Polish pilots — the exit through Constanța

On 1 September 1939, the Polish air force counted about 400 combat aircraft — PZL.7 and PZL.11 fighters, PZL.23 Karas light bombers, PZL.37 Łoś medium bombers — and 5,000 trained pilots. Facing a numerically superior Luftwaffe, with some 2,000 aircraft committed in Poland, and technically more modern, it nonetheless proves remarkably effective in the opening days, shooting down about 285 German aircraft in four weeks. But it leaves much behind: roughly 330 aircraft destroyed and 330 pilots killed, wounded, or captured.

On 17 September, the Soviet invasion precipitates the evacuation of the surviving pilots. General Jozef Zając, who commands the Polish air force, orders the still-operational squadrons to fall back into Romania: 117 aircraft reach the Romanian airfields of Cernăuți, Roman, and Focșani, while 9,200 air-force personnel cross the border between 17 and 27 September.

The Romanians intern the pilots. But, as with those who passed through Hungary, a clandestine Franco-Polish-Romanian network works to extricate them. In Bucharest, Ambassador Adrien Thierry's French embassy issues collective visas, and the airmen embark in groups of one to two hundred on liners from Constanța, by way of Piraeus to Marseille aboard French vessels, or via Beirut through the Levant.

Among the first to pass through is Lieutenant-Colonel Witold Urbanowicz, 31, former commander of the 111th Squadron at Warsaw, credited with eight aerial victories in September 1939; he is followed by Captain Stanisław Skalski, 24, with five victories in the same month. Both reach France in November 1939.

It remains to be decided how to integrate these 9,200 Polish airmen with the Allied forces.