Jun 7.
Ramrod 980. The sortie over Argentan/Breteuil/Dreux/Sees. The squadron took off at 5:05 a.m. and landed at 7:10 a.m. Every plane was bombed up with 500 pounders. There was a poor weather with 10/10 clouds at on different altitudes. Argentan station was bombed and few motor columns were strafed and bombed. F/Lt Sworniowski shot down Fw-190 near Rouen.
Left: D-Day+1. Coolham ALG.

After immediate refueling and rearming Ramrod 980 continued.   Take off at 9:05 a.m. landing at 11:20 a.m. Dreux marshalling yards bombed together with a train. Squadron clashed with 10+ Bf109s. Four Germans were shot down. Victory scored: F/Lt Marciniak, F/O Kirste, F/Sgt Berka and F/Sgt Idrian. Another Bf109 was damaged by F/Lt Marciniak. After that fight 315 Deblinski strafed a truck convoy.

Next sortie at 2:10 p.m. two a./c - F/Lt Stefankiewicz and W/O Tamowicz - for weather recce near Allies landings. Satisfactory weather reported.



Left: W/Cdr Skalski and S/Ldr Horbaczewski. Top: F/Lt Nowosielski being shown Dziobek's DFC.

 

At 3:10 p.m. W/Cdr Skalski led the 315 Squadron and the central section, while F/Lt Sworniowski and F/Lt Polak led the other two. Eight a/c were armed with bombs, and all where dropped at railway and road intersection some 2 miles S of Sees. There was no incidents and unit landed at 5:50 p.m.


June 1944. PK Mustang being bombed up. 

Rearmed and refueled once more, 12 PK Mustangs took off at 6:45 p.m. Leading the squadron and the middle section was F/Lt Marciniak. The other elements were led by F/Lt Cwynar and F/Lt Stefankiewicz. Eight a/c bombed the railway track near Ecoucher, S of Argentan. Upon return, F/Lt Marciniak replaced shot down S/Ldr Lapka in 306 Squadron. Within 315, his place was taken over by F/Lt Cwynar.

Jakub Bargielowski recalls:
        Interesting incident happened to me on Ramrod 980, D-Day+1, and June 7th, 1944. 315 Polish Squadron had a mission to dive-bomb some targets in the invasion area. All planes had been armed with two 500 lb bombs each. As we were approaching the French coast, we flew at 10,000 feet above the Allied invasion armada. All of a sudden, my friend behind me, R/T to me: “Kuba, one of your bombs fell off!” Instantly, I released the other one, as was the order to do so in such circumstances. It was dictated by the safety reasons.
Bombs fell into the channel, a safe distance from the ships. One of them exploded, and at that moment, all ships started to shoot at us. Luckily, this friendly fire didn’t hit anybody.
       Having no bombs, I went up and took defensive position, little behind my squadron. Flying inland, I found myself in the clouds of mixed density and visibility. After a while, a visibility improved and, to my big surprise and shock, I found myself in the middle of Me109s formation. I was right behind the leading section, about 40-50, and a little bit higher. Had I started to shoot in this position I would have hit nothing. I had to slow down and lower my flight to get in the line of fire. As I did so, the leader of the German formation must have spotted me in his mirror. He immediately made an evasive maneuver, a 180-degree by the left wing and under me. I presume that he must have given an order to the others to do the same, because I saw all of them doing that popular defensive move. However, leaders wingman, started to turn right and as a result he collided with him. Both enemy aircraft got stuck together, theirs propellers wedged into the fuselages. It looked a little bit like a cross, a bizarre picture in a dim visibility.
I almost slammed into them, but having quick reflexes, I pulled up just in time - full throttle and straight up. I misseed them by a few meters. The German formation disappeared.
As I was going up, in a left hand spiral, I analyzed what just had happened. It didn’t last long for at 18K I met another group of Me109s, diving at me from the sun. But that’s for another story. About those two Germans, which collided I concluded:

  1. Both pilots noticed me at the same instance.
  2. Leader being right-handed person started doing the maneuver normal way, to the left.
  3. His wingman must have been a left-handed and in emergency, his system took automatic action by turning to the right.

That’s why they collided and I couldn’t think of any other reason.

Left: April 3rd,1945. Stanmor RAF Station. W/O Bargielowski moments after receiving a DFC.