Gen. Witold Urbanowicz, who flew on three fronts to become Poland's foremost fighter ace of World War II, died Saturday at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Manhattan. He was 88 and lived in Glendale, Queens.
General Urbanowicz fought in aerial combat over Poland, in the Battle of Britain and in China with the Flying Tigers of Gen. Claire L. Chennault. General Urbanowicz was credited with destroying 28 German and Japanese planes.
For those exploits he earned Poland's highest decoration for valor, the Order of Virtuti Militari. Among his many other Polish, British, American and Chinese decorations were the British Order of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Last year, President Lech Walesa of Poland honored him with a formal promotion to general in the Polish air force.
Witold Urbanowicz was born near Augustow in northeastern Poland and joined the Polish Air Force in 1930. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he was an instructor at the Deblin Air Academy, where he had received his own flight training. Pressing his cadets into action, he fought briefly against heavy odds before leading his cadets by foot to neutral Romania, where they boarded a ship for Western Europe and enlisted in the British Royal Air Force.
Once in Britain he was assigned to the 145th Squadron of the R.A.F. and took part in the Battle of Britain, in which Germany vainly fought to establish air superiority as a prelude to an invasion from the Continent. He then transferred to the Warsaw 303 Squadron, or Kosciuszko Squadron, flying Hawker Hurricanes, and commanded it for a time in 1940 when the previous commander was wounded in action.
Later that year he took command of the Polish 11th Fighter Group, and in 1941 he organized and commanded the First Polish Fighter Wing. Having endured his share of dogfights, he was posted to Canada and Washington, where he served the Polish Government in Exile as assistant air attache.
But the desk jobs soon bored him and, intrigued by what was going on in China, he went through some refresher training with the American 14th Army Air Force and turned up in China in October 1943.
He was the first foreign volunteer pilot to report to Chennault's Flying Tigers. At 36 he was also the second oldest pilot in the unit after General Chennault, and distinguished himself in the battle for Changteh.
Flying a P-40 Warhawk, he escorted bombers and transport planes, dropped food and ammunition to Chinese troops and sank 15 Japanese river boats. Once he found himself alone battling six Japanese Zero fighters deep in enemy territory and made it to a friendly airfield with not a drop of fuel to spare.
He returned to Washington in 1944 as air attache with the rank of colonel. After the war, he settled in the United States and worked for American Airlines, Eastern Airlines and, most recently, Republic Aviation as an executive in production control.
He retired from Republic in 1973 but continued as a security consultant to the aviation industry until 1994. He also kept busy writing about the war experiences.