircraft. They didn’t quite know what to do. It was not for our safety but for the safety of the money on board.
Interviewer: The money on board. Right. That’s interesting. So I imagine there was just in the inside of the aircraft there were just crates.
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: Big wooden crates full of money.
JM: Yeah. We didn’t know what was inside.
Interviewer: No. A good thing.
JM: We didn’t care very much.
Interviewer: No.
JM: Got to Athens and there was something. Pick it up.
Interviewer: An easy job at the end of the war then really compared to your twenty four hour operations out in the North Sea and the kind of arctic and Antarctic area. When you when you were at Benbecula what were the conditions like on the base to live? To live.
JM: Well, it wasn’t very pleasant. It was sort of windswept out to the Atlantic. No amenities at all. There was no proms or theatres or anything like that. No entertainment of any sort. The only entertainment you could have was to play cards. Well, it so happens I wasn’t, I wasn’t very keen on playing cards or doing anything like that. I picked up books. I was learning English and realised that having my education in Poland broken during the war I was going to need to get some education later on. So I decided to pick up sort of very sick moments so I could pass examinations like A Level examination and eventually get a job doing some of the examination results. I did realise that later on they said to me about getting a degree as well so I would have a degree but I was still carrying on. When I arrived and settled in England I was given like all ex-servicemen I was given a bit of money. It wasn’t very much. It was enough to start with for a few days and I found a job as [pause] I’d had enough of written, I had enough knowledge of mathematics and physics to apply for a job as a draughtsman in Birmingham. There was others, they wanted draughtsman who not only could draw but was good with calculations.
Other: Are you comfortable?
Interviewer: I’m having a lovely time. I’m just listening.
JM: They offered me this job and it wasn’t, the money wasn’t too grand but it was very nice and it wasn’t a great future. I knew that I would need a bit more than that if I wanted to have more secure future employment. So at that time I realised there was, there was a scheme. Further education for ex-servicemen. You could apply for either you could join the learning scheme for degrees in London. London external. There was only the course for me so I applied for this course and they said in the interview, they said, ‘Why do you want to do a degree? You’ve got a [unclear] situation. You’ve got a job as a draughtsman.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: That should carry on alright.’ And I said, ‘Yes, but I started employment hoping that I’d get a degree and get entry to a career.’ So now there was a chance to try to get on to the degree. I must say at that time they were all very sort of helpful to me. When there were exams there was always somebody who tried to help. On the other hand [unclear] make it more difficult.
Interviewer: Yeah. I was, I was just going to show you because before, before the time I’m worried in case the camera, the actual the memory size before it runs out. I was just going to move that out a little bit. There we go. I was going to just show you a couple of pieces of kit I’ve got here. You may remember these. These are certainly from the Second World War and they are certainly Air Ministry. This is one. This is an airspeed knots indicator. Does that look familiar? Is that something you would have had before at some point do you think on your aircraft?
JM: No. I don’t think I had that. No.
Interviewer: No.
JM: I had a calculator.
Interviewer: And the other, the other piece that I have as well is the drift recorder. Apparently when you are over water —
JM: Yeah, the drift recorder. We did our observations. It was [pause]
Interviewer: There you go. I think the pencil went in there didn’t it and then obviously whatever you did looking through your, the scope.
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: I’m not exactly sure how it went but —
JM: I didn’t have, I didn’t have that but I can measure the drift easily enough.
Interviewer: This was obviously attached to the —
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you would, I presume you would look through there would you and then there is a hole is underneath there to see, to calculate your drift when you are over water. Is that [pause] what I understand is what a drift recorder does?
JM: Yeah. That’s to measure the wind speed.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: Yeah. But you picked up [pause] it picks up the point on the surface of the sea and [pause] I think it was the usual the machine gun sights. Set the sights on that point and you had to turn it a few degrees to keep it. If it didn’t keep it inside it would drift off you see.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: So the drift depended on the strength of the wind.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: For navigation you needed the strength of the wind to steer the right course.
Interviewer: So the first thing you had to do was to see what the windspeed was before you could then do your calculations. This is all new to me. I’m learning from an expert on —
JM: Oh, when setting a course if we were going on that course anyway because the wind was pushing you to the one side you see. So you had to roughly do, the first thing you had to do was to measure the windspeed. I mean there was no, as far as I gather there was no enemy instrument could measure that but using the sights of the gunsights of the machine gunners we could find out the amount of speed, the drift we had and from that and from the airspeed could measure the speed of the wind you see.
Interviewer: And as, as the navigator on a Wellington aircraft you just had a little seat and a very small table didn’t you to —
JM: Well, we had a seat and a small table. The table was very small. No bigger than this.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: And it had —
Interviewer: Do you want, do you want me to take that off your knee? Is that a little bit heavy for you? There we go. Thank you.
