303 (Polish) Squadron RAF were so far and away the best RAF fighter squadron in the Battle of Britain that it is no exaggeration to say that the British would have lost the Battle of Britain without these Polish pilots. Britain owes its freedom to these Polish pilots.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, AOC and chief of RAF Fighter Command, later 1st Baron Dowding of Bentley Priory GCB GCVO CMG, wrote of the Polish pilots:
"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 (of Britain) would have been the same."
Lord Dowding could not, as their commander, outright say that the Polish pilots were so much better than the other allied pilots but he clearly knew that, without the Poles, Britain would have lost the Battle of Britain.
How did Britain repay these incredibly brave and noble Polish pilots?
The British government, in order to appease Josef Stalin, forbade them participation in the victory parades, betrayed their country (for whom Britain had allegedly gone to war in the first place) to the murderous Stalin, and even planned to send the pilots back to Poland where they would doubtless have been murdered by Stalin.
That's British government gratitude for you!
Lord Dowding was outraged but there was nothing he could do about it. It was government policy from the very top.
Pictured above left is Squadron Leader Franciszek Kornicki, one of the Polish heroes of the Battle of Britain, having narrowly survived the Battle of Britain and many other engagements.
One of my great regrets in life is that I did not have a chance to meet, and shake the hand of, this very gallant Polish gentleman.
After years of suffering in silence being forgotten by an ungrateful British government, he and his fellow Polish pilots were eventually finally recognised for their heroic service in saving Britain in 1940, at a time when 22,000 of their fellow Polish officers and intellectuals were being murdered at Katyn by the monstrous murderers of the Soviet NKVD.
Franciszek Kornicki survived the war and, finally, on 16 June 2011 he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta and the award was conferred upon him in person on 24 September 2012 by the President of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski.
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| Franciszek Kornicki, aged 93, was re-united in September 2010 with the very same Sptifire that he flew in the Battle of Britain, Spitfire MkVB BM 597, at RAF Northolt on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. This Spitfire is still flying in the colours of 317 Squadron. |
On 11 November 2012 he was promoted to the rank of full colonel (Pułkownik) in the Polish Air Force. He turned 100 in December 2016 and lived until almost his 101st birthday.
For half the 3 months of the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command forbade 303 (Polish) Squadron RAF to take part in the battle.
But then the British began to run out of pilots and they had no choice but to send in the Poles. Lord Dowding quickly realised their potential.
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| Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding of Bentley Priory GCB GCVO CMG (24 April 1882 to 15 February 1970) Air Officer Commanding RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain who believed the battle might well have been lost without the Polish pilots. |
The Poles of 303 (Polish) Squadron, whilst only participating in half the Battle of Britain, nevertheless then proceeded to shoot down more enemy aircraft than any other fighter squadrons together had shot down in the entire Battle of Britain and yet the Poles had only started half-way through!
Even in training, the Polish airmen were miles ahead of all the other squadrons. Whereas the next best squadron scored in the region of 350 points in training battles, 303 Squadron scored over 800 points!
Yet still RAF Fighter Command would not let them fly in battle.
It was only after Fighter Command was forced to employ the Poles that they realised what a formidable fighting force they had under command!
Indeed, 303 Squadron was far and away the best squadron in the whole Battle of Britain.
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| Josef František DFM and Bar
(7 October 1914 to 8 October 1940)
was a Czechoslovak fighter pilot and Second World War fighter ace who flew for the air forces of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and the United Kingdom, serving with 303 (Polish) Squadron RAF. He was the highest-scoring non-British Allied ace in the Battle of Britain, with 17 confirmed victories and one probable, all gained in a period of four weeks in September 1940, during the Battle of Britain. He was killed in action at only 26, one month later.
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Britain repaid them with....
...betrayal!
It is one of the most shameful chapters in the history of British betrayals.
Utterly shameful.
And Britain has still not apologised.
Worse still, Britain still pretends that the mass murder of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia at Katyn Forest in Russia was carried out by the Nazis in 1941, when, as is now proven beyond a shadow of doubt, this atrocious crime was carried out by Stalin's Soviet NKVD in 1940 - at a time when the Soviet Union was supposed to be an ally of Poland!
And Britain has still not apologised!
