F/Lt Glebocki describes the feelings among the station’s crews:
        "The Warsaw Rising broke out on 1st August, 1944, between four and five in the afternoon. For us, listening to the loudspeakers, the only vital question was: Warsaw is fighting - when do we fly to help them?
    I remember that moment well. The announcer was finding it difficult to keep his voice properly calm and impersonal - we could feel that. I looked round: every face was set and stern. Some bombers were just taking off outside - their crews knew nothing of the Rising. Lucky fellows, in a way. We were to take off at midnight. Stan, my tail gunner, rapped out a curse, banging the table with his fist and went out, slamming the door. Of course our flight was unimportant. Just as everything not taking place in Warsaw was unimportant.

    I’m sure that not one of us even for a moment imagined this Battle of Warsaw would last 63 days - more than two months of heroism, agony and death. It never entered our heads that time after time through the unending night hours we should listen to Warsaw calling for help - and that we should be unable, absolutely unable, to do anything. We were quite sure, to begin with, that the Rising would last only a few days. We feared we might lose an excellent opportunity, and were most impatient. The Russians were advancing westwards so quickly on such a wide front that we all feared it might be too late for us to drop those last few bombs of ours on the Germans besieging Warsaw. So we waited from day to day, but no order ever came.

    Finally, as we were climbing out of our bombers one day after an op., an aircraftman came up and told me: ‘Sir, the Germans have taken Warsaw.’ He seemed suddenly aged with grief.
    Stanley was just behind me. He’s what you’d call a Warsaw Cockney with all a Cockney’s affection for his city. He must have heard, because he stopped short and dumped his ‘chute on the ground. He couldn’t at first take in what he had heard. He just stood there, turning his head from side to side helplessly; his eyes looked this way and that as if seeking enlightenment. Suddenly he realized the full meaning of the words. His face became a gray mask of hopeless misery. He picked up the ‘chute and, bowed down, shuffled off to the car without a word. He came up to me in ops. room later as I was studying the maps. His eyes were sunken and lifeless. He asked me in a hoarse, unfamiliar voice: ‘Sir, what’s the use? Warsaw’s gone. Live? In such a world? What’s the use, sir?...’ he broke off and went to the window. He pressed his face against the glass and looked out into the darkness through the panes where the drops of mist were trickling down like tears." (Destiny Can Wait)

F/Lt Chmiel recalled:
        "We had been ordered to carry out the sortie regardless of weather conditions. So, though the met. forecast was exceptionally despondent, we took off. It’s funny how only the gloomy predictions come true: sure enough, right from the Yugoslav coast fog stretched from the ground to 6,000 feet above. Fog was hardly the word for it - water vapor or steam would be more appropriate. We had no navigational aid from the ground; I tried map reading at first but even rivers were so obscured that we finally flew on solely with star ‘fixes’.
    We had similar weather all the way until we crossed the Carpathians and got over Poland, where we saw a Jerry fighter shoot down one of our Halifaxes - it crashed and burst into flames. (There had been, by the way, a lot of flak over Yugoslavia and the Danube, and they had done their best to bring us down.) We pushed on and got a decent ‘fix’ by the time we reached the Pilica. After that we flew on guided by the distant red glow over Warsaw.
    We dropped to some 700 feet, got through a very dense flak barrage near Sluzew and so over the Vistula. Fires were blazing in every district of Warsaw. The dark spots were places occupied by the Jerries. Everything was smothered in smoke through which flickered ruddy, orange flames. I had never believed a big city could burn so. It was terrible: must have been hell for everybody down there.
    The German flak was the hottest. I have ever been through, so we got down just as low as we could - 70 or a 100 feet above ground; it was really too low, but we had to get out of the line of fire. The flicks in the Praga and Mokotów suburbs lay down flat on the ground and kept us lit up all the time - there was nothing we could do about it. We nearly hit the Poniatowski Bridge as we cracked along the Vistula: the pilot hopped over it by the skin of his teeth.
    Our reception point was Krasinski Square, so, when we got over the Kierbedz Bridge, we turned sharp to port and made ready for the run-up. The Square was nicely lit up. The whole southern side was blazing and wind was blowing the smoke south, much to our satisfaction. We dropped the containers and knew we had made a good job of it.
    It was time to clear out. The pilot came down a little lower, keeping an eye for steeples and high buildings. The cabin was full of smoke, which got into our eyes and made them smart. We could feel the heat from the walls of the burnt-out district.
    We ripped along the railway line leading to Pruszków and Skierniewice. Some flak near Fort Bern tried to shoot us down. It came from an anti-aircraft train on the track, so we let go some bursts at it. We had a short breathing space until flicks near Bochnia picked us up, and the flak got uncomfortably near. We passed over the crashed bomber in the foothills; it was now burning out.
    We got through all the usual flak on the way back home and landed safely at base. The other Halifaxes - five of them - that had taken off with us never returned. The Home Army people signaled that a supply was received on Krasinski Square on the 20th August at the time we noted in our logbook. So we knew that at least our flight had not been in vain. (Destiny Can Wait)