JM: I had a calculator and also a map of course. Now, the purpose of the map of course is to see the, the land.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: [unclear] because not having a map of the Atlantic. There was nothing there. But there was another help in the navigation. It’s, it was called LORAN long range navigation. Now, this works on the principal that there was a railway station in, in, I think it was somewhere in Spain. It was sending pulses as you know and he had, he had a screen [unclear] a kind of a television screen and —
Interviewer: That, what? That would pick up the radio waves would it?
JM: Yeah. It would have. You synchronized the movement of the points on the screen with the signal coming from that station. Now [pause] so the raid, the [unclear] raid which was [unclear] from there and you go there indicated how far you were from that station. That was easy and we got a map on which they were circling around negating the distance from that station in, in Spain and I think there was another also in the east. No [unclear] over there so there was suddenly another one. So there were two signals then. You’d got these drawn on the map so where they crossed that was your position. So that was very useful.
Interviewer: And obviously up in the aircraft it must have been very cold. Did you have good, good clothing or was there a heater in your little, below your table or something?
JM: Well, there was no heating there certainly. There was enough heat anyway coming from the engines so I don’t, I don’t think we suffered from cold somehow because we wore warm dress anyway. I think the trouble was not falling asleep all the hours in the air at night we didn’t [unclear] very much.
Interviewer: No. But I mean you obviously as the navigator still had to do quite a lot. I would imagine the, the rear gunner and even the bomb aimer had even less to do until you got to the convoy did you or were you busy. Was everybody still busy looking out of the aircraft. Looking for submarines.
JM: Well, no we had to keep awake and looking out for anything they could find on the surface and [pause] occasionally I think we would try to [pause] we would fire out over the Atlantic and of course we relied very much on LORAN and tried to take [unclear] We had a list of tables indicating the position of the star. We got a sextant. We had the usual navigation sextant. We could take the sight of a star at a certain time and I can’t think how hard it was. We could work out the he but again —
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: We could work out our position using the shots of the stars.
Interviewer: I’ve seen also there’s like a round disc with little holes in it for they said the navigators used for plotting stars to see where you were as well. Have you? I should have brought that one as well. Somebody gave it to me. That’s another Air Ministry one that was obviously used by navigators. It’s just like a big round circle with various stars on it and you, I presume you hold it up to the light and plan that way. I’m not sure how that works.
JM: I didn’t have that.
Interviewer: You didn’t have that.
JM: I had a sextant.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: I’d climb into the gunner’s [pause] position and take the sides off. I had to know the stars of course. Lots of stars you see in the sky. So we had before then we had training as part of our navigation. We had to know the position of certain stars which could be useful.
Interviewer: And because, because you were having these twenty four hour operations did you have to take more than one pilot then? So one could have a rest.
JM: No.
Interviewer: Just a —
JM: Two pilots.
Interviewer: Two pilots.
JM: Two pilots. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: They had to. There was no rest for the whole time.
Interviewer: The pilot. No. No.
JM: They had to keep awake.
Interviewer: So you had a six man crew then for your things.
JM: Two pilots, navigator.
Interviewer: Navigator.
JM: And there were two gunners and radio operators.
Interviewer: Radio operator. What about food for that? For the whole journey did the cookhouse give you plenty of food?
JM: We were given food from the canteen when we went but I never got that. As far as food is concerned I don’t suffer from hunger very much.
Interviewer: But over twenty four hours. That’s a long time isn’t it you know for sandwiches or biscuits or a cup of coffee or tea up in the aircraft. You must have needed something to keep you going.
JM: We had, we had something like sandwiches I think.
Interviewer: But you didn’t really bother much.
JM: And we had coffee in a thermos flask but on the whole I don’t remember —
Interviewer: No.
JM: Ever being sort of particularly hungry when I was doing that. We were too busy.
Interviewer: Was 304 Squadron, was it a good, a good bunch people to be with? Was it a good, good squadron?
JM: Well, the people were quite good. They were all very friendly except one of the gunners was very clever. He could have been a navigator. He was [unclear] and the pilot was a good pilot. He wasn’t a very, he wasn’t a sort of a type you could make friends with very much. He was just sticking to his job.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: And he was married and we were all single so that made a difference.
Interviewer: Yeah. So —
JM: After the war I tried to find some of my friends. I found mention of, he was mentioned. His name was in a paper. He did something or belonged to an organisation so I sent him a letter telling him who I was and I signed as a navigator. I had a letter from him. Only one word. “Buggered.” So he didn’t want to carry on any contact with me.
Interviewer: Very strange.
JM: As I said he was married and he had a family so he wasn’t very keen on having any more friends.
