JAN MALINSKI was the last survivor among the Polish Battle of Britain veterans living in Poland. Like most of those of his fellow countrymen who came to Britain to continue the fight against Nazism, in the early days of the war he had participated in the desperate defence of his own country in the air campaign against the overwhelming might of the Luftwaffe.
After many vicissitudes, he arrived in Britain and fought in a Hurricane squadron in the Battle of Britain from August 1940 onwards.
During the war he flew as both a day and night fighter pilot and, later, as a transport pilot. Afterwards, while flying civil transports, he played his part in the Berlin Airlift.
Jan Leonard Malinski was born in Berlin in 1917, but with the re-creation, after the First World War, of the state of Poland (which had been dismembered in the 18th century by Prussia, Austria and Russia) his family moved there. In 1936 he joined the Polish Air Force as an officer cadet.
After flying training he was posted to 132 Fighter Squadron, and it was with this unit, as part of the Poznan Army Air Arm, that he was serving when the Wehrmacht assailed Poland on September 1, 1939.
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At that stage most Polish fighter squadrons were equipped with the PZ P11, an open-cockpit, fixed-undercarriage high-wing monoplane, which though sturdy and manoeuvrable was, by the late 1930s, hopelessly obsolete and especially vulnerable against the Luftwaffe’s latest types.
Nevertheless, Polish pilots strove heroically against German fighters which were 100mph faster. Having accounted for 20 enemy aircraft, Malinski’s unit was virtually wiped out; he was shot down, wounded, and became a prisoner.
In March 1940 he managed to escape via the Balkans and arrived in France. That country, too, was shortly to experience, and succumb to, German attack, and he was soon on the move again, this time to England.
Here, many veterans of the 1939 air campaign were gathering and he joined the first Polish squadron to be formed in the RAF, No 302 (Poznan) Squadron. This first went into action with its Hurricanes off the east coast in August 1940 and fought through to the end of the battle. In the new year it flew convoy patrols and fighter sweeps over the occupied Continent.
In 1941 Malinski was posted to 307 (Lwowski) Squadron, a night fighter unit flying Beaufighters. After a period on fighter control he was to return to the squadron in 1944, by which time it was flying Mosquitoes. In 1945 he joined a transport group in the Far East.
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Malinski was credited with one kill, one shared combat victory and one aircraft damaged. He was awarded the Polish Cross of Valour with three Bars, and the Silver Cross of the Order of Virtuti Militari.
After the war Malinski had a career in civil aviation. For the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation he flew Halifaxes during the Berlin Airlift, the year-long operation to supply the city’s food and fuel needs by air, after the Soviet Union blocked the land and water access routes to its western sectors in 1948. He later flew for Eagle Aviation and Aircharter. In 1951 he was involved with a secret CIA unit dropping agents and supplies into the Balkans.
In the mid-1950s he was with Maritime Central Airways, playing a role in the logistics of establishing a warning radar chain in the north of Canada. He was subsequently involved with several small airlines both in Canada and in the Bahamas.
In 1972 he returned to Poland, settling in Ostrzeszów, Wielkopolskie, 50 miles south-east of Poznan, where he had lived before the war. There he set up a small business.
He is survived by a daughter and son.
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Jan Malinski, Polish Battle of Britain pilot, was born on March 1, 1917. He died on February 6, 2006, aged 88.