.. from the Polish Heritage Flight FB page...
In the summer of 1944, while Warsaw fought, Polish airmen of the 1586 Special Duties Flight flew night after night from Brindisi, Italy, in these B-24 Liberators — carrying weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to the fighting Home Army. This photograph shows members of one of those crews standing beside their aircraft. The distinctive nose art and the Polish checkerboard markings tell the story of men who knew the odds: a 1,500-kilometre round trip over enemy territory, no fighter escort, and no permission to land on Soviet airfields. Captain Zbigniew Szostak and his entire seven-man crew would not return from one of these missions. On the night of 14/15 August 1944 their Liberator KG890 was shot down near Bochnia on the way home after a successful drop over the city. None survived. Of the roughly 1,840 containers dispatched by Allied aircraft, only about a quarter ever reached the insurgents. Many aircrews paid the ultimate price for that limited help. Today a full-scale reconstruction of a Liberator stands in the Warsaw Rising Museum as a permanent tribute to their courage. We remember them.
