Born in Winnipeg in 1916, Andrew Mynarski followed the hundreds of thousands of other young Canadians and signed up to fight in Europe against Nazi oppression.
After a brief stay in the infantry with the Royal Winnipeg rifles, he transferred to the RCAF in 1941.
In 1944 he was stationed at Middleton-St George aerodrome in England with 419 squadron as a mid-upper gunner on Lancaster bombers.
Just recently promoted to Pilot Officer, Mynarski was on his thirteenth flight, late in the night of June 12, 1944 which would return on the 13th. It was a bombing run over the railyway yards at Cambrai, France.
Prior to leaving on that 13th flight Mynarski and his friend, tail-gunner Pat Brophy, sat on the grass waiting. Mynarski found a “lucky” four leaf clover and said “Here Pat, you take it”.
Later over enemy territory the plane successfully evaded the searchlights but was picked up by a JU-88 nightfighter which destroyed two of the Lancs engines and set the hydraulic on fire inside the rear. Without hydraulics, the rear turret was inoperable.
The pilot ordered everyone out. Mynarski climbed out of his turret and was about to jump from the rear escape hatch when he spotted rear-gunner Pat Brophy trapped in his turret behind the flames.
Crawling on hands and knees through flames, he grabbed a fire axe and tried to pull and break the turret open even as his clothes caught fire. The turret gave only slightly, and he tried desperately with his hands to open the turret to no avail. As the falling plane continued to lurch Brophy screamed at him to save himself and get out.
Realizing it was hopeless, Mynarski crawled backward through the buring fluid again, and at the hatch stood up and saluted Brophy.
Witnesses on the ground saw him come down with his clothes on fire and he later died of his burns.
The pilot fighting the fatally crippled plane finally jumped himself from a mere 800 feet.
The stricken plane hit trees which broke the rear turret open and Brophy was thrown free to survive along with the rest of the crew, four of whom evaded capture.
Quoted in Bette Page’s book “Mynarski’s Lanc”, Brophy would later say, “I’ll always believe that a divine providence intervened to save me because of what I had seen, so that the world might know of a gallant man who laid down his life for a friend.”
Mynarski was posthumously awarded the Commonwealth’s highest honour, the Victoria Cross, the citation reads in part,
“…The rear gunner escaped miraculously when the plane crashed and testified that, but for his gallant rescue attempt, P/O Mynarski could have left the aircraft in safety and would doubtless have escaped death. Although he must have been aware that he faced almost certain death, P/O Mynarski courageously and willingly accepted the danger. He lost his life by a most conspicuous act of heroism which called for valour of the highest order.”
A memorial statue will be placed today in Winnipeg, at the Vimy Ridge Memorial Park
In a nine-year enterprise, the Canadian Warplane Heritage museum near Hamilton Ontario restored a Canadian-built Lancaster (FM213) as KB726, the one Mynarski was in. It is one of only two airworthy Lancasters left in the world.
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