Let us thank the memory of these heroic Poles who saved Britain from invasion and were betrayed by our ungrateful, shameful government.
Polonia semper fidelis!
Poland ever faithful!
Poland ever faithful!
...and here is a wonderful version of the Polish anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego - the March of Dambrowski - with its famous opening words:
“Jeszcze Polska nie umarła, Kiedy my żyjemy,
Co nam obca moc wydarła, Szablą odbijemy.”
“Poland is not dead yet while we're still alive!
What the foreign power had seized from us,
we shall recapture with the sabre!”
And this heroic hymn surely captures the unique and invincible fighting spirit of the Poles....
If fidelity to nation, people and the Catholic religion in the face of a unique history of persecution and suffering is a mark of God's blessing - as it surely is - then Poland must be the most blessed nation upon the face of the earth.
Surely the red and white flag of the Polish people will be flying among the foremost in the celestial realms of eternity!
And let us not forget that it has been the Poles who have always come to the defence of Christendom in the hour of most desperate need.
Let us not forget that it was the Poles who defeated the Communist invasion of Europe in 1920 when the Soviet forces had embarked upon the military take over of all Europe. The Soviet machine was stopped in its tracks at the Battle of Warsaw by a smaller - but utterly determined! - Polish army!
Let us not forget that it was the Poles who, at the eleventh hour, defeated the massive Muslim Turkish army that invaded Europe through Hungary and very nearly took Vienna in 1683, while the French and English were busy fighting the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire like treacherous, back-stabbing assassins.
The Polish winged lancer-hussars, the very best cavalry in all Christendom, under King Jan Sobieski (the grandfather of Prince Charles Edward Stuart of Britain) charged down the Kahlenberg mountain and utterly routed the Turkish troops, sending them fleeing, utterly defeated, back to Turkey.
The Polish winged lancer-hussars, the very best cavalry in all Christendom, under King Jan Sobieski (the grandfather of Prince Charles Edward Stuart of Britain) charged down the Kahlenberg mountain and utterly routed the Turkish troops, sending them fleeing, utterly defeated, back to Turkey.
What a famous charge! What a nation! What a people! The saviours of Christendom...
God bless Poland!
God bless the Polish people!
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3 comments:
Thanks for this post, a timely reminder of our debt to this great Christian nation.
[1/2] A search engine led me to a 2014 article of yours, which I thought good; but egos beware, I disagree with this one.
Yes, the combat record of 303 Squadron was very good—although their highest scoring pilot during the BoB was Czech; you have his pic and short description, but no remark on his Czech background. They also had a Canadian, Johnny Kent, who claimed 11 kills while with them. Note that 303 had Hurricanes until January 1941; where possible, the RAF sent Hurris against the bombers while the more manoeuvrable Spits went against the escorting fighters. Dealing with the bombers was vital—but any going up against Heinkels and Junkers will accumulate more kills and sustain fewer losses than those going against Bf 109s. Their record appears less spectacular in light of that when compared to e.g. 603 Squadron’s 57½ kills, 47 of which were Bf 109s. Of course 303 took on and out their share of 109s (e.g. Kent’s third kill was a 109); merely cautioning against OTT remarks like ‘heroic Poles who saved Britain from invasion’. The Poles contributed but so did the other aircrew, the majority of whom were British; so did the New Zealanders, Canadians, Czechs, Australians, Belgians, South Africans, French, (Southern) Irish, Americans, and Rhodesians; so did the Royal and Merchant Navies, the radar techs, the lads manning the AA guns and searchlights, the groundcrew maintaining and repairing the aircraft the various nationalities flew; so did the bomber crews targeting the invasion barges Jerry were collecting in preparation; so did the Coastal Command boys in their war against the U-boats; so did those in the factories manufacturing the aircraft, weapons and ammunition that enabled everyone else to fight. All helped defend our island.
Of the 2,937 aircrew known to have participated in the BoB, 145 were Polish—<5% (0.0004% of Poland’s 1939 population, as compared to the 88 Czech aircrew, 0.0006% of theirs; rather more impressive is New Zealand’s contribution, whose 127 aircrew represented 0.0077%). Most pilots (79.7%) were British; God bless the Poles and all the others, but we did most of our own fighting.
