page_title: Warsaw airlift
section_title: Results and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Warsaw airlift / Results and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Tablica poświęcona połoudniowoafrykańskiemu lotnikowi, zmarłemu w Łodzi podczas Powstania Warszawskiego, cmentarz Łódź DołyEnglish: Plaque to south african flyer shot down in 2nd WW, Łódź Doły Cemetery
context_page_description: The Warsaw Airlift was a British-led operation to re-supply the besieged Polish resistance Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi Germany during the Second World War, after nearby Soviet forces chose not to come to its aid. It took place between 4 August and 28 September 1944 and was conducted by Polish, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African airmen flying from Celone and Brindisi in Italy and denied flyover rights from their Soviet allies, who shot at them when the planes entered Soviet airspace. On 18 September, in the final stages of the Nazis crushing the uprising, one United States airdrop was launched from Great Britain and landed at Poltava in Soviet Ukraine as the distance to the drop-zone precluded the aircraft returning to base. The flights from Italy were night operations with low level cargo drops, conducted without fighter escort while the single United States Army Air Forces mission of 18 September 1944 was a high-altitude, daylight operation consisting of 107 B-17s protected by P-51 fighters. From the night of 13/14 September, Soviet aircraft flew some supply drops, dropping about 130 tons in total until 27/28 September.
context_section_description: Even if the air-supply missions had delivered their full consignment of supplies, and these had reached their intended recipients, there is little likelihood that it would have altered the outcome of the Warsaw Uprising. However, the Red Army did not move against Warsaw, even when the resistance was crushed and instead they cleared their flanks in the Balkans and the Baltic, waiting for the total destruction of the non-Communist Poles.
  The RAF and SAAF lost one aircraft for every ton of supplies delivered and a total of forty one allied aircraft were destroyed out of 306 dispatched.  In 1992, 67 ex-members of the SAAF 31 and 34 Squadrons were awarded the Polish Warsaw Cross of the Uprising for their role in the relief operations.
caption: Plaque in memory of Herbert J. Brown, 31st squadron SAAF airman killed during the airlift: Łódź Doły Cemetery, Poland
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