Second flight to Warsaw. 69 years ago today, May 20, 1946.
Countless times, Dad told me about the Veterans Air flight to Warsaw – multiple flights actually to both Poland and Czechoslovakia. The company had procured a contract from UNRRA (United Nations Relief & Rehabilitation Administration) to fly relief-effort supplies to European nations devastated by World War II.
Today, it is 69 years to the date since the second of those flights. On May 20 (and two weeks prior when it was the first civilian flight of its kind), Veterans Air flew a shipment of 55,000 fertilized eggs. They were for hatchery purposes and were to be incubated just outside Warsaw to help reestablish the Polish poultry industry.
The requirement to land in Berlin for orders on the proper course to fly is discussed in John Noll’s video. He talks about the narrow flight corridor allotted for them to overfly the Russian-controlled region of Germany. Remember, this was only the second civilian flight, flown by a privately-owned, American company, in an American owned DC-4 to land in Warsaw. That first historic delivery was flown by Veterans Air, too.