On 3 September 1939 the Minister of the Army ("Min. Spraw Wojskowych"), general Tadeusz Kasprzycki, ordered general Walerian Czuma (the Commander of the Border Guards - "Straż Graniczna") to organize a force to defend the city of Warsaw against a German attack. The city had been under constant attack by the Luftwaffe since the early morning of 1 September. Initially the only organized units available to him were four infantry battalions, anti-aircraft artillery and anti-aircraft machine guns detachments under colonel Kazimierz Baran, composed mostly of fire-fighter brigades and volunteers supervised by colonel Tadeusz Bogdanowicz and Julian Kulski, the deputy president of Warsaw. The AA artillery had 86 pieces of anti-aircraft artillery, as well as an unknown number of anti-aircraft machine guns. In addition there was an air force Pursuit Brigade which was equipped with 54 fighter aircraft. On the 5 and 6 September the air force and 11 batteries of anti-aircraft artillery were withdrawn to Lublin.