Battle of Ławica, 1919: how Polish insurgents captured an air force

The capture of Ławica was one of the shortest actions of the Greater Poland Uprising and one of the most valuable. It cost the insurgents one man, and it gave the reborn Polish state the core of its first air force.²

The last German post at Poznań

The uprising broke out in Poznań on 27 December 1918, and within days the city was in Polish hands. One German force remained that could threaten it: the air station at Ławica, just west of the city.³

The station had opened in 1913, with Emperor Wilhelm II at its official ceremony, and was home to the German 4th Reserve Aviation Detachment, about 200 men. According to Głuszek, in the war it trained pilots, observers and mechanics and repaired aircraft rather than flying combat missions. Its real value lay in its stores. In the great airship hall at Winiary in Poznań the Germans kept more than 200 aircraft in parts, which could be put together quickly, and the ammunition and aerial bombs for Ławica were kept in nearby Fort VII.⁴

According to Głuszek, about 40 Poles served on the station's staff. Among them was the pilot Wiktor Pniewski, a member of the Polish Military Organization, who with another Polish pilot, Józef Mańczak, drew Polish airmen and mechanics into a conspiracy. They mapped the hangars, stores and barracks, and their aim was simple: to stop the Germans evacuating the aircraft to Frankfurt an der Oder.⁵

An ultimatum refused

On 4 January the Supreme People's Council in Poznań, afraid that the Germans would retaliate by bombing the city, was persuaded by Second Lieutenant Mieczysław Paluch and Sergeant Pniewski to take the station by force, and Major Stanisław Taczak gave the order. On 5 January Paluch and Pniewski met the German commandant, Lieutenant Fischer, and demanded surrender. He refused and threatened to blow up Fort VII with its stock of aerial bombs. A regional history adds that the Germans also threatened to bomb the Bazar building in the city center.⁶

The assault force was put under Second Lieutenant Andrzej Kopa, commander of the People's Guard in the western Poznań district. The figures differ. Paweł Głuszek of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) counts 300 infantry of the 1st Poznań battalion of the Guard and Security Service, a platoon of the Polish Military Organization, a battery of two 77 mm guns, 50 mounted riflemen and a medical team. Jarosław Łuczak of the Wielkopolska Military Museum speaks of about 400 men with two guns.⁷

Twenty minutes at dawn

Before the attack the station's electricity and communications were cut. In Głuszek's account, the infantry took up positions on the side of Ławica village, to the southwest, while the cavalry was to make a feint from the east; the guns stood on the Berlin Hill near the Poznań-Wola railway station. After 6 a.m. four mounted envoys rode forward with a last demand to surrender. They were fired on, and one fell from his horse and was captured. Łuczak says only that the Poles surrounded the airfield and called on the Germans to surrender.⁸

At about 6:30 two companies of infantry advanced. The German machine guns fired high, over their heads, and they took no losses. According to Głuszek, the battery fired two salvos, four rounds in all: one shell destroyed a machine gun post on the airfield tower, the other landed near the main entrance of the barracks. The Poles held back from heavier fire so as not to wreck the aircraft they had come for. When the cavalry appeared from the direction of Poznań, the Germans gave up. The fight had lasted, by both accounts, about twenty minutes or less.⁹

The biggest haul in Polish military history

One insurgent was killed and several wounded; the Germans lost two dead and a dozen or more wounded. The IPN account counts 110 Germans taken prisoner and 26 aircraft and 20 machine guns captured at the station, among them Fokker and Albatros fighters, a Halberstadt reconnaissance machine and a high-altitude Rumpler. The airship hall at Winiary held about 215 more aircraft in parts, by other accounts as many as 300, along with observation balloons.¹⁰

The value of the haul is given in round and differing figures: about 160 million German marks according to Głuszek, nearly 200 million according to Łuczak, and up to 200 million according to the Polish Press Agency and the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków. All agree that it was the largest prize ever taken by Polish arms, and that it became the basis of the squadrons of Greater Poland, which flew later at Lwów and in the war of 1920.¹¹

Raid and counter-raid

The Germans struck back from the air. According to Głuszek, on 7 January three or four aircraft from Frankfurt an der Oder bombed Ławica, killing a Polish soldier and burning a building; on 8 January they came again, but this time machine gun fire brought one down and its crew was taken prisoner.¹²

What happened next is told in two ways. Łuczak and an anniversary report of the Polish Press Agency say that Polish airmen hit back by bombing the airfield at Frankfurt; Łuczak puts the raid at six pilots who broke discipline to fly it and dropped 36 bombs, and the Press Agency dates it to 9 January. Głuszek writes instead that the Poles took the German general von Bock und Polach hostage and threatened a retaliatory raid on Frankfurt, which never took place.¹³

Today the old German station is Poznań's civil airport, Poznań-Ławica, and every January anniversary ceremonies are held at the memorial to the airfield's captors beside the old terminal. The uprising itself began on 27 December 1918, and it is one of the few Polish risings that ended in success.¹⁴