Jan Nagórski

Jan Nagórski
Jan Nagórski
	Polonia Restituta
	Aviation career
Air force	Imperial Russian Navy, Red Army

Alfons Jan Nagórski (1888–1976), also known as Ivan Iosifovich Nagurski, was a

pioneer of aviation, the first person to fly an airplane in the Arctic and the first aviator to perform a loop with a flying boat

.

Biography

Early life

Jan Nagórski was born on January 27, 1888, in

pilots

of the Imperial Russian Navy.

In 1914 Nagórski was tasked with the difficult mission of locating the expedition of Georgy Sedov, Georgy Brusilov, and Vladimir Rusanov in the Russian Arctic. In a Maurice Farman MF11 plane, specially purchased for that purpose in France, Nagórski embarked on a ship in Arkhangelsk and arrived to Novaya Zemlya, whence he initiated a series of reconnaissance flights in difficult Arctic conditions. Between August 21 and September 13, 1914, he flew five missions, spending more than ten hours in the air and travelling more than a thousand kilometres over land and the Barents Sea. During the last flight he reached the 76th parallel north. Nagórski failed to find Sedov's expedition, but he gained valuable experience as the first polar aviator in history. His report to the Admiralty prepared after his return, as well as a report of Nagórski's achievements by Admiral Mikhail Zhdanko^[1], included a number of suggestions that would prove invaluable to every polar aviator. Among them was the idea of painting red all the planes operating in the Arctic, to make them more visible. His achievements proved that the North Pole could be reached by airplane. He was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, class III in 1914.

Upon his return from the Arctic, Nagórski returned to active service in naval aviation during

Åbo (Turku) in Finland, he operated a variety of planes on patrol missions above the Baltic Sea and commanded an air squadron of the Baltic Fleet. During that time, he performed the first ever loop with a flying boat (September 17, 1916). The following day Nagórski repeated the loop twice with his experimental Grigorovich M-9 plane. For his wartime service, Nagórski was awarded with five Russian military medals. The following year his plane was damaged above the Baltic Sea and Nagórski was declared missing. After several hours at sea, he was rescued by a Russian submarine and escorted to a military hospital in Riga

. He quickly recovered and returned to his unit, but the report of his recovery never reached headquarters.

Return to Poland

After the October Revolution, Nagórski's unit became a part of the Red Army and took part in the Russian Civil War. He returned to Poland in 1919 and attempted to join the Polish Navy, but was turned down due to his past service with the Reds. In the chaos of the Russian Civil War, Nagórski's personal files were lost and he was declared dead by Russian authorities^[2]. He then settled in southern Poland and started working as an engineer and designer of refrigerators and coolers for the sugar and oil industries.

In 1925 Nagórski's report of his flights to the Arctic reached

Richard Byrd, who contacted him and asked for more details on weather conditions and other tips. The information obtained proved valuable during his later Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Among other pioneers of Arctic aviation to take advantage of Nagórski's experience were Walter Mittelholzer and Boris Chukhnovsky. Forgotten in Poland and believed dead in Russia, Nagórski gained much fame. In 1936 the Nagurskoye meteorological station in Franz Josef Land (80°49′N 47°25′E / 80.817°N 47.417°E

) was named after him.

Nagórski survived

Polish President

.

Death

He died on June 9, 1976, and was buried at the Wólka Węglowa cemetery in the Bielany district of Warsaw.

Notes

^ Zhdanko, M.E. Первый гидроаэроплан в Северном Ледовитом океане (The First hydro-aeroplane over the Northern Ocean), Petrograd, 1917.
^ Initially Soviet encyclopedias, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, claimed that Nagórski was killed in action in 1917. It was not until 1974 when both the biographical note and Nagórski's name were corrected in most Soviet publication under insistence from Ryszard Badowski (see also references No. 3 and 6).
^ see reference No. 4
^ see reference No. 5