On Wednesday 30 August 1939 the commander-in-chief of
the Polish Navy, Rear-Admiral Józef Unrug, received an unequivocal
signal from Warsaw: "Execute Pekin".
That signal meant sending three most worthy Polish destroyers - Błyskawica, Grom and Burza - to Great Britain. All three
of them had already been readied in the roadsteads of the navy port in
Gdynia, but when the signal was received at 12:50, probably none of
their crewmen had any inkling what would be the consequences of that
order. Nobody probably thought that it meant that three ships and half
a thousand sailors would leave Poland at the most critical point of the
Germano-Polish political relations. For six months then they had been
preparing for defence of the Polish territorial waters, and now they
had to abandon them. Only Wicher
would be left at the disposal of the Coastal Sea Defence Command. More >>>
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