A Polish destroyer

[The_Blockade_Runner]

GWX 2.1
VIIB
Feburary 1940, BF grid, west of spain I encounter an unreported large convoy. I move into postion at night and spot many juicy targets. The lead escort comes in to veiw, and its got the polish flag. I found that a little odd, Poland had already fallen. Maybe this guy escaped to England and is still fighting the good fight. I fire my first fish at it and begin reloading. I miss, barely.

I got to take out 5 targets in one pass though. an Ore carrier, 2 Large Merchants a Large cargo and an Aux Cruiser. By then the Pole destroyer was pinging me and in an attack run. I CD'd from PD and got under the blasts. Close call. Took her down to 200 meters went silent, set speed for 1 kt and crept away victorious. I thought my encounter with a destroyer other than an England one was pretty cool.

[Task Force]

lol, yea ive had an encounter with a polish distroyer... escorting a brit convoy. before britian was even in the war.

[meduza]

I found one near Dunkirk, June '40...

[ddiplock]

Quite a few Polish destroyers made it to safer British waters to carry on the fight agsint the Germans if I recall So its entirely possible you had run into one of the good chaps :P

[kuchciol]

Yep, a squadron of Polish destroyers evacuated to Brtain before the war actually started. As did some submarnes during the war. The Polish navy also operated some vessels transfered fron the RN, including two lght cruisers among others.
Even though the country was occupied a lot of the military got out of t and continued to fight abroad.
Not all of these men were actually human too: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voytek.html
(contains strong language)

[cj95]

My very first encounter of my current career was a Polish DD.

Had a beautiful 90degree AOB shot, and I gave her a full spread.....well for a Type ii anyways.

CRAP! Forgot about the steam torpedoes which quickly reveal my presence.

The DD does a quick 90 geree turn and I spend the net hour playing hide and seek in 25 meters of water.

The crew was not amused to almost get killed on day 1 of war.

[Ford Prefect]

It's the Poles in the RAF you've really got to be worried about! Whatever the service though, those guy's had a vendetta and they were after german blood. A friend of mine worked out there a few years ago, he was invited to dinner with a work mate who's dad after dinner took them out to the barn where he proudly showed them this pockmarked and stained section of wall inside the barn. After a little translation it turned out the red army had found some german soldiers hiding in the barn and had submachine gunned them down. This old polish guy still hated the germans so much he'd never washed that area of wall and showed it to all the visitors he could.

[PavelKirilovich]

I had Polish next door neighbours. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, they'd invite everybody over for a massive barbeque. This is where I developed my taste for roast pig - yeah, the whole thing, apple jammed in its mouth and all, roasted over a fire. Delicious.

The grandfather came over to Canada after fighting with the Polish Armoured Division, as I recall. Mad respect for the PAD; they did some serious damage and some damn fine work alongside 1 CDN Army in NW Europe.

[kuchciol]

Those merchant shps that were scattered all over the world when the war began also took part in it. Some of them had to break out of French ports n Africa when the Vichy goverment got to power.
Of particular interest is the "Kroman". A small and slow tramp steamer (with the top speed of 9 knots) it was too slow for even the slowest convoys and had to make it on its own. It managed to break out of the French Dakkar.
Apparently the captain figured out the only way to survive is to arm the ship. How exactly the crew obtained the armament is unknown - enough said the ship eventually had more guns and machine guns than people to work them. She would blast at German planes with a firepower of a small cruiser and was quite trigger happy. I guess being small and slow made her a bit paranoid. "Kroman" in his voyages managed to shoot down a German plane and damaged a few others, a Catalina included. If it flies - shoot it

[Ford Prefect]

Originally Posted by PavelKirilovich

I had Polish next door neighbours. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, they'd invite everybody over for a massive barbeque. This is where I developed my taste for roast pig - yeah, the whole thing, apple jammed in its mouth and all, roasted over a fire. Delicious.

The grandfather came over to Canada after fighting with the Polish Armoured Division, as I recall. Mad respect for the PAD; they did some serious damage and some damn fine work alongside 1 CDN Army in NW Europe.

Those boys meant business for certain, people seem to forget the commonwealth troops, there were more british and common wealth troops put ashore on D-day than any other, and almost every ship was either british/commowealth or was manned by british/commonwealth sailors, even the vessels taking the american soldiers to normandy. It was the last great hurrah of an empire in decline.

[Jimbuna]

I once knew a Polish dentist (about 26 years back) who fought at Cassino.

A proud and fiercesome reputation for fighting on the side of the Allies....and well deserved.

[rs77]

Originally Posted by The_Blockade_Runner

GWX 2.1
VIIB
Feburary 1940, BF grid, west of spain I encounter an unreported large convoy. I move into postion at night and spot many juicy targets. The lead escort comes in to veiw, and its got the polish flag. I found that a little odd, Poland had already fallen. Maybe this guy escaped to England and is still fighting the good fight. I fire my first fish at it and begin reloading. I miss, barely.

I got to take out 5 targets in one pass though. an Ore carrier, 2 Large Merchants a Large cargo and an Aux Cruiser. By then the Pole destroyer was pinging me and in an attack run. I CD'd from PD and got under the blasts. Close call. Took her down to 200 meters went silent, set speed for 1 kt and crept away victorious. I thought my encounter with a destroyer other than an England one was pretty cool.

take a look at these pages in wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_Grom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_Conrad

or uboat.net:
http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships....html?navy=ORP

these are just examples and you still can visit Gdynia and actually take a look and visit ORP Blyskawica:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORP_B%C5%82yskawica
(scroll down the page for current photos)

[PavelKirilovich]

One of my favourite photos of the Blyskawica.

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

Those boys meant business for certain, people seem to forget the commonwealth troops, there were more british and common wealth troops put ashore on D-day than any other, and almost every ship was either british/commowealth or was manned by british/commonwealth sailors, even the vessels taking the american soldiers to normandy. It was the last great hurrah of an empire in decline.

Quite. Disturbingly, many of my countrymen forget that Canada was assigned its own beach during the D-day landings, and practically none of them know the role that Canadian troops played in preventing the 21. Panzer Lehr and 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" divisions from sweeping the Americans off their beachheads. This is just the single most famous example, we're not going to go into the book-long list of other actions.

[Task Force]

Originally Posted by kuchciol

Those merchant shps that were scattered all over the world when the war began also took part in it. Some of them had to break out of French ports n Africa when the Vichy goverment got to power.
Of particular interest is the "Kroman". A small and slow tramp steamer (with the top speed of 9 knots) it was too slow for even the slowest convoys and had to make it on its own. It managed to break out of the French Dakkar.
Apparently the captain figured out the only way to survive is to arm the ship. How exactly the crew obtained the armament is unknown - enough said the ship eventually had more guns and machine guns than people to work them. She would blast at German planes with a firepower of a small cruiser and was quite trigger happy. I guess being small and slow made her a bit paranoid. "Kroman" in his voyages managed to shoot down a German plane and damaged a few others, a Catalina included. If it flies - shoot it

I wish someone would make a driveable ship for gwx on the german side like that... would make 1944s planes alot easyer.

[PL_Cmd_Jacek]

By the way, if you played in SH2, first mission was to sink one of the Polish destroyers that were sailing to England, at he beginnig of the war. Based on true story. Good for Polish, that tropedoes exploded to early.