My warmest thanks to Mr. Jan Borowczyk for allowing these excerpts of his memoirs to be published here.
As a young Pilot Officer, he joined the squadron in Peterhead in October 1944.

    6th Dec - 3rd operation, on the wing of F/Lt Schmidt. Escort to Beaufighters to Loch Froy and Sildegapet, Norway. 
Heavy flak in the fiord when we went in at 2,000 ft level; one of the heavy German shells caused my aircraft to flip upside down from the power of blast. On the return journey, F/Lt. Schmidt developed engine trouble; instead of bailing out he chose to attempt ditching. I followed him on his path: his aircraft touched down and rode on the waves smoothly for 200 to 300 yd, then twisted suddenly to the left, the nose of the aircraft plunged vertically into water and the pilot and aircraft vanished in the sea. The Squadron dispersed around in search of the pilot, but he perished by drowning. The position of the disaster was 59º 47’N, 00º 04’W.

    7th Dec - 4th operation, on the wing of F/Lt Stembrowicz. Escort to Beaufighters to Aalesund, Norway.
We were just under the cloud layer near Gossen over the coast of Norway when a large group of Me 109’s and FW 190’s jumped at us attacking from the clouds: P/O Czerwinski was hit, his aircraft caught fire and went down with the pilot to sea. The Squadron dispersed and we were in a hurry to drop our auxiliary fuel tanks suspended under the wings to gain full maneuver ability. I had to dive three times to get rid of the right tank which was stuck and did not want to fall away; that separated me from F/Lt Stembrowicz for whom my task was to provide him cover.
    It was late in the afternoon and the lighting was poor under the clouds: in my preoccupation to rejoin my section leader I criss-crossed the path of several aircraft, but I have to admit honestly that in spite of the good marks I received for aircraft recognition in my training schools most of the aircraft swirling around appeared very much alike to me; for a moment I saw a plane that I certainly could engage in combat and I went for it, but from close quarters I realized it was one of our Mustangs not a Focke Wulf I believed it to be. The encounter with the German Air Force did not last more than 2 minutes. I was overwhelmed by the discovery that aircraft were frantically flying in all directions. Then the realization came that our best, experienced pilots chose their victims very early in their encounter and pursued them for the kill. I lost quite a few precious moments in the beginning and actually what I saw were only the Germans running away for cloud cover since they were in vicinity of their base airfield at Gossen. I did not want to give up, still hoping for a chance to spot a German, so I gunned the engine around the area for a few more moments. It was all in vain: there were but a few silhouettes of aircraft disappearing on the western horizon, but not a stir along the Norwegian coast. I realized that the encounter was long time over and that it must have been my Squadron assembling on the way westward. For a while I tried to fly as fast as I could after them but seeing that I was not getting closer and they soon disappeared completely from my view, I resigned myself that I will have to make my way to home base alone. To conserve fuel I returned to average speed of about 240 mph and continued my flight towards Scotland.
    The weather was somewhat better over the western part of the North Sea and I had no difficulty to reach the Scottish coast and guide my aircraft to Peterhead: I landed there about 30 minutes after the return of my Squadron. Part of the reason for such late return was that my "letter Z" aircraft had some speed limitation since it was one of the veteran aircraft with many flown hours in the Squadron: naturally, the efficiency of the engine was no longer comparable to that of newer machines. One should remember that the commanders and the best pilots were customarily getting the newer aircraft whilst "the old faithfuls" were as a rule assigned to the younger pilots: I got "letter Z" because I was then the youngest, by experience, pilot of the Squadron.

    23rd Dec - P/O Lubicz-Lisowski bailed out near Shetland Islands and perished in the North Sea. He was the youngest pilot in our Squadron who joined us in December. He liked to drop in to my room for a chat in the evening; he was a writer who enjoyed writing war stories. Three days before he lost his life, he was telling me that he was very uneasy and reluctant to fly on the next mission which was expected towards the end of the week. When we were checking his belongings after his death, we found several stories. The last one he wrote described in detail the way in which he died three days later. I often remembered that incident as a remarkable example of young pilot’s premonition.

