Operation Peking — Stankiewicz Facing the Sound

In 1939 the Polish navy musters four modern destroyers — ORP Burza (1929), ORP Wicher (1930), ORP Grom (1937) and ORP Blyskawica (1937) — the last two among the most powerful in the whole Baltic, built at the British J. Samuel White yards, capable of thirty-nine knots and armed with seven 120 mm Bofors guns. But the Baltic is a strategic trap: at the first invasion the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe could easily neutralise Polish ships penned between Danzig and Hel.

From the spring of 1939 the Polish naval staff around Admiral Swirski had therefore worked out with the British Admiralty Plan Worek, "the Sack": at the first threat of war the three best destroyers would withdraw to the Royal Navy to fight in the Atlantic alongside the Allies, while the fourth, Wicher, the oldest, would remain to ensure coastal defence with the submarines.

On 29 August 1939 the Polish analyst posted in Berlin, Captain Witold Lopuszynski, signals that the Wehrmacht is in position for imminent attack. The following morning Admiral Jozef Unrug, the fleet's commander-in-chief, receives from President Moscicki the order to launch the operation, code-named Peking. Roman Stankiewicz, thirty-six, a lieutenant-commander, commands the division of three destroyers — Grom, Burza, and Blyskawica. His mission: to leave Gdynia clandestinely at 2 p.m., set a course due north, force the Sound between Denmark and Sweden, and reach the British coast. The perils are not few: to be spotted by German or Swedish aircraft, to be attacked by a German submarine, or to be refused passage by Denmark, which has remained neutral.