Poles In The Battle Of Britain

They came to fight for freedom and their country, they came to fight Germans. Men of the Polish Air Force, who had escaped first to France and then to Britain, to fly alongside the Royal Air Force just as Fighter Command faced its greatest challenge the Battle of Britain.Many of the Polish airmen joined existing RAF squadrons. The Poles also formed their own squadrons, but only four became operational during the Battle of Britain: Nos. 300 and 301, were bomber squadrons, with another two, Nos. 302 and 303, being fighter squadrons. Flying Hawker Hurricanes, both 302 and 303 squadrons were active by the middle of August 1940, just when they were most needed, at the height of the Battle of Britain, with Fighter Command stretched to its limit.The Polish squadrons, battle-hardened from their encounters with the Luftwaffe during the invasion of Poland and Battle of France, soon made their mark. In particular, 303 Squadron become the highest-scoring unit of Fighter Command.In total, 145 Polish pilots, the largest non-British contingent in Fighter Command at the time, fought in the Battle of Britain. While Winston Churchill praised the contribution of the Few, the pilots of many nationalities who had defended Britain, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was more specific: Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle would have been the same.

A pictorial history of the valiant Polish aviators who aided the RAF in the fight against the Luftwaffe. The Polish Air Force, which was created in Britain in the summer of 1940 from flying and ground personnel evacuated from Poland and then from France, proved to be one of the most successful formations to fight the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Overcoming the obstacles of language and operating in a foreign country, the Polish Air Force gained independent status, flying alongside the RAF rather than being a part of the RAF—and for the first time, the Polish Air Force became a separate air arm of the Polish Armed Forces. It’s said that 145 Polish pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, many of them experienced and battle-hardened. These men fought not only for the freedom of their own homeland but also for British people, of whom they often knew very little. The Poles were able to form four squadrons, two bomber and two fighter, that went into operations during the Battle of Britain. Many other Polish fliers were dispersed across the Fighter Command, joining various RAF squadrons. They all made a decisive impact, when they were needed the most, gaining the respect of their British colleagues and the British public. In this superb collection of photographs, the story of the Polish Few is told—from their hazardous journey from Poland to the UK to the great struggle for control of the skies above Britain during that memorable summer of 1940.

The little-known WWII story of the Polish Air Force fliers who played a crucial role in the Battle of Britain and beyond. To the Polish volunteers who flew and fought so brilliantly and tenaciously throughout the Battle of Britain, the United Kingdom was known as “Last Hope Island.” Many lost their lives, such as Antoni Ostowicz. Many achieved glory and became aces—such as Glowacki, Skalski, and Witorzenc. The RAF came to depend on these men, with over one hundred Polish pilots supporting almost thirty fighter squadrons, most especially 302, 303, and 307 (night fighter). The result of years of research, Robert Gretzyngier’s book includes detailed combat descriptions, personal accounts from combat reports, memoirs, and diaries from the Polish, British, and German perspective, with in-depth biographical data of all Polish pilots, including full RAF and PAF careers and much tabular material in appendix form. Poles in Defence of Britain is a tremendous account of Polish contribution in those hectic days before the RAF began to take the offensive across the Channel, with many previously unpublished photographs from private collections.

A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known story of the refugee Polish pilots who joined the RAF and played an essential role in saving Britain from the Nazis, only to be betrayed by the Allies after the war. After Poland fell to the Nazis, thousands of Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped to England. Devoted to liberating their homeland, some would form the RAF’s 303 squadron, known as the Kosciuszko Squadron, after the elite unit in which many had flown back home. Their thrilling exploits and fearless flying made them celebrities in Britain, where they were “adopted” by socialites and seduced by countless women, even as they yearned for news from home. During the Battle of Britain, they downed more German aircraft than any other squadron, but in a stunning twist at the war’s end, the Allies rewarded their valor by abandoning Poland to Joseph Stalin. This moving, fascinating book uncovers a crucial forgotten chapter in World War II–and Polish–history.

303 (Polish) Squadron, RAF, was to emerge as the RAF's top-scoring unit of the Battle of Britain. This book tells its story during that fateful summer of 1940.

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German army to land across the channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies—the Royal Air Force would have to be broken. So every day throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties. Greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, the pilots of RAF Fighter Command scrambled as many as five times a day, and civilians watched skies crisscrossed with the contrails from the constant dogfights between Spitfires and Me-109s. Britain’s very freedom depended on the outcome of that summer’s battle: Its air defenses were badly battered and nearly broken, but against all odds, “The Few,” as they came to be known, bought Britain’s freedom—many with their lives. More than a fifth of the British and Allied pilots died during the Battle of Britain. These are the personal accounts of the pilots who fought and survived that battle. Their stories are as riveting, as vivid, and as poignant as they were seventy years ago. We will not see their like again.