Interviewer: Or conversations with friends. Maybe he just wanted to start a new life and forget about the war completely like many people did I suppose. Right. Well, I’ll turn this off now unless there was anything else that you can think of from, is there anything you can think that you would like to tell me about your time with the Polish Air Force in the RAF? Is there anything else because you said you moved down to Cornwall was it? Or the southwest of England. Was that with 304 Squadron as well?
JM: It was 304 Squadron. Yeah.
Interviewer: 304. Oh, was that St Eval? A name like RAF St Eval.
JM: Yes. It was St Eval.
Interviewer: But you were still on Wellingtons then were you?
JM: Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: We stayed in that squadron until we were transferred to Transport Command and Transport Command was outside London and as I say we would then travel. Travelling with, getting surprise in the Middle East.
Interviewer: Well, thank you. That’s, that’s lovely. That’s tremendous. I’ll just switch this off then you
JM: My name is Julian Michalski.
Interviewer: And Julian could you just tell me a little bit possibly about your early life before you came to Britain please.
JM: Well, my early life was very short part of my life. I left Poland when I was twenty years old so that’s, apart from that I haven’t been to Poland very much apart from a short visit. So, I spent most of my life or three quarters of it outside mainly around England or Canada. But it was I left Poland for good when I was about twenty and then spent most of my, most of my life in a foreign country.
Interviewer: I remember when we last spoke you told me about your journey to get to Britain and you went all the way down through Spain, across the Mediterranean into Africa and I think it was, was it Nigeria that you ended up getting either a plane or a boat. But you went to several didn’t you? You went across the Sahara. I don’t know if you, would you like to tell me the story because you do it a lot better than I do. I can’t remember all that you said to me but —
JM: Well, I have had many journeys during my travels abroad. The first one when I left Poland. It was when the Russians attacked Poland from the east and we were forced to escape abroad. That was we went with a group to Hungary first for a short time and then we were told by the Polish Embassy in Hungary to travel to France. Well, in France of course there was quite a lot of Polish immigrants mainly workers in the coal mines so that was a base. So they were hoping to, created a sufficient number of volunteers to create a Polish Army. So that’s why we went from Poland to Hungary and then of course through Italy to France. And when we went to France, when we arrived in France we were joined with the rest of the French people, French soldiers being formed in large numbers because France was at war then. It was in ‘39. So something about nine months training I was attached to the Polish Army Division. This was in the French Army and we were sent to the northeast part of France ready to meet the Germans. Well, at that time the French defence was mainly based on the Maginot Line. They were hoping that that was strong enough to prevent the Germans attacking France. But the Germans managed to get across the Maginot Line very quickly. Each time they went past it and when they got into France proper most of the French Army had to retreat towards Paris. Well, we did the same and after that France quickly collapsed and we could have stayed in France as prisoners of some sort but we wanted to carry on fighting on. And the only place you could do that was either in the Middle East or in England because England was still at war but not occupied of course. So we, the unit I was in was ordered to travel to Morocco from France across Spain to Morocco and the idea was that we could either go to the Middle East where there was an awful lot of Polish soldiers from Poland at the same time who arrived in the Middle East from the east. Went to Eastern European countries from there. They travelled to Egypt and then to Palestine and they started forming, forming a Polish Army there. So in a few months’ time the Polish refugees from Poland and some were instructed from another part of Europe. You know, where there was an organized Polish Army. But I was, I went the other way and went west and straight to France and when France collapsed of course we had to go and travel to Morocco. Now, the idea was that at that time there was quite a lot of [pause] part of English Navy who were still there and then their duty was to pick up any, any suitable fighting ex-servicemen and bring them to England. And of course France had quite a lot of good Navy which they were hoping to bring some to join with the English Navy in England but that never happened. France refused to join the English Navy and eventually they were at that [pause] the English were very frightened the Navy could get, the Germans could get their hands on the French Navy and of course most of the German plans were really strong anyway as far as England was concerned. Well, we who were Air Force personnel especially flying personnel the British would take us. Originally take us to England. Some people managed to get to England from France proper somehow but we didn’t. We didn’t do that so we were faced either staying in Morocco and possibly be interned as ex, ex-fighting troops or possibly forced to join the German Army. Well, that didn’t appeal to us very much but we knew then that there was Polish Army units being formed in Palestine. Well, unfortunately, Palestine was quite a long way east.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: And it was a long way across the Sahara Desert but there was no possible means of travelling there right from wherever. The only possible way was to travel through the English colonies in Africa and from then somehow we had to get through the Middle East to Palestine. But it was a crazy idea. Nobody would think of that. Travelling across Africa without really any proper support. All we had was passenger cars and nothing else. Well, we fortunately, one of our people who were with us was a Polish officer who before the war went to Cannes training. His father was a general so he had a possible job being sent to France for training. Well, he knew French quite well and he picked up quite a lot of contact with the French people. So with these we found these people and they, we explained to them that we wanted to travel to the Middle East and they got some papers for us to travel as tourists. Not to the Middle East but to the French colonies —
Interviewer: Tourists.
