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Pakistan’s Polish Patriot
Air Commodore Władysław Turowicz -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
‘Our Man in Karachi’
Recently declassified files reveal how the Polish secret services tried to recruit a Pakistani hero as a spy
by Natalia Laskowska
Turowicz’s health was deteriorating. He knew he was a financial burden to his family. It would come as no surprise if he committed suicide, a Polish intelligence officer wrote in 1971.
Wadysaw Józef Marian Turowicz was one of the refugee pilots from Poland who joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) and fought for Britain during the Second World War. No longer needed by the Allies after the war and unwelcome in their newly communist homeland, some of the pilots settled in Pakistan and helped to establish one of the most admired air forces in the world at the time.
An aeronautical and astrophysics engineer in addition to being an avid pilot, he would go on to rise to the rank of Air Commodore and also headed up its space and missile programmes. Pakistan would bestow numerous national and military honours on him, and also grant him and his family Pakistani citizenship.
He helped establish the Pakistan Air Force and was known as the godfather of Pakistan’s space and missile programme.But Air Commodore Władysław Turowicz (pronounced Vuadisuav Turovich) was a Pole who became a Pakistani hero.
A Polish man who became the national hero of Pakistan. His name does not exist on the pages of Polish history, but he figures in the records of Służba Bezpieczestwa, or SB, the security service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People’s Republic of Poland, which allocated a big budget and a group of its best men to recruit Air Commodore Turowicz into its structures.
“Did he spy against Pakistan?” I asked the employee of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw who guided me through the microfilms on Turowicz and his family.
The institute has recently opened to the public thousands of files from the notorious agency which was the main intelligence organisation in communist Poland from 1956 until the end of the People’s Republic in 1989.
“It is not clear, there’s been no research on the Polish pilots in the Pakistan Air Force, so you must go through all these files to find out. But I hope he didn’t, those pilots were people of better sort, of much higher standards,” he said leaving me with SB reports, intercepted letters to family members, photographs, bills, medical checks, conversation transcripts, and handwritten notes of several agents involved in recruiting Turowicz.
Turowicz with other officers (Chaklala, 1954) -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
The SB’s preliminary note says Turowicz, with his high rank in the Pakistani military, huge respect and knowledge, would be a valuable asset for the organisation. It seems they became interested in recruiting him when he joined the national space agency after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, and further reinforced their efforts when Pakistan was about to launch its nuclear program.
According to the biographical file, Turowicz was born in 1909, in Wadziejewsko village, Siberia, to an aristocratic family. The very Polish name of the village might suggest it was colony for Poles imprisoned or exiled by the Tsar; it is also unlikely that Polish aristocrats would live far in the Amur valley, on the border of Russia and China, for reasons other than political.
In 1920, with his parents and siblings, Turowicz began the journey to Poland which finally was a sovereign republic again after 150 years when Russia, Prussia and Austria annexed its lands.
They reached Poland in 1922, and settled down in Warsaw. After matriculation, Turowicz was enrolled at the Faculty of Aviation of the Warsaw University of Technology. A brilliant aeronautical engineer, he graduated with honours.
He liked air racing. In 1936, at the Warsaw Aero Club, he met his future wife Zofia who, at the age of 20, was already a famous glider pilot. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Turowicz — then a Polish Air Force lieutenant — was stationed in south-western Poland. He received the order to retreat to Romania and was soon locked up in an internment camp. Zofia found him there in 1940, and somehow managed to receive permission for them to marry.
In autumn 1940, they began the journey to the West. Through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and France, they reached England. Turowicz joined the Royal Air Force as a flying instructor and a test pilot.
Turowicz being decorated by President Ayub Khan in 1966 for meritorious service
to the Pakistan Air Force -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star.
Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
The first SB officer in charge of recruiting Turowicz reported he could not get accustomed to life in England and left when an opportunity arose in 1948. That opportunity was in the newly formed state of Pakistan and he moved with 30-odd other Polish pilots to RAF’s base in Karachi.
The statement is unconvincing. Unfortunately, documents on the group of Polish pilots who helped establish the Pakistan Air Force remain classified in Great Britain, which had seen over 8,000 Polish air personnel arriving on its shores in 1940. Many of them, who could no longer fight in their country which had been torn to pieces by the Nazis and Soviets, believed they could strive against the German Luftwaffe from the sceptred isle.
Polish Squadron 303 was considered the best unit in the Battle of Britain.
But the RAF no longer needed them after the war. Neither did Poland. Many pilots who returned after the war were imprisoned by the new communist regime. The government of Pakistan chose 30 Polish officers from the RAF, offering them three-year contracts and a home when they could not return to their land of original belonging.