Poland was a problematic issue for the Big Powers throughout the Second World War. For Britain, Poland was a major stumbling block in British-Soviet relations as Polish-Soviet territorial disputes clashed with the needs of the British-Soviet-United States alliance. As the Polish government-in-exile attempted to obtain a guarantee of British support, and many thousands of Polish troops fought for the British cause, the perception grew that the Churchill government had a debt to pay. Ultimately, however, it was a debt which Britain could not discharge because of its dependence on Soviet participation in the war. In this book Anita Prazmowska looks at British policies from the point of view of wartime strategy, relating this to Polish government expectations and policies. She describes a tragic situation where Polish soldiers were trapped between the grandiose and unrealistic plans of their government and the harsh realities of a war which they fought with no prospect of a satisfactory outcome for them or their country.

This work is presented to the reader with several ideas in mind. First, it is the author''s hope that, in some small way, it will help preserve the memory of a little known pilot who fought, not only for his own country, but also for France and England during the early, dark days of World War II. While Waclaw Lapkowski was an experienced pilot who became one of Poland''s aces during the war, his early demise, like that of so many others, has relegated his achievements to the back pages of history, making them nearly forgotten. However, in referring to pilots such as Lapkowski, the great British ace Robert Stanford-Tuck cites the many men "who were credited with six, seven, or eight victories", pilots that "formed the bulk and guts of our fighter force." The second reason for producing this work is the unique use of official combat and operations reports from the Royal Air Force (RAF). Many of those who are interested in World War II aviation and fighter aces have read the biographies, and first-hand accounts of air combat contained within, of such men as Douglas Bader, Witold Urbanowicz, Adolph Galland, and Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, to name just a few. But what of those "aces" that did not survive to tell their story? How are they to be remembered? In the case of those who served with the RAF, the answer is, in part, through the use of official combat reports and related documents. While these official RAF and Polish Air Force (PAF) records do not sound particularly exciting, a glance at the surviving records quickly proves otherwise. Indeed, the title of this book consists of a borrowed phrase from one such report, and is a small example of the many dramatic events recorded within, often in the pilot''s own words. While these reports have been an important source for many works on the RAF and PAF and its achievements during the war, never before, to the author''s knowledge, have official combat reports been presented to the reading public in their original form. Though not originally intended for public view, they nonetheless make for exciting and informative reading and will be of interest not only to those with a passing interest in World War II aviation, but to the serious student as well. While the author was unable to obtain combat reports for all of Lapkowski''s flights, those that were procured for September 1940 and June 1941 are of particular interest as they highlight all of the "kills" that he made while serving in the RAF. The final reason for choosing to write about Waclaw Lapkowski is due to the availability of wartime artifacts connected with his service in the RAF. About a year ago the author came in contact with a man who owned a portion of Lapkowski''s Hurricane fighter, which was legally excavated in 1979. The author subsequently obtained a small piece of the wreckage for his personal collection, while the collector retained the remains of its Merlin engine, the prop boss, its Browning machine guns, and other items formerly on display at an aviation museum. Once this artifact was in the author''s possession, he became interested in finding out about Lapkowski, his career, and his subsequent fate. While this work gives much information about 303 Squadron, it is not, however, a squadron history. While a book entitled Squadron 303 was published in London in 1942, written by Arkady Fiedler, it was not intended as an exacting history of the unit. Instead, it was a nice work of wartime public relations to help explain the Polish contribution in general terms during the Battle of Britain. Despite its shortcomings, Fiedler''s book deserves its own place in the annals of aviation history. Copies by the thousands were smuggled into Nazi-held Poland and served not only to show that those who had left Poland were still fighting for their country, but served as an inspiration to those left behind to continue their resistance. No definitive squadron history has yet been translated into English. What the author found out, from the official combat reports, and various published sources, uniquely combined with available archaeological artifacts, was fascinating. What emerged from the records is a story worth telling. Waclaw Lapkowski, though not famous like such other Polish aces as Stanislaw Skalski, Jan Zumbach, or Urbanowicz, had an interesting and distinguished career. He was in the thick of battle at the outset of the war, when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and saw subsequent service during the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain in 1940. He achieved air victories in two out of three of these campaigns, and is one of only a handful of men, less than 150 in number, who served in all three campaigns. To borrow a phrase from the British, Waclaw Lapkowski truly was one of "The Few", men whose skill and bravery helped stem the tide of German aggression and made Allied victory possible, at the cost of their own lives.