JM: In West Africa. That was enough for us and we managed to get ourselves a permit as well which allowed us to get some extra petrol. So with only that support we decided to travel with two cars and there were the two Polish officers and it so happened that one of these officers was a permanent residence in Morocco before the war. He had, he had a business there importing something from Poland. Well, he took, he had a wife with him as well and the other officer Captain [unclear] as he was moving out of Poland he came across a group of refugees and alongside them was his wife. But he didn’t want to leave his wife in Poland under occupation so somehow he managed to bring her as well. When, when we eventually got to France she was a very useful member of this group because before the war she was, she was working. He was part of the consulate, Polish Consulate, the Embassy working in France and she knew French very well and she knew some people.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: We knew there was some possibility to get support from the French people to travel to, at that time we were officially travelling from the French colonies in West Africa. Once we got to French colony so the plan was not to stay there but to move east. Travel east and go to Nigeria which was a French colony there and it was [pause] we had no official permit to go there which at that time it was chaos, more than chaos. Nobody bothered us very much. We could go. We didn’t represent any threat to anybody so we could go wherever we wanted to. So we turned to the east. Got as far as the [unclear] in the centre of Africa. The trouble was that there were no proper roads essentially. It was tracks used by the local inhabitants because they had no cars and there was no proper roads. Well, we had the difficulty in moving but fortunately we had these two cars. Citroens. And they were, they were, they had front drive which made them easy to drive on the roads because from the front. It was easier to get a grip on that bad road. But that, when we, the local people they were sort of amazed to see us. They didn’t expect white people to go there. They didn’t know what we, where we came from, where we were going so they let us go you see. We managed to pass the workmen of Egypt and Nigeria somehow. In some cases with quite a bit of help from the local affiliations. Then we would have to cross across wet areas. They made, they started to get a number of logs and we used that as rafts. So we travelled with these rafts. We travelled east and eventually we got to the, to the ground which was good enough to drive so we moved from there and we found after that was [unclear] part of the English colony in Nigeria. And so then we moved to, the plan then was Nigeria which was under British control. Well, at that time there we no telephones that we knew and I managed the communications. But somehow the authorities in in [unclear] which was part of the town in Nigeria under English control and they knew that we were coming but they didn’t know who we were. But I suppose they suspected some sort of invasion from the English side where we prepared and in our case there was a sort of a defence unit ready to fire at us in case we were sort of part of the invasion. Invading force. But the news came to the authorities that were two women as well. Well, they had enough sense to realise two women and two men is not a strange invasion force at all. So, they let us go until eventually we got to [unclear] and then we had an English commissioner. Met an English commissioner and he realised that it was, we were genuine refugees and there was no danger. They said, ‘Well, we will look after you here but first of all we have to find out exactly who you are.’ So they got in contact with the Polish people in London. And then we gave them our names and of course the officers, especially Captain [unclear] who was a former serving officer in the Polish Army and they knew him. So at that stage they said that we are genuine Polish people and could we, could they give us help to move to the Middle East? That meant putting us on a train from [unclear] to Lagos which was the then capital of Nigeria. So we travelled on this train for about two days. It was quite a distance to Lagos and when we arrived we had to wait for a couple of days, a week I think to meet the English convoy which was taking soldiers to the Middle East from England. So we joined that convoy and then the trouble was that at that time we didn’t speak English very much. Mrs [unclear] knew French and a bit of English because she had travelled during the, well with the Polish authorities before the war. She spent some time in London researching something so she knew a bit of English and she could explain what we were and make it easier. Well then once we joined this transport with these soldiers we arrived to join some units, British units in the Middle East. So we travelled along the coast of Cape Town in South Africa and then down again off to Egypt. We arrived in Egypt. They were already hearing this, all the Polish, Polish units formed in Palestine and in Egypt so we joined that and spent about [pause] a few. It was, that was nothing was happening very much in that. The fighting in Europe but not in the Middle East. So we get, we sort of got organised and eventually they formed a Polish brigade of two companies who were part of the brigade and then they sent us to defend Tobruk. Tobruk was [unclear] because it was from people who had travelled from Malta to Egypt. Egypt was partly under British control and so was Malta as well. Travelling there we had to stop halfway and Tobruk was a convenient spot. So of course at that time there were a lot of soldiers already. Our job then was settle there and prepare the defence of Tobruk in case Tobruk was going to be attacked. Well, eventually Tobruk was surrounded by Germans and Italian forces and our job was to defend it. The unit was spread around the perimeter and made sure that Tobruk wasn’t occupied by the Germans. It meant that the actual fighting meant that we had to do night patrols along there to see what the others were doing. Not actual fighting but occasionally we bumped into each other and of course there was a lot of land mines around as well so we suffered quite a lot of losses there. From about originally four hundred unit of men in two companies we lost about one hundred. So what we were [pause] eventually the, the British sent their force from Egypt to recover Tobruk and when they came, by that time we had spent about eight or nine months in Tobruk and we were due to go back to the Middle East and Palestine to join the bigger Polish forces who were forming there. Well, it wasn’t safe to travel at that time in that area during daytime because it was under the control of the German Air Force. So we got to travel, for safety we had to travel at night. On our plans for the night when you don’t see where we are going. We all said this was [unclear] So we didn’t go on the main road. It wasn’t much of a road anyway. We arranged the brigade in a column and all moved east with some stronger vehicles, lorries and [unclear] we went through the night and eventually when we realised in the morning we, we simply we thought we were safe from the German air attacks and I think in one case there was some German fighters came to attack [unclear] but fortunately we didn’t lose anybody. So we joined, eventually joined our forces in Egypt.
