The Untold Battle of Britain

On Channel 4 Now . . . .

"The story of 303 Squadron . . . "

Thanks, im gonna watch that.

But I expect the Poles to come on and tell us how they single handedly won the war for Britain :P

I was based at Northolt for 3 years . . . so far the prog appears to be unbiased & certainly it reflects the frustration of the Polish pilots.

my grandfather was in No. 300 (Polish) "Land of Masovia" Bomber Squadron - i'll be watching it online later on the 4oD service :)

I wonder if it's going to mention the day that a single Polish squadron claimed so many kills that they were credited with shooting down more planes than the entire RAF managed on that day; we constantly hear how the Polish pilots won the entire battle but we rarely hear about how they lied about the number of kills they got.

Just caught the end of it and loads of old Poles moaning about the English! Some things just never change!

16 kills in 15 minutes - all confirmed!! Highest scoring sqn at that time!!!

No doubt, if we didn't have the Poles, we would've lost the Battle of Britain . . . very close run thing!!

A shame that their sacrifice wasn't acknowledged in 1946

They had some good reason to moan though, If you watched it all ;)

There are many Youtube accounts available. The RAF spoke very well of the Poles.

Nope only the end...that was enough - Poles settled in the UK and forged some nice communities, they must have rounded up the miserable moaning ones for good TV.

They had bloody good reason to moan

Highest claiming. 303 very clearly overclaimed their actual number of kills.


Please don't trot out the old lies again: 303 pilots were invited to the London Victory Parade. And they were also all given jobs and homes for themselves and their families, far more than Poland ever gave it's defeated allies.

That's true! Britain really looked after many of those Polish pilots and they intermingled with many locals. I can't see where the moaning can come in.

To make good TV, it wouldnt do to say that Poles were welcome and made good lives for themselves - Im sure there were some who made them feel unwelcome but times were hard and Im sure people were not feeling as charitable as they may have preferred.

Maybe they should have spoken the family members of those that were here from the 1930s

bbc.co.uk/stoke/features/polish/polish_community.shtml

stop moaning about the victory parade which this thread is clearly not about. Back to the topic - many pilots of all the countries claimed more shoot downs than they actually did. Basically pilots took hits for granted if they have noticed smoke or fire and the plane disappearing at the corners of their eyes. I've read "Poles in defense of GB" by Polish authors and they wrote that on numerous occasions polish pilots have misreported shot down planes that later turned out to come back to the german base safely. A pretty interesting book consists mainly of reports by english german and polish pilots (so is a bit boring if somebody doesn't like reading) It says a lot about some of the heroic flights by Poles but in the same moment it's not sugar icing. There's a lot of critic of polish pilots having hard time getting used to the steering and general handling of British planes (which they destroyed frequently and were sent back to training, some even over and over again) or multiple cases of friendly fire by Polish pilots. Despite massive failing instances I personally think they did a good job there. Case closed. ;o


damn I must be really tired ;) "doesn't like reading tables with lots of numbers and similar data" ;)

Harry is like Gazta Wyborcza. He claim he says truth and can be understand only by intelligent people. But when you check him it appears he knows only few 'useful' to manipulate. BTW I am sure he is not English. I am sure for couple reason main one is: he knows what sarcasm stand for. He is cunning but not too smart.

You can watch it ... here (if you're in the UK). The part I like most is the description: "This dramatised documentary..."

One thing for sure Polish pilots came to defend England in crucial point of bob

I think he is from OZ. Don't mind him, he is just a little grumpy aussie failure who had to resort to teaching english grammar as a career. His only purpose on this forum is to **** on poles because it makes him feel superior. He's quick with wikipedia though:)

that is not an untold story though.. it's rather well known but i guess maybe not in england?

A review of "The Untold Battle Of Britain"

monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/reviews/article_1567417.php/Review-The-Untold-Battle-Of-Britain

Anyone seen any other reviews?

I hope there are more shows like that.

As an American, I never heard about Squadron 303 until I read about it on the internet from other bloggers. I am glad I did and aware of it now.

303squadron.com/history.htm

I would'nt mind seeing that programme...........I wonder if the History Channel will carry it.

I have got a strange feelings in my guts, that the sign "Poles go home!" on the nearest pub to the airfield, placed there right after the war ended might be a clue to answer this question. :-]

Yeah, way f*cking curious mate. Because of course the Russians in PL in 1945 were just waiting to welcome the returning AK troops with open fire ^H^H^H^H arms.

A

You mean the Polish should have started a new war with the Soviet Union immediately after WW2?

Maybe they should have tried the British style: declaring the war and then sitting on their asses for they were not ready. One hell of the fight i tell ya!

british could not deal with Poles so they send Poles in Soviet hands to be kill

Or the Polish style: run for British ports before the first shot is even fired.

Harry, please stop trolling as i'm getting fed up of cleaning this thread.

Marek11111:
Harry is good

Just let it go, your reaction is what he is after, don't play according to his rules, simply ignore that miserable scamp. :)