'Battle of Britain' won thanks to Polish aces !!

It would be crow,when europe was fighting the nazis your grandad was joining them with the other chetniks.........

It isn't to be believed: on one particular day 303 by itself claimed more kills that the Luftwaffe actually lost to every squadron in the RAF combined. So much for "the Poles were very strict with their pilots when it came to claims and their claims were all verified through German records."!


One reason may have been that 303 let him fly pretty much when and where he wanted. And as he was usually by himself, witnesses for his claims weren't always there.


One of grandfathers flew Spitfires and the other Wellingtons and then Liberators. I still place greater reliance in the words of somebody who was actually there at the time than I do the words of somebody who is just repeating tales they were told (and which were at best second-hand when told to them).

You told me a few years ago that they were flying in Spitfires, your uncles that is.

It's entirely possible that they flew Hurricanes during the BoB and their squadrons later switched to Spitfires.

All Poles were flying Hurricanes (inferior planes) through all of BoB, Spitfires were reserved for brits.

And another lie from you: there most certainly were Poles in the 19 Spitfire equipped squadrons, less than two thirds of the Poles who took part in the BoB flew in the two 'Polish' fighter squadrons which took part in the BoB. And as has already been pointed out: most Brits were also in Hurricanes.

no. Stop your anti-Serbian propaganda, will you. Serbian chetniks were first to fight against Hitler. but, i am always sad when see how many Slavs died on the behalf of other, foreign, even often anti-Slavic oriented civilizations. Britain often manipulated with Slavs and in WWII actually harmed Slavs as much as nazi Germany.

One of my grandfathers was a ship's cook. Not a very good one, so bad in fact that his shipmates suspected him of being on the other side. By those that didn't die, he was considered the worst thing to happen at sea.

This is interesting from the link earlier.
d_hodgkinson.madasafish.com/hawker-Vspit.htm


Does that mean the germans copied their engine tech from Rolls Royce?

No, not at all. The Bf 109 was supposed to use a Junkers engine but there were problems with it and so the RR was used until those were ironed out. The Bf 109 had a better engine than either the Spitfire or the Hurricane (at least until Tilly's orifice was fitted to partly solve the negative G problems the RR had).

However the MiG 15 and MiG 17 most certainly did use an engine which was a direct copy of a Rolls Royce jet engine (the Nene I think).

Thats the one.


Rubbish.


Piece together posts on this page,not by me,and you get your answer.a hint, Pilots didnt just fly one type of plane throughout the war :)

When Pilots flew in France,then The BofB then the Western Desert then Italy,Normandy etc etc .....

So,anyway, whats funny is,if you google Top Scoring Battle of Britain Aces this thread comes up with the outright lie that two Pilots in 303 sqdrn were the top scorers........check any other source and its clear that 3 Brits were the top three,then a Czech then two Kiwis followed by another Briton then in 8th place is the first Pole, Urbanowicz.

Whatsmore,of the Top 5 aces 3 were flying Hurricanes during the Battle. In the top 10 ,7 out of 10 flew Hurricanes

@PWEI:
nice to know that You are believing Germans and not british historian. especially that all sources known to me agrees that Germans weren't showing all lost planes, and claiming to wipe RAF out of the face of the planet 3 times. wich means that since you beloved Germans you should be writing in german.

I'm staying with brit until I'll see other reliable source (I'll check wiki sources tomorrow).
and strict doesn't mean "no mistakes", does it?

Josef Frantiśek was his name and he was a very good looking guy. Pity he was killed.



Did you know that he took part in 1939 campaign as a pilot of Polish air force and was awarded the Polish Medal of Honour? In France and Britain campaigns, he refused to join the Czech Army in exile, preferred to stay with Poles and claimed he was Polish.

Salute to a great guy.

isthatu2:
I have no problem with top aces being brits, especially that they were fighting longer, so It's probable that they got beretu totals, however some sources are pointing to.Czech guy, witch is interesting.

what is really strange to me is fact that 7 out of 10 aces flu (??) hurricanes.
I mean hurricanes outnumbered Spitfires almost 2to one,.best pilots flu them, they had shorter time of refueling and rearming (9min to 26), so they were able to be longer in air and yet they fails to hit 60% mark, while Spitfires are well over 30% with healthy 12 points margin. strange

At this time of night Im not even going to try to follow that last bit retro dog :)
But, extrapolating a bit.I guess its simple really, Hurrican sqdrns were largely tasked with attacking German Bomber formations while the Spitfire sqdrns often flew top cover against the German fighter escorts, stands to reason you will get a higher tally if you are attacking JU 87s with one ickle mg 15 poking out the back than you will taking on something with 3 cannons firing heavy lead at you.

When you exit the trenches - you will walk to the enemy - not run!

Only time that order was given was during the first battle of the somme,in mid summer the tommies were over loaded with extra equipment and had much farther to go to the german trench lines than usual,so the order to walk was given with the understanding that A, the germans MG positions would have been wiped out by the heavy arty bombardment and B, no point in exhausting yourself before the fight.