Interviewer: Could I, could I just ask how on earth, how did, what was the transition between you being in the Polish Army in Palestine to being with the RAF, with the Polish Air Force and the RAF in Britain because that seems —
JM: Well —
Interviewer: You were going further and further away.
JM: Yes. When we arrived in, first of all in Egypt, then we moved to Palestine where there were quite a lot of Polish refugees and ex-soldiers and they formed quite a large Army Corps having got a few divisions. The idea was that they would be sent eventually to fight in, in Italy because Italy was defended by the Germans and the British wanted to recover those. So the idea was to send Polish troops to Italy to get rid of the Germans there. Well, we didn’t know that at the time but we knew there were Polish Air Force forces, units being formed in England and also we heard about the exploits of the Polish fighters and how they were successful in fighting the German Air Force. So I got an idea working. Being in, in Army mainly in the deserts at the time as from the very beginning it was the better part, best part of three years in the deserts and the Army of course never appealed to me all that much. Being here in the Air Force also had a great appeal. So I asked Captain [unclear]. I came with him whether he could do something about me going somehow to England to join in the Air Force. Well, fortunately at that time there were [pause] at that time there were convoys of soldiers going from England to the Middle East and back. They were taking back wounded and they dropped out [unclear] back to England. So there was, there was transports from the Middle East to England but you have to have a reason why I should go there. Well, with the, with the fighting in the Middle East the British forces and the Polish forces fighting there captured quite a lot of prisoners. German and Italians. Well, they were being sent to England I think to work on the ground. But so what they wanted was an escort of some soldiers to keep an eye on these prisoners. Well, it so happened that I was always learning something whenever there was a chance of learning either language or science. I never sat down and played cards. I was always keen to learn. Well then after a few months I picked up enough English to be useful as a translator. So they attached me to one of these convoys that were going back from the Middle East to England taking a group of prisoners. Now that took quite a bit of time because we were going around the Cape and back to England. When I, when we arrived in England it was [pause] late 1941. I think. My first impression of England wasn’t very [pause] wasn’t a very pleasant one because of the weather. November in England is not the best part of the year to see England. Well because I had no choice. When I arrived they said yes [unclear] Polish from the Middle East but they said , ‘An Army Corps is being formed in Scotland and if you like we will send you there.’ And I said alright but at the same time [unclear] Army unit they were looking for people who would join the Parachute Brigade. Well, that was, from my point of view was quite attractive flying over there and jumping with a parachute but I wanted to, to fly proper. And then there was a commission that came to England and that commission was picking people setting off to Parachute Brigade. Well, the way they arranged it in this interview was put us in line and as usual in the Army the tall ones were at the top. The short ones like me were always at the end. They were just picking the names. They didn’t ask if you wanted to go to Parachute Brigade or not. They just asked your name and that was it. You go. Well when I realised what was happening I then quickly slipped out of there and went to the toilet. Well they came to my end and I wasn’t there. So they went without my name being chosen for the Parachute Brigade. The following day people from the Air Force came so I quickly went there [unclear] I was very keen on flying and he asked me a few technical questions. I realised that I knew a bit about maths and physics. So they said, ‘Alright, we will put your name down.’ So from then on I was attached to the Air Force and they examined me and they said that the medical examination, they said, ‘You’re alright. You passed. It’s okay but you are a little bit too short to be a pilot so we’ll send you to the navigation training.’ So they sent you for the first six weeks training in Brighton of all places during the war. [unclear] stayed and we learned the basic amount about navigation and it was that sort of thing. I passed that quite well and they said alright. At that time there was no navigation training in England because they were too busy fighting. So they had a very large organisation of training flyers, pilots, navigators in Canada and I was attached to a group of others sent to Scotland to join the transport going to Canada. On [unclear] and [pause] it was one of the transatlantic passenger ships. I think it was something like one of those luxury ships. When we, when I arrived near it they found that I spoke, I could speak a bit of English so they put me with the group of the Polish people. Again I got to be translator for them. Again it wasn’t easy for me but [unclear] we got a cabin and we had regular meals three times a day which each day consisted of sandwiches only. They were not cooked meals. There were too many people you see. But we didn’t complain. We arrived eventually in New York and at the first sight of New York was it was surreal because there was a lot of fog and the skyscrapers I saw again coming out from the fog. I didn’t know. It didn’t look like real at all.