Franciszek Jarecki

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Franciszek Jarecki (born 1931) is a former pilot of the Polish Air Force, whose name became famous in early 1953, when he decided to escape Soviet-controlled Poland in a Mig-15 plane, which was one of the best planes owned by the Soviets at that time.

Jarecki was born in 1931 in Gdów, a town near Kraków. He was a graduate of a prestigious Polish Air Force school of aviation in Dęblin. Some time in the early 1950s he was moved to Słupsk in northern Poland, near the Baltic Sea. There, he flew Soviet MiG-15 planes, as a few of them were owned by the Polish Air Force.

On the morning of March 5, 1953 (coincidentally, the same date of Joseph Stalin's death), Jarecki escaped Poland in the MiG-15. The decision was a very risky one, as the Polish People’s Army had previously shot those who tried to escape. For example, Edward Pytko, an instructor at Deblin, tried to escape to Western Germany in 1952, but was stopped by Soviet aircraft over Eastern Germany and handed back to the Poles. Pytko's escape was regarded as high treason, for which only one kind of punishment was meted out.

Jarecki flew from Slupsk to the field airport at Rønne on the Danish Bornholm island. The whole trip took him only a few minutes. There, specialists from the USA, called by Danish authorities, thoroughly checked the plane. According to international regulations, they returned it by ship to Poland a few weeks later. Jarecki stayed in the West. From Denmark he moved to London, where General Władysław Anders gave him an order, and then to the USA, where he provided crucial information about modern Soviet aircraft and air tactics. His escape was a godsend to the Americans, who were at that time fighting the Korean War and the U.S Air Force pilots did not know how to fight MiG-15 planes. Among those who shook his hand was President Dwight Eisenhower. Jarecki also received a $50,000 prize for the person who was first to present a MiG-15 to the Americans and became a US citizen.

A few months later, another Polish pilot successfully escaped with a MiG-15 to Bornholm, this time it was Zdzislaw Jazwinski. Three years later, four students of Deblin’s school escaped in two Yak-18 planes, crossing Czechoslovakia to land near Vienna.

Currently, Frank Jarecki lives in Pennsylvania. He owns a factory in Fairview, Pennsylvania, called Jarecki Industries. The uniform in which he escaped can be seen at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. In 2006 Polish TV Station TVN made a movie “Jarecki”, which is part of the “Great Escapes” series. The series shows stories about Poles who escaped the country between 1944-1989 and chose freedom in the West.