A beautiful documentary film directed by Anna Pietraszek, Polish Eaglets Over Pakistan (2008), has thus far been the only attempt to bring them back — or at least their names — to Poland.
A monument in honour of Turowicz at the Pakistan Air Force Museum -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
Group Captain (retd) S. Ahtesham A. Naqvi of PAF spoke to Pietraszek about how, even after 60 years, he remembered the Polish pilots as his teachers, instructors at the Pakistan Air Force Academy in Risalpur, and friends.
“Poles came to help us when we were abandoned by everyone else,” he says in the documentary.
The Poles might have felt the same.
Plaque at PAF Museum Karachi
Air Vice Marshal M. Akhtar, Air Commodore Kamal Ahmad and Squadron Leader Ahmad Rafi remember them as kind, noble and soft-spoken. They were not “foreigners” they say; Turowicz was “like an elder brother.”
Akhtar says that the first thing that impressed him and which he found endearing was that Turowicz, as a senior officer, had the privilege to be served food in his own room but would always come to eat at the canteen with the younger pilots.
In SB files, the agent described him as “a Pakistan enthusiast.” He interpreted Turowicz’s enthusiasm as “a debt of gratitude.”
Turowicz receiving Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin
-Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star.
-Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
Turowicz was interested in everything related to Poland. All of the SB agents involved in the operation to enlist him — diplomats, representatives of a foreign trade agency or engineers — observed that Turowicz was a “pre-war kind of patriot.” They were convinced this deep, idealistic patriotism only needed a proper material incentive to have him recruited, especially as his health and the family’s financial situation were not good; Zofia had to become a physics and mathematics teacher to support them.
‘Pre-war’ in the Polish language is charged with meaning other than chronological. Years ago, when it could still be used for people, my grandmother would recommend a doctor as “a good pre-war physician.” My mother, who had not witnessed the war, often mentions ‘pre-war’ manners or gallantry if a man has to be described as courteous. We all know the pre-war intelligentsia was of better quality, higher moral standards. In this term there is a lot of what Pakistanis call lehaaz — good upbringing, graciousness.
Air Commodore Wladyslaw Turowicz (Second from right), Mrs Zofia Turowicz (Third from left) with other officers and cadets (1954, Chaklala)
Air Commodore Władysław Turowicz -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
‘Our Man in Karachi’
Recently declassified files reveal how the Polish secret services tried to recruit a Pakistani hero as a spy
by Natalia Laskowska
Turowicz’s health was deteriorating. He knew he was a financial burden to his family. It would come as no surprise if he committed suicide, a Polish intelligence officer wrote in 1971.
Wadysaw Józef Marian Turowicz was one of the refugee pilots from Poland who joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) and fought for Britain during the Second World War. No longer needed by the Allies after the war and unwelcome in their newly communist homeland, some of the pilots settled in Pakistan and helped to establish one of the most admired air forces in the world at the time.
An aeronautical and astrophysics engineer in addition to being an avid pilot, he would go on to rise to the rank of Air Commodore and also headed up its space and missile programmes. Pakistan would bestow numerous national and military honours on him, and also grant him and his family Pakistani citizenship.
He helped establish the Pakistan Air Force and was known as the godfather of Pakistan’s space and missile programme.But Air Commodore Władysław Turowicz (pronounced Vuadisuav Turovich) was a Pole who became a Pakistani hero.
A Polish man who became the national hero of Pakistan. His name does not exist on the pages of Polish history, but he figures in the records of Służba Bezpieczestwa, or SB, the security service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the People’s Republic of Poland, which allocated a big budget and a group of its best men to recruit Air Commodore Turowicz into its structures.
“Did he spy against Pakistan?” I asked the employee of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw who guided me through the microfilms on Turowicz and his family.
The institute has recently opened to the public thousands of files from the notorious agency which was the main intelligence organisation in communist Poland from 1956 until the end of the People’s Republic in 1989.
“It is not clear, there’s been no research on the Polish pilots in the Pakistan Air Force, so you must go through all these files to find out. But I hope he didn’t, those pilots were people of better sort, of much higher standards,” he said leaving me with SB reports, intercepted letters to family members, photographs, bills, medical checks, conversation transcripts, and handwritten notes of several agents involved in recruiting Turowicz.
Turowicz with other officers (Chaklala, 1954) -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
The SB’s preliminary note says Turowicz, with his high rank in the Pakistani military, huge respect and knowledge, would be a valuable asset for the organisation. It seems they became interested in recruiting him when he joined the national space agency after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, and further reinforced their efforts when Pakistan was about to launch its nuclear program.
