Polish Eagle shows its mettle
The short but heroic career of the Orzel

THE DRAMATIC exploits of the submarine ORZEL - the Polish word for Eagle - have been told in newspaper headlines, in books and in a popular European film. More recently a handsome medallion, minted in Warsaw, helped to keep the story alive and now a variety of websites seek to do the same. Britain owes much to its wartime comrades from the Polish armed forces so with this issue The Review adds its tribute to the ORZEL's crew and their commander, Lieut-Cdr Jan Grudzinski.

Her famous escape from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, came 17 days after Hitler had triggered the Second World War by invading Poland on 1 September 1939, and only 20 months after her own launch. Built by public subscription, the ORZEL was one of two submarines ordered from Dutch shipyards as part of Poland's efforts to create a navy well enough equipped to defend what was then only a 90-mile coastline. On 8 September 1939 the 1,473-ton submarine sailed from the Gulf of Danzig for the open sea. Skipper Cdr Kloczkowski managed to evade a German trap by scraping the ORZEL through a minefield, hitting a couple of mooring cables but luckily nothing else. When he later fell ill, possibly with typhus, executive officer Grudzinski took command.

The German advance meant that on September 12 Polish naval facilities at Gdynia and elsewhere had to be evacuated, so the ORZEL had no base to which to return. Now the captain's condition worsened so Grudzinski, who was also faced with the need for mechanical repairs to the ORZEL, made for the neutral port of Tallinn in Estonia, where the submarine was escorted in. The ailing Kloczkowski had discussions with the Estonians about the ORZEL's status before being driven off to hospital.

Under pressure from the Nazis, the local authorities interned the crew, confiscated their maps and started to dismantle the armament. Amid protests from the Polish sailors, soldiers boarded the submarine and workers were sent to remove torpedoes. In the course of this Grudzinski himself sabotaged the torpedo hoist, successfully blaming the Estonian workers for its failure. His outward show of co-operation continued to deceive the guards while the crew prepared for their escape. After a delay caused by an unexpected visit from an Estonian officer, the two soldiers who had been left on board were overpowered and the ORZEL broke out to sea under the nose of an Estonian gunboat. She grounded briefly on a mudbank and the moment she was spotted she was pursued by a hail of bullets, followed by shells from the harbour's coastal defence batteries, as depcited on the reverse of the medallion illustrated here. As soon as she reached deep enough water Grudzinski gave the order to dive and the next day she lay on the seabed. The Germans soon announced that the Poles had murdered the two Estonians but in fact Grudzinski later put them safely ashore on the Swedish island of Gotland.

Now Soviet destroyers joined in the hunt for the ORZEL, while the Kriegsmarine threw in aircraft, escort vessels, sub-chasers and minesweepers. The submarine remained in the Baltic long after the last of the pockets of resistance on Polish territory had been overcome. Grudzinski continued to take the war to the Germans and he was shaping up for an attack on an armed enemy merchantman when the submarine hit a rock and stuck, her powerful Swiss-made Sulzer diesel engines only just pulling her off in time as a Heinkel seaplane zoomed in to attack. The bombs hit the rock from which the ORZEL had just slid but she made her escape unscathed. Her commander was now faced with a problem. His home country had been invaded by both Germany and the Soviet Union so, learning by radio that the Polish submarine WILK had joined the British to carry on the fight, the ORZEL's crew decided to do the same.

She made her way stealthily through the Sund Narrows and into the Kattegat, heading for Britain. The destroyer VALOROUS was sent out to meet her, escorting her to Rosyth where on 14 October she ended a 44-day voyage made without maps and navigational equipment. She was sent to the Caledon Shipyard at Dundee for refit and once she was back in fighting trim in December 1939, she joined the Royal Navy's 2nd Submarine Flotilla, operating on North Sea patrols. For her fifth patrol she was sent to help oppose the German invasion of Norway. On the morning of April 8, patrolling at periscope depth, she found the German troop transport RIO DE JANEIRO off Lillesand, on her way from Stettin to Bergen carrying more than two hundred soldiers from 307 Infanteridivision, about a hundred Luftwaffe Flak troops, eighty horses and other military material.

Grudzinski surfaced to challenge the 5,261-ton former Hamburg-Sudamerika liner, which tried to escape, ignoring the ORZEL's instructions to stop. Then the RIO DE JANEIRO began sending encrypted radio signals. The submarine's first torpedo missed as the target gained speed but the second struck home and the ORZEL became the first Polish warship of the war to make a successful torpedo attack. The troopship, pouring smoke, began to list but when she showed no signs of sinking, the submarine fired a third torpedo which finished the job, exploding amidships. Loaded with German soldiers, the ship's back was broken and she was now in two pieces. The bow section disappeared almost immediately, then the stern rose slowly before it, too, sank beneath the waves. It is said, perhaps with a degree of licence, that through the periscope Grudzinski could see a terrible scene with bodies floating on the surface and German soldiers struggling to survive in the chill waters. Some sources record that Norwegian ships managed to rescue 183 men, while one says the survivors reached the shore themselves. In any event, 150 perished.

