On 18 September, in the final stages of the Nazis crushing the uprising, one United States airdrop was launched from Great Britain and landed at Poltava in Soviet Ukraine as the distance to the drop-zone precluded the aircraft returning to base.

The airlift proved to be ineffective and could not provide sufficient supplies to sustain the Polish resistance, who were overrun by Nazi forces on 2 October 1944.

The airlift was further hampered by the Soviet Union not allowing Western Allies the use of its airfields for several weeks,[2] forcing flights to operate at extended ranges from Italy and Britain and in so doing, reducing payload and limiting the number of sorties.

By the beginning of July 1944, Soviet forces had repelled the German formations over a wide front, from Lithuania in the north to the Black Sea in the south.

[3] In their rush towards Warsaw, the Soviets had neglected intelligence collection, flank protection and had over-extended their supply lines[4] - to such an extent that a deliberate attack launched by General Walter Model stopped the Red Army's advance just short of Warsaw, preventing them from crossing the Vistula - this was after Hitler had finally consented to releasing four experienced and fresh panzer divisions to Model.

[Note 2] This action caused the Soviets to pause in order to re-group and bought Army Group Centre the time needed to deal with the resistance encountered within Warsaw itself.

[5] They managed to occupy large areas of downtown Warsaw but failed to secure the four bridges over the Vistula and were therefore unable to hold the eastern suburbs of the city.

[Note 3] Supplies were to be released from a height of 500 ft (152.4 m) at an airspeed of 225 kilometres per hour (140 mph) (the slow speed to avoid separation of parachutes from their containers).

The route from Italy was planned to take the aircraft north east from their home airfields over the Adriatic and Croatia at sunset to reach the Danube in Hungary in darkness.

[16] At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, the Allied leaders had devised a new bombing strategy whereby American heavy bombers stationed in Britain and Italy would fly strike missions into central Germany and occupied Eastern Europe and would then land at secret American air bases (to be defended by the Soviets) located inside Soviet Russia.

[17] However, on the night of 21/22 June 1944, German and Hungarian He 111 bombers had conducted a raid on one such airfield (Poltava in occupied Ukraine), destroying 43 B-17 Flying Fortresses on the ground.

[26][23] Even if the air-supply missions had delivered their full consignment of supplies, and these had reached their intended recipients, it is unlikely that it would have altered the outcome of the Warsaw Uprising.

[5] However, the Red Army did not move against Warsaw, even when the resistance was crushed and instead they cleared their flanks in the Balkans and the Baltic,[5] waiting for the total destruction of the non-Communist Poles.