    29th Dec - 8th operation. on the wing of P/O Haczkiewicz. Escort to Mosquitoes and Beaus to Christiansand, Norway. 
Very poor weather and heavy fog near the Norwegian coast. Squadron returned to base battling several snow showers, landing at night in a snow storm took close to 50 minutes to bring all planes safely down; I landed after 3 approaches for landing. Just as we finished debriefing after our mission, we came out to see a brilliant full moon sailing through cloudless sky.

    12th Jan - 10th operation, on the wing of F/Lt Stembrowicz. Escort to Lancasters to Bergen, Norway. 
We met heavy flak; my aircraft "letter X" developed engine trouble: the engine ran unevenly, coughed and shuddered at interrupted running. I adjusted fuel supply to run at lean mixture and tried to coast the engine along, yet the vibration continued and the aircraft was slowly losing height. Since we came to the coast at about 13,000 ft, I had some room for maneuver: I turned the nose of the plane to west and decided to fly on that course, adjusting and coasting the engine. Yet there was no improvement and I was still losing height; if I opened the throttle wider, the engine was choking up and shuddering intensified.
    I realized that having done all I knew to ease the strain on the engine and yet unable to maintain height or to regain normal engine running conditions, I was faced with the inevitable prospect of not getting back to base. Through my mind ran choices available to me: I could turn over towards the land and either land there or bail out; in any case I would be captured and become POW The second choice was to bail out over the sea: if not captured by the Germans, I would not last beyond 10-15 minutes in the North Sea at winter time and would certainly perish before any air-sea rescue could reach me from Scotland. My third and last alternative was to continue flying westward as long as the engine would last and at the end of it I could quietly go into the sea; it seemed to me to be the most honorable and graceful way to die if that was my fate.
    Yet, at my age of 24, I had a strong desire to live. Since I had done all I could do to save myself, yet it was all in vain, I knew instinctively that only the hand of God could save me from certain disaster. I started a prayer asking God that somehow He would bring me back to my base in Scotland. I knew I was asking for extraordinary happening and I was far from being sure I deserved a miracle.
    The aircraft continued feebly for a little while, I was at height close to 10,000 ft and a good distance away from Norway shores.
    I attempted now to communicate with my Squadron that I was in trouble and would try to get home on my own, but there was no acknowledgement and I received no answer: my radio was dead, perhaps damaged by the flak at Bergen. As I still continued my prayer, I noticed the engine tended to run more smoothly; improving steadily over the next half hour I was exhilarated to find that I could count on the engine to carry me farther towards home.
    I came now, I believed, to the mid-point over the North Sea and the cloud base was steadily descending below 10,000 ft. Very gently I started to ascend until I reached 12,000 ft to get above cloud cover: this allowed me a better control of my navigation because I could now adjust my course according to the position of the sun. I flew at that height until my watch showed me I was just over 1.5 hrs away from the time I left Norway. Here then I decided I should start my descent through the clouds in case I might miss the Scottish coast and find myself lost over the Atlantic.
    I was going down gently and came to 1,500 ft, yet fully within the clouds. At 1,000 ft I became a bit uneasy, yet in a few seconds some glimpses of light let me believe I was near breaking out from the clouds. Indeed, about 900 ft I came into the clear, anxious to identify my position with respect to land and water. And it was at that moment that I became so overcome by emotion I nearly lost my intense concentration and let go momentarily of the control stick: I came out at dead center of my base, RAF Station Peterhead, which was just at the NE shore of Scotland. The time flown from Bergen was l hr 42 min. A chance for all these things to happen that way was probably less than 1 in a million. When I landed safely, many of my colleagues in the Squadron congratulated me on safe return from a seriously trying experience with the failing engine. That engine was thoroughly tested the next day and Chief of the Maintenance Staff told me they were quite puzzled how the aircraft made it to Peterhead since, in their inspection, they could not find one completely sound spark plug in the engine.
    My thoughts ran back to the incredible events at Bardia (December 1941), and on the Atlantic (March 1943) when owing to God’s intervention my life was spared. Here, for the third time, the same experience over the North Sea (January 1945) confirmed my trust in God and in the power of prayer. Hence, date of 12th January 1945 remains in my memory as the date God saved my life in AIR operations.

