Paris, Oct. 6.
In an exclusive interview with the United Press yesterday Colonel Nowak, chief of Warsaw's air defence forces, told how he and nine other Polish flyers, on orders from the Warsaw defence commander, General Rummel, escaped from the former Polish capital in six old planes.
With all our aircraft destroyed and our munitions running low," Col. Vowak said, "it became increasingly ar that Warsaw's capitulation was approaching. General Rummel wished io save several Polish pilots, myself included. We searched all the half-burned hangars of the aviation schools and aeronautical clubs for spare parts. For six days we worked rebuilding make-shift planes—two gliders and three single-seater short planes, and an old reconnaissance machine which I was to use. It had dismantled into a thousand parts three years ago for demonstration purposes in the flying school.
"When the machines were completed, we had a look round for an airfield. The Okecie military airport was Occupied by the Germans and fighting raged round the small civilian Mokotow airfield. We determined to leave on the night of September 26. Our infantry was ordered to clear the field where they forced the enemy back in a bayonet and hand grenade charge. I and ten other flyers rolled our machines from the hangars and started the motors. The noise of our motors was drowned out by machinegun and artillery fire. At 2 am., we cleared the German lines, where enemy gun fire brought down one of our planes. We circled Warsaw at 3,000 meters, seeing the burning capital for the last time and headed southward toward Hungary. I am now in Paris, enlisted in the Folish Army."
Col Nowak estimated that 30,000 persons were killed during the siege of Warsaw.—United Press,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.