According to the biographical file, Turowicz was born in 1909, in Wadziejewsko village, Siberia, to an aristocratic family. The very Polish name of the village might suggest it was colony for Poles imprisoned or exiled by the Tsar; it is also unlikely that Polish aristocrats would live far in the Amur valley, on the border of Russia and China, for reasons other than political.
In 1920, with his parents and siblings, Turowicz began the journey to Poland which finally was a sovereign republic again after 150 years when Russia, Prussia and Austria annexed its lands.
They reached Poland in 1922, and settled down in Warsaw. After matriculation, Turowicz was enrolled at the Faculty of Aviation of the Warsaw University of Technology. A brilliant aeronautical engineer, he graduated with honours.
He liked air racing. In 1936, at the Warsaw Aero Club, he met his future wife Zofia who, at the age of 20, was already a famous glider pilot. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Turowicz — then a Polish Air Force lieutenant — was stationed in south-western Poland. He received the order to retreat to Romania and was soon locked up in an internment camp. Zofia found him there in 1940, and somehow managed to receive permission for them to marry.
In autumn 1940, they began the journey to the West. Through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland and France, they reached England. Turowicz joined the Royal Air Force as a flying instructor and a test pilot.
Turowicz being decorated by President Ayub Khan in 1966 for meritorious service
to the Pakistan Air Force -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star.
Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
The first SB officer in charge of recruiting Turowicz reported he could not get accustomed to life in England and left when an opportunity arose in 1948. That opportunity was in the newly formed state of Pakistan and he moved with 30-odd other Polish pilots to RAF’s base in Karachi.
The statement is unconvincing. Unfortunately, documents on the group of Polish pilots who helped establish the Pakistan Air Force remain classified in Great Britain, which had seen over 8,000 Polish air personnel arriving on its shores in 1940. Many of them, who could no longer fight in their country which had been torn to pieces by the Nazis and Soviets, believed they could strive against the German Luftwaffe from the sceptred isle.
Polish Squadron 303 was considered the best unit in the Battle of Britain.
But the RAF no longer needed them after the war. Neither did Poland. Many pilots who returned after the war were imprisoned by the new communist regime. The government of Pakistan chose 30 Polish officers from the RAF, offering them three-year contracts and a home when they could not return to their land of original belonging.
A beautiful documentary film directed by Anna Pietraszek, Polish Eaglets Over Pakistan (2008), has thus far been the only attempt to bring them back — or at least their names — to Poland.
A monument in honour of Turowicz at the Pakistan Air Force Museum -Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star. Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
Group Captain (retd) S. Ahtesham A. Naqvi of PAF spoke to Pietraszek about how, even after 60 years, he remembered the Polish pilots as his teachers, instructors at the Pakistan Air Force Academy in Risalpur, and friends.
“Poles came to help us when we were abandoned by everyone else,” he says in the documentary.
The Poles might have felt the same.
Plaque at PAF Museum Karachi
Air Vice Marshal M. Akhtar, Air Commodore Kamal Ahmad and Squadron Leader Ahmad Rafi remember them as kind, noble and soft-spoken. They were not “foreigners” they say; Turowicz was “like an elder brother.”
Akhtar says that the first thing that impressed him and which he found endearing was that Turowicz, as a senior officer, had the privilege to be served food in his own room but would always come to eat at the canteen with the younger pilots.
In SB files, the agent described him as “a Pakistan enthusiast.” He interpreted Turowicz’s enthusiasm as “a debt of gratitude.”
Turowicz receiving Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin
-Photos by Tahir Jamal/White Star.
-Courtesy Pakistan Air Force Museum.
Turowicz was interested in everything related to Poland. All of the SB agents involved in the operation to enlist him — diplomats, representatives of a foreign trade agency or engineers — observed that Turowicz was a “pre-war kind of patriot.” They were convinced this deep, idealistic patriotism only needed a proper material incentive to have him recruited, especially as his health and the family’s financial situation were not good; Zofia had to become a physics and mathematics teacher to support them.
‘Pre-war’ in the Polish language is charged with meaning other than chronological. Years ago, when it could still be used for people, my grandmother would recommend a doctor as “a good pre-war physician.” My mother, who had not witnessed the war, often mentions ‘pre-war’ manners or gallantry if a man has to be described as courteous. We all know the pre-war intelligentsia was of better quality, higher moral standards. In this term there is a lot of what Pakistanis call lehaaz — good upbringing, graciousness.
Air Commodore Wladyslaw Turowicz (Second from right), Mrs Zofia Turowicz (Third from left) with other officers and cadets (1954, Chaklala)
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