Wrt honouring the Polish contribution, it is notable that of the BBMF’s 6 Spits and 2 Hurris, one (AB910, a Spitfire Mk.Vb) was painted up as Sqn Ldr Jan Zumbach’s RF-D, 2007–13. For 6 years, one-eighth of BBMF’s fighters honoured one-twentieth of the aircrew who were in the BoB; while the New Zealanders, at 4.32% of BoB aircrew only 0.62% behind the Poles, have yet to be even noticed.
Above all, let us not pretend that the Poles who so gallantly fought were doing anything other than using us to fight their nation’s conquerors. This is explicitly stated on the monument to the Polish 1st Armoured Division in Warsaw, which displays the words of their commander, General Stanisław Maczek: ‘The Polish soldier fights for the freedom of all nations but dies only for Poland.’
‘ONLY for Poland.’
Here is a picture of British and Polish troops in France, 1940. Note the Poles’ uniforms—the Poles’ first port of call after the fall of their country was France; and if France hadn’t fallen, there would have been no ‘303 (Polish) Squadron’ but various ‘Groupes de Chasse’ (but a pre-war agreement—‘Peking Plan’—saw Poland’s three destroyers transferred to Britain).
Adolf more than once proposed a German-Polish alliance against the Soviet Union, and if Piłsudski had accepted, then we could have eventually found ourselves fighting against rather than with the Poles.
[2/2] Of note is a recent alternate history novel popular in Poland, Pakt Ribbentrop–Beck, czyli jak Polacy mogli u boku III Rzeszy pokonać Związek Radziecki (‘Pact Ribbentrop–Beck, or How Poles could have defeated the Soviet Union alongside the Third Reich’) by Piotr Zychowicz, arguing that Poland should have allied with Nazi-Germany. The book’s website stated it ‘proves … that the decision to join the war with Germany in an illusory alliance with Britain and France was a fatal mistake for which we paid a terrible price’.
From 1806 to 1814, these ‘saviours of Christendom’ fought for the atheist revolutionary regime of France against the Holy Roman Empire, Holy Russia, Catholic Spain and Portugal, and Protestant Britain, in the Peninsula fighting to liberate Spain and Portugal:
‘… The number of killed [at the Battle of Albuerra, 16 May 1811] was out of all proportion to the wounded: in the Buffs there were 212 dead to 234 hurt. This ghastly slaughter is said to have been due to the fact that the savage Polish lancers not only refused to accept surrender from the unhappy infantry, but deliberately speared the wounded as they lay. Nor can I refuse credit to the general statement of contemporary British authorities after reading the journal of Major Brooke, commanding the 2/48th, who relates how, after he had surrendered and was being taken to the rear by two French infantry soldiers, a Pole rode up to him and deliberately cut him down, after which the ruffian made his horse trample over him and left him for dead. In the regimental annals of the 66th two officers are named as having been wounded by the lance, while already disabled and lying on the ground. Peninsular tradition tells that the 2nd Division after Albuera swore to give no quarter to Poles.’
(Oman, Charles. A History of the Peninsular War, vol. 4. Clarendon Press, 1911. 384.)
It is also notable that in 2014 there were a disturbing number of Poles with the SNP campaigning for Britain’s breakup—so they come over here, they take our jobs, they take our dole money, they murder our women and children, they keep our police busy; and in gratitude, they promote the destruction of the United Kingdom.
Poland would have been done a greater service if you had not only painted Britain less villainously, but drawn attention to the Poles serving in units less glamourous than 303—there were nine other Polish fighter squadrons, four bomber squadrons and one Air Observation Post squadron; there were those Polish Navy destroyers, and more Poles were scattered through the rest of the Royal Navy(*), and there were the various Polish army units—first Allied flag up at Monte Cassino was Polish, btw.
(* Although one such Pole we could have done without was David & Ed Miliband’s father, Ralph née Adolphe, who came here in 1940, joined the RN (didn’t accomplish anything special), and stayed here post-war to promote socialism.)
‘And Britain has still not apologised!’ I’m glad we’ve finally found something we’re not prostrating ourselves before the world and offering inane apologies for.
Nothing against Poland or Poles, some are good lads; but they’re not my countrymen. They’re faithful right enough—to Poland. That’s fine, a Pole’s duty is to Poland; and a Briton’s duty is to Britain.
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