Stanisław Król

Stanisław "Danny" Król (22 March 1916 – 12 April 1944) known as "Danny" was a Polish Supermarine Spitfire fighter pilot flying from England when he was taken prisoner during the Second World War. He is notable both as a persistent escaper and for the part he took in the 'Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III in March 1944 being one of the men recaptured and subsequently shot by the Gestapo.

Król was born in Zagorzyce, Kielce, Poland. He gained a high school diploma and Joined the Corps of Cadets No.3 Polish Air Force at Chelm on 21 September 1937. He completed basic military training with No. 4 Infantry Regiment and in January 1938 commenced aviation training at Aviation Cadet School Deblin preparing to fly as a fighter pilot. He was a championship standard swordsman/fencer.

He was commission as second lieutenant on 1 September 1939 but the aircraft at Deblin for this group of cadets were destroyed in bombing when the Germans invaded Poland so they were evacuated to Romania on 17 September 1939. He escaped from internment camp there and reached the port of Balchik sailing on 15 October 1939 to Beirut aboard a ship "Aghios Nikolaos". At Beirut he boarded the French ship "Ville de Strasbourg" and reached Marseille, France where he joined the Free Polish Airforce in France, training at Lyon with Morane fighter aircraft.

Supermarine Spitfire Mark V

On 1 March 1940 he was with a group of Poles assigned to the air base at Tours to fly the Potez 25 while observers and gunners were training. The Germans invaded France and the French surrendered before he was involved in any combat. He flew to Bordeaux and on 23 June 1940 he boarded the French ship "President Del Piaz" and sailed to Oran where he sailed on a British ship to England.

In England Król continued to fly and was commissioned as pilot officer in the Free Polish Air Force. He was posted to No. 57 and later No. 7 Operational Training Unit at RAF Hawarden to complete training as a Supermarine Spitfire pilot. On 6 May 1941 Król was posted to No. 74 Squadron RAF at Gravesend in Kent as a pilot officer to fly bomber escort missions over the English Channel and occupied France.

Model of Stalag Luft III prison camp.

On the afternoon of 2 July 1941 Król was flying Supermarine Spitfire Mark V (serial number "W3263") on his 11th sortie, a fighter sweep in the area of St Omer when he was shot down by a Messerschmitt Bf109 over France, he was captured and went straight into the prison camp system as prison of war number 1392.

He passed though several camps including Oflag VIB at Warburg before the Germans adopted a policy to banish persistent trouble-makers and escapers to Stalag Luft III in the province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland). He was amongst the early groups of arrivals in late spring 1942 and he immediately began preparing to escape. Król and his friend flight lieutenant Sydney Dowse, attempted to escape by cutting though the barbed wire perimeter fence in late 1942. They were caught in the act and lucky not to be shot by the guard who preferred to recapture them. In March 1943 he and Sydney Dowse participated in a tunneling escape attempt which failed and saw them back in the "cooler".

From May 1943 he joined Roger Bushell's escape organization and was recognized as a powerful and efficient tunneller, so much so that his efforts as a pathfinder digger were rewarded with a highly prized placement very near the start of the queue to escape from the tunnel.

Król was one of the 76 men who escaped the prison camp on the night of 24–25 March 1944 in the escape now famous as "the Great Escape". He was amongst the initial groups out of the tunnel who needed a head start in order to get to the local railway station and catch their appropriate trains however his escape partner Sydney Dowse was delayed and then the airraid closed down the station causing them to change their plan. Instead of taking a direct railway journey to Berlin where they planned to hold up in a known address arranged by a friend of Dowse before making for Danzig hoping for a ship to Sweden, they began walking east to Poland to find friends of Król's, he posed as a Slav worker on leave and Dowse as a Danish worker.

Memorial to "The Fifty" down the road toward Żagań (Kiewnarski at right)

For 12 days and nights they marched through the snow following the railway lines eastwards past Liegnitz and Breslau remaining at large longer than almost all of the escapers. On 6 April 1944 the Germans circulated "wanted posters" with their photographs and just 2 miles from the Polish frontier they were arrested in a barn by a Hitler Youth and some Home Guard men. They were placed in prison at Oels or Olesnica and visited by agents of the Breslau Gestapo on 11 April 1944. During interrogation Sydney Dowse was told that he was being sent to Berlin for further interrogation as this was his 4th escape and that Król was to go back to Stalag Luft III. Dowse was removed to Berlin and later Concentration Camp at Sachsenhausen and Król was never seen alive again after 12 April 1944. Król was one of the 50 escapees who had been listed by SS-Gruppenfuhrer Arthur Nebe to be killed so was amongst those executed and murdered by the Gestapo. He was cremated at Breslau. His remains are now buried in part of the Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery where his headstone shows the rank Kapitan. He is commemorated on the Polish Air Force Memorial at Northolt, Middlesex. Unusually his name was not on the list of murdered officers which was published by newspapers on 20 May 1944.

His conspicuous bravery as a prisoner was recognized by a Mention in Despatches as none of the other relevant decorations then available could be awarded posthumously.

The Gestapo executed a group of 50 of the recaptured prisoners representing almost all of the nationalities involved in the escape. Post-war investigations saw a number of those guilty of the murders tracked down, arrested and tried for their crimes.