The Hoover Institution Archives has received an important increment, an album of photographs and a handwritten diary, to the personal papers of one of the wing commanders in the Polish Air Force in Britain, Lieutenant Colonel Bohdan Kleczynski (1902–1944).
The story of the Polish Air Force during World War II is relatively unknown in the West. Outnumbered and technically outmatched, the Polish air force was effectively destroyed during the first two weeks of the September 1939 campaign. Nevertheless, many Polish pilots escaped via Hungary to France, where, eight months later, in small units detached to French squadrons, they fought with distinction in the Battle of France. A majority of these pilots survived the French campaign and were evacuated to Britain, where a Free Polish Air Force was formed to supplement the Royal Air Force. Four Polish squadrons, manned largely by veterans of the Polish and French campaigns, took part in the Battle of Britain. The 303 Squadron, named after the Polish American hero General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, claimed the highest number of kills (126) of all fighter squadrons in the Battle of Britain. The Polish Air Force, under the command of the Polish government in exile in London, eventually included ten fighter and four bomber squadrons.
Despite wounds suffered in September 1939, Kleczynski made his way to the Polish forces in Allied France. A few months later, he and his comrades witnessed the collapse of France; evading advancing Germans they boarded a British coal ship in the southwest of France, arriving in Liverpool a week later. In England, Kleczynski was given command of the Polish 305 bomber squadron, named after Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Wounded again during a raid over Cologne, Kleczynski was appointed air attaché in the Polish embassy in Washington. After a few months in the United States, Kleczynski returned to Britain. Hurting both physically and emotionally, Kleczynski, no longer able to fly, spent the final months of his life lecturing in the Polish Air Force Academy in Scotland. He died in March 1944, at the age of forty-one.
The Kleczynski diary, which covers the period September 1940 through March 1943, is in the form of long, melancholic letters to his beloved wife, Helena, who remained in German-occupied Poland and thus was unable to read the diary until long after her husband’s death. The photo album details life in the 305 bomber squadron, with several photographs from the French episode of the Polish pilot’s saga.