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: From New York they sent us to Canada and in Canada there was this training in Moncton, Ontario and I was part of the Polish unit. There were twenty of us and a few Canadians like a class doing navigation. Well, that took us about nine months I think and at the end of it I, I found out that I had the highest marks of all the [pause] so that was anything to do with mathematics and physics. So I really think that came easily to me and I had the highest mark. In one case I think I had a hundred percent in one of the exams. Well, it so happened that it was a practical help because when I came to England they looked at it as a navigation exam and they said, ‘Oh yes, you are very good. We need good navigators to fly over land.’ There was a Coastal Command whose job was to look for submarines. I was very good at navigation and that one there was a Polish squadron in the Outer Hebrides, Benbecula prior to that and I joined another group of Poles, the pilot and gunners and we formed a crew and our job was then to protect the convoys coming from Canada and America. Well, there had to be good navigation to find the convoy out in the Atlantic some one thousand miles away. But with good navigation we never missed any convoys. We were the ones there.
Interviewer: And —
JM: And —
Interviewer: Sorry, carry on.
JM: The problem was to find the submarine and attack it with depth chargers. Well finding the submarine wasn’t very easy because they kept submerged. But some of them had to look out to find where they were so they had the periscope sticking out and of course with the periscope we could realise that there was a submarine underneath and we would drop the depth charges on them.
Interviewer: So the periscope would just create a wake with the water would it? Leave a trail. Was that during the daytime or night time you were looking for the submarines?
JM: Well, all the time.
Interviewer: Right. Ok.
JM: But at night they were more brave. Sometimes they would surface to see where they were. In some cases we would manage to spot something that looked like a periscope and we dropped the depth charges on them and we had it confirmed on the submarine but at least being there it made life a bit more difficult for the submarines back with the other sail [unclear] They had to be careful and there was a [unclear] perhaps to attack very easily. So we spent a —
Interviewer: How long —
JM: A long time.
Interviewer: How long on average was each operational flight when you went out there? What was it?
JM: Well, the operation lasted about [pause] about twenty four hours.
Interviewer: Twenty four hours.
JM: We had long range tanks.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: So, it meant flying then, you could fly then a thousand miles and about [unclear] hours so that’s about ten hours. We spent about five hours when I was there and then another ten hours there. So it was quite a long, quite a long flight. Then towards the end of the war when Germany collapsed the job in Coastal Command there was finished so then they moved us to the south, southwest part of England to serve, there was still the war was going on and our job was to [unclear] our job was to look for submarines in the Bay of Biscay and in the Channel. So from flying across the Atlantic we had to fly the area around there. When eventually the war had ended we were moved to the Transport Command. That meant supplying essential supplies to the forces again in the Middle East [unclear]. At first we didn’t quite know what we were taking because we didn’t, we could carry in our flights aircraft, we had Warwicks instead of Wellingtons so it could carry quite a bit of weight. The amount of weight we had in our aircraft was very slow so we didn’t know what it was. Eventually we discovered that we were taking money to the countries in the Middle East. In Greece for example the new government was sitting there and they needed of course money to pay the to keep the economy going. So when we landed there there was always an armed guard outside the aircraft. They didn’t quite know what to do. It was not for our safety but for the safety of the money on board.
Interviewer: The money on board. Right. That’s interesting. So I imagine there was just in the inside of the aircraft there were just crates.
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: Big wooden crates full of money.
JM: Yeah. We didn’t know what was inside.
Interviewer: No. A good thing.
JM: We didn’t care very much.
Interviewer: No.
JM: Got to Athens and there was something. Pick it up.
Interviewer: An easy job at the end of the war then really compared to your twenty four hour operations out in the North Sea and the kind of arctic and Antarctic area. When you when you were at Benbecula what were the conditions like on the base to live? To live.
