Operation Peking
Three destroyers sailed secretly to Britain before the invasion, survived and fought the war.
Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain · Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain · Witold Pikiel (1889-1943) — Public domain · Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain
The sailing ship Dar Pomorza moored alongside, a historic training vessel; the Emigration Museum in the maritime terminal from which hundreds of thousands left for America; and the Gdynia City Museum. The city itself is entirely unlike Gdańsk: built from nothing in the 1920s in pure modernist architecture.
After Poland regained independence in 1918 it received a narrow coastal strip, but Gdańsk was made a Free City outside its sovereignty. Poland therefore decided to build its own port from a small fishing village, and within a decade and a half Gdynia was the most modern port on the Baltic. Its entirely modernist architecture dates from that decade and is now recognised as a significant architectural ensemble.
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A Polish destroyer moored in Gdynia harbour, the oldest preserved destroyer in the world, a museum ship since 1976. She was built in Britain in 1937. Days before the Second World War began, Operation Peking was carried out: three Polish destroyers were sailed secretly to Britain ahead of the German invasion, escaping destruction in port and fighting through the war with the Allied fleet. She served off Norway, at Dunkirk, at the Normandy landings and in the Atlantic. The best-known episode in her history came in May 1942 at Cowes in Britain: during a German air raid on the town, the destroyer turned her anti-aircraft guns to defend the town itself and her crew ran out hoses to fight the fires. The town still commemorates it annually. The visit covers the bridge, the guns, the crew quarters and the engine room. The passages are narrow and the ladders steep, as on any warship. Gdynia is about twenty-five kilometres from Gdańsk with frequent trains.
Three destroyers sailed secretly to Britain before the invasion, survived and fought the war.
May 1942: she defended a British town against a raid, still commemorated annually.
The bridge, the guns, the crew quarters and the engine room.
The southern quay, Gdynia harbour