“I I left the hospital five months later, so I didn’t die, but I lost my life. I lost my most beloved wife, Irene, and Sonia, my dearest treasure. And I also lost my health, which never allowed me to fly again. Thus ended my career as a fighter pilot. This happened on 12 July 1944”, wrote Zygmunt Jelinski on Christmas Day 2001.

​

Back in 1944, F/Lt Jelinski was a pilot of the Polish Air Force 306 Squadron. On 10 July 1944, his unit was declared ready to combat a new threat that had been taking a bloody toll on Londoners for the past month. On 13 June 1944, the first German Fieseler Fi 103 V-1 flying bomb (stands for Vergeltungswaffe, reprisal weapon in German) was dropped on London. The German "Wunderwaffe", which initially caused massive terror, was soon neutralized by RAF fighter pilots.

​

Four years after the victorious 1940 air struggle over the British Isles, Polish airmen once again were up for the task of defending the British skies against German attacks. This time, instead of standard Luftwaffe bombers, they faced a potentially dangerous weapon designed to spread panic, undermine morale, destroy London and avenge the deaths of civilians in German cities. Although in the long run, the attacks of the V-1 flying bombs, often called by the British “buzz bombs” or “doodlebugs”, proved to be ineffective, the first strikes spread enormous panic.

​

For the fighter pilots, the task of shooting down or neutralizing in the air a V-1 flying bomb wasn’t a walk in the park. To combat the V-1 effectively, it was essential to remove all unnecessary equipment from the aircraft and refuel it with 150-octane gasoline, which allowed for greater supercharging of the engine. As a result, the lighter aircraft with more efficient power could achieve better speed and manoeuvrability. When it came to hunting a V-1, speed was what mattered most.

​

The speed of the airplane and the speed of the threat detection by radars or observation posts. After catching up with a tracked target, it was necessary to get very close and shoot from a distance of at least 200 meters at the risk of damaging the aircraft by the explosion. Some pilots mastered the skill of neutralizing a “doodlebug” with the tip of the wing, causing it to tumble out of course. It was a dangerous business.

​

F/Lt Zygmunt Jelinski didn’t have a chance to try any of the tactics. His encounter with a V-1, or rather the effects of its attack, was far more personal. It wasn’t simply the case of neutralizing a target in flight. This was an enormously tragic and traumatic event that involved his loved ones.

​

Before the outbreak of WW2, a Warsaw-born teenager, Zygmunt Jelinski , was already a glider pilot; however, his further training to become a military pilot was cut short by the outbreak of the war. He was lucky enough to be evacuated to Roumania but was interned there following the Soviet invasion of Poland. He escaped and travelled by sea from Balchik (now part of Bulgaria) to Beirut, and from there to the French city of Marseilles. In 1940, he left France and was transported to Great Britain, where he was enlisted into the Polish Air Force and started his training to become a fighter pilot.

​

Jelinski flew with the 306 Squadron since 1942. However, it was not until the hectic period after D-Day that he was credited with the first damage to enemy aircraft. On 7 June 1944, the bullets fired from his Mustang reached a Bf-109 in the Caen-Argentan area and ten days later, he was credited with a shared victory with F/Lt Władysław Potocki, shooting down a Fw190.

​

On 23 June 1944, the 306 Squadron clashed with over 30 Bf-109s over Northern France. The Poles managed to destroy seven of them but lost five men, including the 306 Squadron commander, Squadron Leader Janusz Marciniak. It is said that he crashed his Mustang outside the build-up area to spare civilian victims.

​

“Death does not choose. Everyone is good for her. Nor will anyone make any predictions, calculate, or say how many of us....and to what extent, realized the seriousness of the danger in which we all so unexpectedly found ourselves here. Take a course for England! Run away! A single Mustang does not have the slightest chance if it is surprized by a larger number of enemy fighters,” recalled Jelinski.

Zygmunt made it back to England. Until July 1944, he completed 75 combat missions. What happened more than two weeks later changed his life forever.

