later and the training cruises were halted. At the same time, most Polish surface vessels were prepared to be withdrawn to British ports in Operation Peking. Wicher and Gryf were the only major ships left at Gdynia harbour for the protection of the Polish shore. Combat After the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, she repelled a bombing raid at Gdynia, after which she sailed for the Hel naval base, from where she was to commence Operation Rurka, an attempt to lay a minefield at the entrances to Gdańsk Bay. Wicher was to shield the operation, carried out by Gryf, a heavy minelayer, from the side of the German port of Pillau, assisted by six minesweepers and two gunboats. After boarding naval mines from a floating depot, Gryf and her flotilla sailed for the Hel Peninsula. En route Wicher was attacked by a squadron of 33 Luftwaffe Ju 87B dive bombers and suffered several close misses, which caused minor damage and killed her captain. In what became known as the Battle of the Gdańsk Bay, Wicher was not hit directly, but the German planes scored several close hits, breaking all windows on the bridge and fracturing the hull in several places. After arriving at Hel harbour at 18:45, Wicher sailed for the area of operations, arriving around 22:00. Wichers captain, Commander Stefan de Walden, did not know that the operation had been called off and in fact shielded the empty bay and not the Polish flotilla, which was anchored at Hel. Soon after her arrival Wichers crew sighted two German destroyers. She did not open fire on them as she did not want to draw attention to the Polish units that were meant to be operating in Gdańsk Bay. Later that night she also sighted a . At about 01:00 on 2 September Wicher returned to Hel and discovered that the operation had been called off. On the morning of 3 September 1939, while moored in a harbour, Gryf and Wicher were attacked by two German destroyers, Z1 Leberecht Maass and Z9 Wolfgang Zenker, firing at a range of 9 nautical miles. Polish warships and a shore battery repulsed the attack, with Gryf scoring two hits. After that the German squadron put up a smoke barrier and withdrew. Later that day Wicher, still in harbour, repulsed two air raids. However, in the third attack at about 15:00 she was