A few minutes before 5 a.m., the fleets of pigeons that live in Krakow’s old city walls and building crannies suddenly take to the air, baffling the early risers who are setting up their stalls. Moments later, the reason is clear – the Luftwaffe has arrived to start bombing Krakow’s rail yards and airfields.
Shortly after midnight, SS panzer grenadier leader Kurt Meyer moves his company from the marshalling area and down the road to the border wire. They travel without lights, each driver spacing himself from the blue exhaust flame of the vehicle in front. Skies are cloudless under a waning moon. The unit draws up a few hundred meters short of the customs barrier and parks well off the side of the road.
Then Kurt Meyer’s anti-tank company waits. No smoking. Silence in the surrounding forests. Weapons are rechecked, with safety catches left on. Nobody wants to alert the Poles to the attack.
At 4:30 a.m., the men hear what sounds like a thunderstorm in the distance, the clank of tanks moving up to their positions. The tanks rumble by Meyer and his men. Kurt raises his hand, and yells, “Panzers forward!” The war is on.
At 4:25 a.m., Lt. Bruno Dilley, commander of a Stuka squadron, takes off to attack the detonator wires alongside the Dirschau Bridge on the Vistula River. From his cockpit, Dilly can’t see anything, because of fog. In other circumstances, Dilley would call off the attack. But a train full of sappers is waiting to cross the bridge, so he makes the raid. His bombs miss and the Poles blow up the bridge. No word on what happens to the sappers.
World War II formally begins with the old German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein executing the code-word “Fishing” at 4:45 a.m., opening fire on the Westerplatte forts. The coal-burning warship, normally a training vessel, has a number of cadets aboard.
Fort Westerplatte is an island strongpoint lying between the City of Danzig and the open sea. The Hel Peninsula, 10 miles (16 km) to the north, dominates the seaward approaches to Gdynia. Without their reduction, the ports cannot fall. The ports are minor in the grand scheme of the campaign, but the forts are well-armed and well-supplied.
Schleswig-Holstein is assigned Westerplatte, her equally aged sister from the Cadets’ Training Squadron, the Schlesien, is to blast the Hel Peninsula. Despite the weight of the 11-inch shells, the Poles hold out, mostly because of the effects of the flat trajectory – had the fire been plunging fire, they might be more destructive. Instead, the Poles at Westerplatte hold out for five days and nights against Schleswig-Holstein’s guns. Schlesien does little better against Admiral Josef Unrug and its 4,500 defenders. Unrug is a senior officer in the Polish Navy, and his resume begins with service in the Imperial German Navy. Now he must suffer bombardment by ships that he served with.
Among the Polish naval reserve officers defending the Hel forts is Jedrzej Giertych, called up to duty on August 24, who commands a “fishing cutter” named Gdynia, also freshly-called up from civilian life. The war wakes him up with considerable force – Stukas from the squadron already assigned to the unfinished carrier Graf Zeppelin attack his small ship at the outbreak of war, sinking it right away. Giertych never has a chance to open his sealed orders and find out what his wartime mission is. Instead, he and the sunken ship’s few survivors swim ashore to the Hel Peninsula. Also lost is all of Giertych’s personal kit, including his picture of the Holy Virgin of Swarzewo.
Fifteen minutes after the firing begins, Albert Forster, the Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig (Party Leader) announces on radio the reunification of the city with the Reich. Church bells peal and the Swastika flag is unfurled over City Hall. Gestapo officers, sent into town ahead of the war, reinforced by local SS and SA men, seize Polish officials, teachers, and priests, using lists prepared in advance, and march them to the Victoria School, set up as a temporary detention camp. Opponents of the party are driven through the streets and beaten or in some cases murdered. Raids are made on Jewish homes in Danzig. Most Jews will go to a new concentration camp being set up at Stutthof. Fighting continues in Danzig, albeit briefly. The Polish customs posts are seized quickly, the post office holds out a little longer.
Next is a major aerial onslaught against Poland, codenamed “Operation Seaside.” Its objective is to wipe out the Polish air force on the ground. The mission fails. The Polish Air Force, anticipating the Luftwaffe’s first strike and technical superiority, has scattered its planes to secret fields, many of them mere pastures with a barn or two to conceal the aircraft.
Goering sends a message to his men to start the war: “Born of the spirit of the German airmen in the First World War, inspired by our faith in our Fuehrer…thus stands the Luftwaffe today, ready to carry out every command of the Fuehrer with lightning speed and undreamed-of might.”
The Luftwaffe opens the war with an attack by three Ju 87 Stukas at 4:30 a.m., bombing the deserted Poznan air base. Polish fighters are scrambled, and sometime around 7 a.m., Lt. Wladyslaw Gnys of 2nd Krakow Air Regiment gains the first Allied “kill” of the war, shooting down two Do 17 bombers.
At Deblin, the Polish Air Force’s training center, instructor Witold Urbanowicz takes off, followed by a student pilot, to teach dogfighting. Urbanowicz goes into a turn, and then suddenly live machine-gun fire rockets past his P.7 fighter. Urbanowicz wonders who loaded live ammo in the kid’s guns, and how a mere cadet got the jump on him. Furious, he signals the cadet to land immediately.
As Urbanowicz taxis to the hangar, preparing his anger, a fellow instructor rolls his P.7 to a stop in front of him, and runs over, yelling, “You’re alive, Witold? You’re not hit?”
Urbanowicz yells, “What the hell’s going on?”
The instructor says, “You should go to church and light a candle. You were just attacked by a Messerschmidt!” Thus does the urbane and proud Urbanowicz learn that Poland is at war.
The Luftwaffe storms over Poland with three mighty air fleets, attacking air bases across western Poland with determination and fury. They blast dozens of training and sporting aircraft, but not a single front-line plane. Low cloud and poor visibility interfere with the Luftwaffe’s attack.
The Luftwaffe gets effective air support from its most renowned weapon, the Stuka, and its least known weapon, the Hs 126 biplane. Thirty-six of the latter attack the village of Panki, the first instance of direct support of the Army, with fighters strafing the Polish defenders behind the biplane bombers.
The Poles hurl 159 fighters, most of them obsolescent PSL P 11s, with a top speed of 242 mph, against the Luftwaffe’s ME (Bf) 109Ds, which can crack 300 mph. Yet the Polish air force survives the first day’s onslaught, worrying Berlin’s leadership that the Polish bomber force might attack the Reich Hauptstadt.
The most impressive feat of the Luftwaffe that day is to hammer the Polish naval bases at Gydnia, and the field fortifications in the Polish Corridor.
Radio Operator Werner Borner’s Dornier 17 flies out of Schippenheim in East Prussia at 4:45 p.m. for an afternoon raid. One of the planes, caught in another’s slipstream, heels over and dives. Borner watches with horror as one of the crew, Flight Mechanic Holewa, jumps out, and sees him tumble over and over – he has forgotten to clip on his parachute pack. Holewa disappears from view, one of the first Luftwaffe casualties of the war. The incident, combined with the war, leaves Borner feeling uneasy about his future prospects.
In his Junkers 88 bomber of Lehrgeschwader (LG) 1, Hans Joachim Helbig roars off the ground just after 4 a.m., heading for Brest-Litovsk. He sights a Polish fighter below and swings his bomber into a dive to attack. The bomber’s observer and rear gunner pour gunfire into the Polish plane until its wings collapse. The observer takes a picture of the wreckage. When Helbig reports the action to his bosses back at base, nobody believes his tall story of a bomber attacking a fighter. But Helbig has the photograph as proof, and LG1 has its first air-to-air victory.
