The Airmen's Stories - P/O B H Drobinski

Squadron Leader (Pilot Officer during the Battle) Boleslaw "Ghandi" Drobinski, the Polish fighter pilot who has died aged 76, fought with distinction in the Battle of Britain and finished the Second World War with a confirmed tally of seven Me109’s.

Commissioned into the Polish Air Force on Sept 1st 1939 - the day on which the Germans marched on Warsaw - Drobinski was ordered to make his way to the Romanian border. He was told that Hurricanes were being delivered from Britain to Constanta on the Black Sea; he was to fly one back to Poland and take on the Germans. When the Soviet invasion of Poland put paid to this scheme Drobinski crossed into Romania where he was detained in a camp near Slatina. He escaped and caught a train to Bucharest, jumped off at the outskirts of the city and took a taxi to the Polish consulate. There he was given money and an address at which to stay. The next day, Drobinski took a train to Paris. He doctored his papers and bribed a ticket inspector to lock him in a first class compartment, thus making his perilous journey in some comfort. From Cherbourg he sailed to Southampton, where he was accorded a cool welcome by the RAF. Drobinski considered himself to be a fully trained pilot but to his dismay he was sent to RAF Eastchurch to acquire rudimentary English and to learn how to march.

It was not until the summer of 1940, when the Battle of Britain was at its height and pilots were in short supply, that Drobinski was posted to No 65, a battle-worn Spitfire squadron. On August 24, Drobinski was making a sector reconnaissance. Almost out of fuel, he returned to base to find it being heavily bombed. He gave chase to one of the attackers but noticed his fuel gauge had dropped to zero. He glided in to land "like a slalom skier".

In 1941 Fighter Command went on the offensive over France. By then Drobinski was a member of No 303, a Polish Spitfire squadron, and took part in numerous low-level sweeps. His account of a sortie on May 15th evokes a typical operation of the period -

I and my wingman strafed military buildings in the St Omer area and shot up a Ju52 on the ground. On the way back we attacked and damaged a convoy of five ships about four miles from Calais.

Drobinski set one ship ablaze.

For the next three years he mixed spells as an instructor at No 58 Operational Training Unit with combat duty for 303 and 317 Squadrons. In September 1944, as the Allies pushed into North West Europe Drobinski was appointed to command No 303. Two months later he was patrolling over Holland when a piece of anti-aircraft flak furrowed the top of his flying helmet."I felt as though I had been hit with a hammer and blacked out" he recalled. When he came to, the Spitfire had dropped from 23,000 ft to 5,000ft and was spinning helplessly towards the sea. Most of the controls had been shot out and Drobinski did not manage to restart the engine and pull himself out of the spin until he was only 1,000 ft above the water.

Boleslaw Drobinski was born at Ostrog in Poland on Oct 23rd 1918 and educated at Dubno High School. At 16 he learned to glide on a summer holiday and two years later he was flying powered aircraft. In 1938 he entered the Polish Air Force College at Deblin near Warsaw.

In 1948 he was released from the RAF with the rank of squadron leader. He called at the Aliens Office to obtain a British passport."You will have to wait five years" he was told by a civil servant. "But I have been fighting with the RAF and Polish Air Force since 1940" pleaded Drobinski. "Oh, that doesn't count" said the official "you came here without permission to land".

Somewhat vexed, Drobinski took up a family invitation to work in an oil business in America. After six happy years he returned to Britain to help his sick father-in-law to run his farm. In 1960 he was finally granted British citizenship.

Drobinski was awarded the DFC in 1941; he also received five Polish decorations.

In 1943 he married an Englishwoman; they had two sons and a daughter.

With acknowledgments to the Daily Telegraph August 1995