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.

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.

Nagórski survived World War II and continued his career as a civil worker in Gdańsk and then as an engineer in Warsaw.

In 1955, during one of his lectures, Czesław Centkiewicz, a renowned Polish polar explorer and author, presented the audience with a short biographical note of a "long-forgotten pioneer of aviation, pilot Jan Nagórski who died in 1917".

Nagórski, who remained interested in exploration of the polar areas and was present at the lecture stood up and announced that he was not Russian and definitely not dead.