JM: Well, it wasn’t very pleasant. It was sort of windswept out to the Atlantic. No amenities at all. There was no proms or theatres or anything like that. No entertainment of any sort. The only entertainment you could have was to play cards. Well, it so happens I wasn’t, I wasn’t very keen on playing cards or doing anything like that. I picked up books. I was learning English and realised that having my education in Poland broken during the war I was going to need to get some education later on. So I decided to pick up sort of very sick moments so I could pass examinations like A Level examination and eventually get a job doing some of the examination results. I did realise that later on they said to me about getting a degree as well so I would have a degree but I was still carrying on. When I arrived and settled in England I was given like all ex-servicemen I was given a bit of money. It wasn’t very much. It was enough to start with for a few days and I found a job as [pause] I’d had enough of written, I had enough knowledge of mathematics and physics to apply for a job as a draughtsman in Birmingham. There was others, they wanted draughtsman who not only could draw but was good with calculations.
Other: Are you comfortable?
Interviewer: I’m having a lovely time. I’m just listening.
JM: They offered me this job and it wasn’t, the money wasn’t too grand but it was very nice and it wasn’t a great future. I knew that I would need a bit more than that if I wanted to have more secure future employment. So at that time I realised there was, there was a scheme. Further education for ex-servicemen. You could apply for either you could join the learning scheme for degrees in London. London external. There was only the course for me so I applied for this course and they said in the interview, they said, ‘Why do you want to do a degree? You’ve got a [unclear] situation. You’ve got a job as a draughtsman.’
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: That should carry on alright.’ And I said, ‘Yes, but I started employment hoping that I’d get a degree and get entry to a career.’ So now there was a chance to try to get on to the degree. I must say at that time they were all very sort of helpful to me. When there were exams there was always somebody who tried to help. On the other hand [unclear] make it more difficult.
Interviewer: Yeah. I was, I was just going to show you because before, before the time I’m worried in case the camera, the actual the memory size before it runs out. I was just going to move that out a little bit. There we go. I was going to just show you a couple of pieces of kit I’ve got here. You may remember these. These are certainly from the Second World War and they are certainly Air Ministry. This is one. This is an airspeed knots indicator. Does that look familiar? Is that something you would have had before at some point do you think on your aircraft?
JM: No. I don’t think I had that. No.
Interviewer: No.
JM: I had a calculator.
Interviewer: And the other, the other piece that I have as well is the drift recorder. Apparently when you are over water —
JM: Yeah, the drift recorder. We did our observations. It was [pause]
Interviewer: There you go. I think the pencil went in there didn’t it and then obviously whatever you did looking through your, the scope.
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: I’m not exactly sure how it went but —
JM: I didn’t have, I didn’t have that but I can measure the drift easily enough.
Interviewer: This was obviously attached to the —
JM: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you would, I presume you would look through there would you and then there is a hole is underneath there to see, to calculate your drift when you are over water. Is that [pause] what I understand is what a drift recorder does?
JM: Yeah. That’s to measure the wind speed.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: Yeah. But you picked up [pause] it picks up the point on the surface of the sea and [pause] I think it was the usual the machine gun sights. Set the sights on that point and you had to turn it a few degrees to keep it. If it didn’t keep it inside it would drift off you see.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: So the drift depended on the strength of the wind.
Interviewer: Right.
JM: For navigation you needed the strength of the wind to steer the right course.
Interviewer: So the first thing you had to do was to see what the windspeed was before you could then do your calculations. This is all new to me. I’m learning from an expert on —
JM: Oh, when setting a course if we were going on that course anyway because the wind was pushing you to the one side you see. So you had to roughly do, the first thing you had to do was to measure the windspeed. I mean there was no, as far as I gather there was no enemy instrument could measure that but using the sights of the gunsights of the machine gunners we could find out the amount of speed, the drift we had and from that and from the airspeed could measure the speed of the wind you see.
Interviewer: And as, as the navigator on a Wellington aircraft you just had a little seat and a very small table didn’t you to —
JM: Well, we had a seat and a small table. The table was very small. No bigger than this.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: And it had —
Interviewer: Do you want, do you want me to take that off your knee? Is that a little bit heavy for you? There we go. Thank you.
JM: I had a calculator and also a map of course. Now, the purpose of the map of course is to see the, the land.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: [unclear] because not having a map of the Atlantic. There was nothing there. But there was another help in the navigation. It’s, it was called LORAN long range navigation. Now, this works on the principal that there was a railway station in, in, I think it was somewhere in Spain. It was sending pulses as you know and he had, he had a screen [unclear] a kind of a television screen and —
Interviewer: That, what? That would pick up the radio waves would it?
JM: Yeah. It would have. You synchronized the movement of the points on the screen with the signal coming from that station. Now [pause] so the raid, the [unclear] raid which was [unclear] from there and you go there indicated how far you were from that station. That was easy and we got a map on which they were circling around negating the distance from that station in, in Spain and I think there was another also in the east. No [unclear] over there so there was suddenly another one. So there were two signals then. You’d got these drawn on the map so where they crossed that was your position. So that was very useful.
