Capt. pilot
Janusz Meissner (1899–1978) – captain pilot of the Polish Army, fighter pilot, instructor, writer, officer of the Polish Air Force in Great Britain. He was born in Warsaw to the family of Jan Wiktor Meissner and Anna née Braun. In his youth he studied at the H. Wawelberg and S. Rotwand School of Machine Building and Electrical Engineering in Warsaw. From 1917 he was active in the Polish Military Organisation, for which he was imprisoned by the occupation authorities. From 1918 he served in the Polish Army as an aviation mechanic, and subsequently as a pilot. He completed piloting courses at the Lower Pilot School in Kraków and the Advanced Pilot School in Poznań. During the Polish-Bolshevik War he served as a pilot in the Toruń Reconnaissance Squadron, for which he was decorated with the Cross of Valour. After the war he took part in the preparations and operations of the Third Silesian Uprising in the “Wawelberg” sabotage group, participating in the “Bridges” operation, for which he was decorated with the Order of Virtuti Militari and the Cross of Independence with Swords. In the interwar period he served in military aviation as a pilot-instructor, staff officer and squadron commander at the Aviation Officer Training Centre in Dęblin and in the 2nd Aviation Regiment in Kraków. He was one of the most experienced training pilots of the Second Polish Republic. After the outbreak of World War II he was mobilised and assigned to the Aviation Officer Training Centre in Dęblin. After evacuation through Romania and France he reached Great Britain, where he was given RAF service number P-1007. He held organisational and propaganda functions in the Polish Air Force, including as editor and head of the Military Radio Station attached to the Commander-in-Chief’s Propaganda Bureau and as an aviation war correspondent. After the war, in 1946, he returned to Poland and settled in Zakopane, and subsequently in Kraków. He was active as a writer and journalist, one of the best-known authors of aviation literature in Poland. He died on 28 February 1978 in Kraków and was buried at the Salwator Cemetery.
