Tadeusz Góra

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Tadeusz Góra
glider pilot, flight instructor

Tadeusz Góra (19 January 1918 – 4 January 2010) was a Polish glider and fighter pilot.

Plaque at Bezmiechowa honoring Góra's record flight

Born in Kraków, Austria-Hungary he was the first winner of the Lilienthal Gliding Medal in the world for his record-breaking 577.8-kilometer flight on 18 May 1938 in a PWS-101 from Bezmiechowa to Soleczniki (near Vilnius).

With the outbreak of the Second World War, he was detailed by the Soviets, but escaped. He worked in Vilnius for a while, then obtained a passport which enabled him to travel to France. When that country fell to the Germans, he fled to the UK.

During the war, he flew with the

German submarine. Góra also flew 28 flights anti- V-1 “flying bombs” operations; one such bomb he destroyed on 31 July 1944. He performed his final operational flight of his tour on 22 October 1944 over Heligoland
.

After the end of the war, he was discharged as a

Cross of Valour
three times.

Tadeusz Góra returned to Poland in 1948, as a senior instructor at the Żar Glider School near Żywiec.

He died in Świdnik on 4 January 2010.

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