Object description

The memorial to the RAF aircrew located in the hamlet of Dębina Zakrzowska, Wojnicz Commune in southern Poland, marks the spot where the British, Canadian and Australian airmen perished on the night of 4–5 August 1944, when their Halifax bomber, from No. 148 Squadron of the RAF, was shot down by a German fighter aircraft. They were flying on a mission as part of the Warsaw airlift, to supply the Polish Home Army whose Warsaw Uprising had just begun. Owing to a change of orders, the bomber had taken off from its base in Brindisi in Italy with instructions to divert their drop to partisans in the vicinity of Miechów, rather short of the capital. The men were initially buried in the military cemetery in Wojnicz, but their bodies were subsequently exhumed for repatriation to their own countries.