Interviewer: And obviously up in the aircraft it must have been very cold. Did you have good, good clothing or was there a heater in your little, below your table or something?
JM: Well, there was no heating there certainly. There was enough heat anyway coming from the engines so I don’t, I don’t think we suffered from cold somehow because we wore warm dress anyway. I think the trouble was not falling asleep all the hours in the air at night we didn’t [unclear] very much.
Interviewer: No. But I mean you obviously as the navigator still had to do quite a lot. I would imagine the, the rear gunner and even the bomb aimer had even less to do until you got to the convoy did you or were you busy. Was everybody still busy looking out of the aircraft. Looking for submarines.
JM: Well, no we had to keep awake and looking out for anything they could find on the surface and [pause] occasionally I think we would try to [pause] we would fire out over the Atlantic and of course we relied very much on LORAN and tried to take [unclear] We had a list of tables indicating the position of the star. We got a sextant. We had the usual navigation sextant. We could take the sight of a star at a certain time and I can’t think how hard it was. We could work out the he but again —
Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah.
JM: We could work out our position using the shots of the stars.
Interviewer: I’ve seen also there’s like a round disc with little holes in it for they said the navigators used for plotting stars to see where you were as well. Have you? I should have brought that one as well. Somebody gave it to me. That’s another Air Ministry one that was obviously used by navigators. It’s just like a big round circle with various stars on it and you, I presume you hold it up to the light and plan that way. I’m not sure how that works.
JM: I didn’t have that.
Interviewer: You didn’t have that.
JM: I had a sextant.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: I’d climb into the gunner’s [pause] position and take the sides off. I had to know the stars of course. Lots of stars you see in the sky. So we had before then we had training as part of our navigation. We had to know the position of certain stars which could be useful.
Interviewer: And because, because you were having these twenty four hour operations did you have to take more than one pilot then? So one could have a rest.
JM: No.
Interviewer: Just a —
JM: Two pilots.
Interviewer: Two pilots.
JM: Two pilots. Yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: They had to. There was no rest for the whole time.
Interviewer: The pilot. No. No.
JM: They had to keep awake.
Interviewer: So you had a six man crew then for your things.
JM: Two pilots, navigator.
Interviewer: Navigator.
JM: And there were two gunners and radio operators.
Interviewer: Radio operator. What about food for that? For the whole journey did the cookhouse give you plenty of food?
JM: We were given food from the canteen when we went but I never got that. As far as food is concerned I don’t suffer from hunger very much.
Interviewer: But over twenty four hours. That’s a long time isn’t it you know for sandwiches or biscuits or a cup of coffee or tea up in the aircraft. You must have needed something to keep you going.
JM: We had, we had something like sandwiches I think.
Interviewer: But you didn’t really bother much.
JM: And we had coffee in a thermos flask but on the whole I don’t remember —
Interviewer: No.
JM: Ever being sort of particularly hungry when I was doing that. We were too busy.
Interviewer: Was 304 Squadron, was it a good, a good bunch people to be with? Was it a good, good squadron?
JM: Well, the people were quite good. They were all very friendly except one of the gunners was very clever. He could have been a navigator. He was [unclear] and the pilot was a good pilot. He wasn’t a very, he wasn’t a sort of a type you could make friends with very much. He was just sticking to his job.
Interviewer: Yeah.
JM: And he was married and we were all single so that made a difference.
Interviewer: Yeah. So —
JM: After the war I tried to find some of my friends. I found mention of, he was mentioned. His name was in a paper. He did something or belonged to an organisation so I sent him a letter telling him who I was and I signed as a navigator. I had a letter from him. Only one word. “Buggered.” So he didn’t want to carry on any contact with me.
Interviewer: Very strange.
JM: As I said he was married and he had a family so he wasn’t very keen on having any more friends.
Interviewer: Or conversations with friends. Maybe he just wanted to start a new life and forget about the war completely like many people did I suppose. Right. Well, I’ll turn this off now unless there was anything else that you can think of from, is there anything you can think that you would like to tell me about your time with the Polish Air Force in the RAF? Is there anything else because you said you moved down to Cornwall was it? Or the southwest of England. Was that with 304 Squadron as well?
JM: It was 304 Squadron. Yeah.
Interviewer: 304. Oh, was that St Eval? A name like RAF St Eval.
JM: Yes. It was St Eval.
Interviewer: But you were still on Wellingtons then were you?
JM: Yes.
Interviewer: Yes.
JM: We stayed in that squadron until we were transferred to Transport Command and Transport Command was outside London and as I say we would then travel. Travelling with, getting surprise in the Middle East.
Interviewer: Well, thank you. That’s, that’s lovely. That’s tremendous. I’ll just switch this off then you
Collection
Citation
Geoff Burton, “Interview with Julian Michalski,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed March 16, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/54684.