So,in short, a sensible order that has been twisted for years to fit in with the false stereotype of lions lead by donkeys.....
Sorry Ogorki.....but british disapline gave us the worlds largest ever empire, like that fact or not you are onto a hiding to nothing trying to mock its effectivness.

...sensible? ... or was it incompetence - and just plain arrogance - resulting in 1000's of casualties.
Also, traditionally in earlier wars - the soldiers would walk to the enemy because it was more civilised and orderly. Maybe Haig was a traditionalist or maybe he just forgot the Jerries had machine guns and just may have survived the bombing in their 'underground bunkers'?


..discipline? ... or was it by enslaving 1000's of Africans in the slave trade - plundering Asia of it's spices and minerals while subjugating and killing it's people?

(Formation flying was only effective for bombers becuase they could protect each other)

@ishatu2:
You should be ready at all times. ;-)
what You said means that hurricanes should even greater percentage of kills.
let's go back to beginning:
the argument is wich aircraft is better hurricane or spitfire.
I'll be simplifying, ok.
if they were roughly equal they should produce similar number of kills.
we know that hurricanes were almost twice as many as Spitfires in BoB, wich means that they should have produced twice as many kills as Spitfires.

knowing that other planes takes 3% of cake, with 97% being hurricanes and Spitfires share. let's divide it generously 60% to hurricanes and 37% to Spitfires, wich is less then 2:1.

and we knows that hurricanes got 55% while Spitfires 42% of kills.
wich means that hurricanes looks worse then they should be ( if they were equal )
and if we are to add your contributions:
7 out of 10 best aces had hurricanes
hurricanes were attacking bombers ( well, we don't know, but you suggested it)
and we know that refueling and re-arming of hurricanes was much shorter ( giving them more flying time)
adding it up and we should be looking on better numbers than 60-37, possibly 70-27 ?
and we really see 55-42?
something is not adding up

absolutely correct
the spitfire was more manouverable and faster than the hurricane therefore the spitfires were intended the tackle the ME109s leaving the hurricanes to deal with the German bombers. The German bombers were the more serious threat as in the early days of BoB they were tasked with bombing the British airfields so it does not matter how good your pilots are, if they cannot return to base to refuel and rearm, you are in serious trouble

The hurricane was such a sturdy plane that one pilot who had run out of ammo used the hurricane's wing to smash a German bomber's tail to pieces causing it to crash

Although the number of Battle of Britain claims was overestimated (as with virtually all fighter units), No. 303 Squadron was one of the top fighter units in the battle and the best Hurricane-equipped one.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._303_Polish_Fighter_Squadron#The_Battle_of_Britain_August.E2.80.

So, those undisciplined Poles were the very best in collective actions. Thats the way it should be, those aces regardless of their personal valors and skills were only focuses on because of the effect to morale of the civilian population. What was counting was that units killed more enemy unites with efficiency and with lower losses.

We may simplify assume that those myths about undisciplined Poles you can safety put on the shelf with a BS label on it.
As for words of those they were there at the time. That guy said


Douglas Robert Steuart Bader

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader

Go and argue with him.
I found it funny that some Brits still cannot take it. Too much c&c guys !

Sorry for my English in above post. I posted it before checking......:(

I wonder why you didn't finish the quote. Could it be because you know that the full statement was that the best AND worst pilots under his command during the BofB were the two Polish Squadrons? I wonder.

And let's not forget that according to Bader the pilots of 302 squadron were gay.

what does c&c mean?
I have not heard this expression before and am genuinely interested in what you mean

thanks

Bader was an arse, great movie,complete sh!t of a man by all acounts :)

forget pilots, Polish Squadrons were the best according to the guy.

My grandfather billeted Polish pilots at his manse during the war and said what a wonderful bunch of
people they were.

Can any polish answer why a book on the battle of britain by paval vancatta (a czech writer) shows that the raf lost 399 aircraft to 612 luftwaffe lost in august, and 303 squadron only had 1 kill and their first on august 30th, they had most of their kills in september yet the performance of the RAF in the battle of britain didn't improve that month and they lost 414 to luftwaffe loss of 554 aircraft?

it allways seems sad to me to hear the continued rangling of polish people over the contibution made by polish pilots during the battle of britain,

it allways seems to be the case that they strain at the idea that victory was largely down to them,

i dont think that it will ever be exceptable that whilst in the process of seeking to establish a greater recognition than what is deserved for polish pilots the rightfull recognition for all of the other contributing pilots is deminished

better the polish pilots had flown for their german masters than that !!!!!!!!!

when i see title of this thread i always feel sad. Are we Slavs destined to serve foreign civilizations?

Given the number of Poles who served in the Nazi armed forces, it is highly unlikely that there were no Polish Luftwaffe pilots.