    13th January: I took off on a Mustang "letter V", to fly an air-sea rescue mission when just after the start the flying control noticed my undercarriage did not fold up properly and one of the legs dangled loose. They called me over the radio to make several runs over the airfield to try locking the undercarriage in position: every attempt failed. Now I was trying to release the undercarriage downwards: the leg that was loose did not get locked and dangled as before.
    In this situation, when only one leg would lock, the plane which weighed 3.5 tons could not be landed easily on one leg off the center line of the aircraft. On the ground, the heads were put together to choose the most effective yet safe method for crash landing without the risk to pilot’s life and with some chance of avoiding major aircraft damage. In the meantime, I was told that one leg was not locking and that I should make rounds over the base until they call me to make crash landing.
    My somewhat naive assumption was that I would be directed to fly low over the grassy part of the airfield and try to knock over the vertical locked leg before crash landing on the belly. When they told me eventually I was to land on a concrete runway, I thought for a moment somebody lost reasoning; but, in the service one does not argue over orders; sometimes, there are other reasons for action and they may not be known to everyone.
    I came approaching the longest runway having to cope with about 300 cross wind of which I was aware. At the height of about 800 ft I switched off the engine, my cockpit cover open, and went down more like a fast falling boulder towards the surface of the runway. I had to ease off the path of descent much more swiftly to get the aircraft into the landing position perfectly leveled as if both undercarriage legs were supporting me. As soon as the locked leg started touching, I had to work hard on the rudder to counter the turning movement and on the control stick to maintain the leveled position.
    There rose a tremendous rasping noise as if a thousand nails were drawn with force over a glass pane; I felt if I were sitting lower and lower because the aircraft was sinking deeper on the runway. My preoccupation was to keep her leveled and straight at the center of the runway; the propeller stopped just before I was touching down, so only one of the 5 blades suffered a bent tip. It was a very long run, so much so that I stopped the plane only about 20 yards away from the end of concrete runway. The wings of the plane were not damaged; the cooling system scoop on the belly of fuselage was squeezed and ground down to the size of a book.
    As I jumped out from the cockpit, safe and sound, my Squadron Commander, T Andersz, approached me to say that he had witnessed one of the nicest crash landings and that I had done a very good job of it. I now looked closely how much the aircraft suffered. I realized fully the wisdom of making me land on a concrete runway. The "Mustang" aircraft, when wheels are pulled up and locked into the wheel wells, have long and sharp contoured plates called fairings which fold upwards and cover the wheel wells flush with the surface of the wings to ensure aerodynamic lines for flying. When I experienced problem with locking the undercarriage, both fairings remained locked in vertical line downward to the ground. By landing on concrete, the calculation was to shear off the fairing plates gradually: that indeed had happened, the plates sheared down to 1-2 ins from a length of several feet; this was also the source of the wild scratching noise. Had a landing with fairings down been attempted on a grassy surface, the fairings would dig into the ground and at that speed the aircraft would topple or overturn with serious consequences to both the pilot and his plane.
    However, I admit this honestly, one such crash landing is enough for a while and I do not recommend the experience to anybody.

    14th and 15th Jan - The Squadron receives farewell parties from Station Personnel at the Officers’ Mess.

    16th Jan - Peterhead, departed by train at 13.10 hrs; through Aberdeen and Edinburgh.