​

On 12 July 1944, Zygmunt had a day off, so he decided to travel to London to visit his wife Irene and their six-month-old daughter Sonia. Squadron Leader Pawel Niemiec, the new commander of the 306 Squadron, granted his permission to travel. Jelinski was to report the following day, ready to fly combat sorties against flying bombs. As it turned out, his first encounter with the devastating effects of a V-1 attack was about to happen within only a few hours. He was given a ride to London by a chaplain and reached the city by afternoon. However, he felt disappointed when he did not find his wife and daughter at home. Zygmunt thought of Mrs. Cooper, the mother of Irene’s friend Daphne. She lived just a 20-minute walk from where they lived.

​

He felt an extraordinary joy. His gut feeling proved to be true. He found his wife and daughter at Mrs. Cooper’s house. He arrived there just in time for the usual 5 o'clock cup of tea. “Sonia, a delightful baby, when she saw me, she excitedly stretched out her hands, so I picked her up, pressed her to me and could not stop kissing her,” recalled Zygmunt.

​

What was disturbing about an approaching V-1 was its buzzing sound, replaced by an eerie silence when the engine shuts off. It was the sign that the flying bomb was on its final path to reach the ground and explode. The distinctive sound was probably heard clearly when Zygmunt was enjoying the company of his family, and it all happened in a matter of seconds. No time to even panic. The explosion, the shock, the destruction. The flying bomb hit the street just outside.

​

“I wake up. I feel extreme heat, and some kind of weight is on my chest. It must be a dream. Where is Irene? I can't see anything! At once, I'm cold, I'm shivering madly. I can't breathe. I hear voices; someone is digging up debris. This is not a dream, this is not a dream! Where is Irene? They reach me, they are already digging me out and putting me on my feet. I want to go, I insist. I lose consciousness. I'm lying in a car; it must be an ambulance. I can't see anything, I lose consciousness”, recalled Zygmunt.

​

He woke up in a hospital, where he regained his consciousness only to lose it again a few minutes after a nurse asked him whether the badly injured baby girl was his. It was, but Zygmunt could hardly recognize her.” Sonia, Sonia, my darling, she, hearing my voice, stops crying for a moment and starts crying back. My heart goes to her, and I’m powerless. All the nurses and doctors are crying, and one of them, with tears in her eyes, takes my daughter away forever, and I lose consciousness,” wrote Zygmunt many decades after the tragic event.

​

He later found out that Irene died on the spot. Initially, the nurses just kept quiet when he repeatedly asked questions concerning the whereabouts of his wife. The amount of suffering was just too much. Zygmunt left the hospital in December 1944. Because of the sustained injuries, he would never fly again. In April 1945, he was given the post of a Polish liaison officer to the British Air Ministry, and three years later, he left the Polish Air Force.

​

81 years ago, the first V-1 flying bomb exploded in London. Overall, 78 Polish pilots shot down over 190 of them, but the new German weapon took its toll. Over 2,000 flying bombs exploded in London, killing over 6,000 people. Behind every victim, there is a tragic story, just like this one.

​

After the war, Zygmunt graduated from the University of London, receiving a bachelor’s degree in economics and statistics. His career eventually took off when he moved to Canada and later the United States.

​

In the mid-1950s, he was involved in the development of the Univac computers. Later, he worked for Bendix, Autonetics, North American, Philco, and Rockwell International. For 14 years, he was one of the main engineers in the Computer Science Department at McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, California. In 1972, he published a paper with Paul Moranda presenting a mathematical model of software reliability (the Jelinski-Moranda model).

​

According to WW2 Polish fighter pilot and writer Wacław Król, Jelinski often mentioned the tragic loss of Irene and Sonia in letters to his family in Poland. The trauma and the memory of the “day when he lost his life” probably stayed with him until the end of his days. He passed away in Vista, California, on 18 February 2006, aged 86.

​​

​

 

Source: Institute of National Remembrance Fcebook post

​

​