On April 10 Grudzinski saw three armed German trawlers, one of which he attacked. As the ORZEL fired her torpedoes, she came under air attack, forcing her to dive to 50 metres. Then two big explosions were heard, which were assumed to be the torpedoes finding their target. The remaining two trawlers began dropping depth charges but they fell some distance from the ORZEL, which was again able to make its escape.

On the night of April 11, a German communiqué reported that two of their trawlers had sunk an Allied submarine. The ORZEL's crew was happy as this might give them some peace from their hunters. Unfortunately the two trawlers found her again at periscope depth the next morning and she dived to 40 metres in an attempt to evade them. The ensuing depth charge attack was a nightmare for her crew. The submarine went down to 85 metres, five metres below her maximum designed depth. After what seemed an age, the two trawlers left the area, probably thinking they had finally sunk the submarine.

On orders from Rosyth, ORZEL moved to another area on Saturday, April 13,. That afternoon she was near the north coast of Denmark, where German cutters attacked her without success. At 20.00 hours on April 14, three big submarine chasers were seen. ORZEL dived to avoid them and resurfaced four hours later to charge her batteries. The next day Grudzinski saw three submarine chasers through the periscope and to everyone's alarm the ORZEL inadvertently surfaced. She was seen by the German ships but could not dive again immediately. The three enemy ships were getting close when she crash dived and reached 105 metres before control was regained and she was brought up to 50 metres.

Then the attack began. Depth charges were dropped and the crew became very anxious as the search went on for a long time with oxygen in the submarine running low. ORZEL remained submerged for 24 hours during which time other vessels had probably joined the original three sub-chasers. Between April 11 to 15, its has been reported, one hundred and eleven depth charges were dropped around ORZEL. Some claim the figure was about two hundred but in any event she remained undamaged. On April 16 she left to go back to her base, but on April 17 she was attacked by a German Arado aircraft. Again her luck held and she returned home to be congratulated by Captain Stephens, commander of the 2nd Submarine Flotilla. Reporters were also awaiting ORZEL's arrival and exaggerated reports later appeared in some newspapers, which said the submarine had despatched three or four ships including a destroyer. The reality was that two German ships had been sunk.

On her next patrol the ORZEL disappeared in the Skagerrak with five officers and forty-nine men, some time in late May or the first week of June. Her wreck has not been discovered, so what happened to her? The www.uboat.net website advances two possible causes for her loss. In 1962 the Admiralty said she had gone down in 1940 - on May 25 - in a recently-laid British minefield. It had not been possible to inform all Allied ships, including the ORZEL, about the minefield, presumably because they were at sea when the mines were laid. British acoustic stations heard a loud noise that day, which was assumed to have been something hitting a mine.

An alternative suggestion is that she might have been sunk on June 8 - the date that appears on the commemorative medallion - when she could have run into a new German minefield while on her way back to Rosyth. The Dutch submarine O-13 was lost in the same minefield five days later. The location of this and some other enemy minefields was not known until May 1941 when charts were captured with Enigma material on board a German weather reporting trawler.

Whatever the actual fate of the ORZEL, it was a sad end for a courageous crew.

THIS 7cms silver plated medallion depicting Lieut-Cdr Jan Grudzinski and the Orzel was designed by Zbigniew Kotyllo, manufactured by the Warsaw State Mint in 1991 and issued by the Defensive Knowledge Society in Warsaw. The lively design on the reverse shows the Orzel flying the Polish ensign while escaping under fire from Tallinn in Estonia in 1939. The apparent lack of will or inability to disarm and intern the crew caused the Soviet Union to accuse Estonia of helping them escape and to claim that the country was not neutral, using this to justify its annexation. Grudzinski was born on 3 December 1907 in the then Russian city of Kiev. He studied at Lvov before joining the Polish navy, serving in minesweepers in the early 1930s. In 1939 he was transferred to the submarine Sep as executive officer for her voyage from her builders in Holland. He joined the Orzel on 1 June 1939. During nine months' war service he carried out eight patrols and spent 100 days at sea. His exploits earned him gallantry medals including a DSO from the British and he was the only Polish commander to be awarded two Virtuti Militari Orders by his government.

Sources: There is a great deal about the ORZEL on the Internet but the main sources consulted in the preparation of this article were www.orzel.one.pl; http://crolick.website.pl/orporzel; www.uboat.net; and www.skovheim.org. Printed sources included Dictionary of Disasters at Sea, by Charles Hocking (1969), Submarines of the World, by David Miller (2002) and All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946 (pub Conway 1980)

 

Not forgotten: A rare and flimsy 1960s image on paper paying homage to the Orzel. The picture, measuring 7cms by 5cms including border, was one of a series given away with Belgian chocolate.