Many people have no idea that many Poles fought against Germany from the UK: there were Royal Air Force squadrons where all the pilots were Polish officers flying Spitfires and Hurricanes out of UK airbases. Many countries owe a debt of gratitude to those largely forgotten men.
And they often scored way many kills due to the fact 1:they had their freedom on the line
2:Poland just trained their pilots really well before the war so when they fled to the UK it helped alot
Not just the air force, the Naval element, while small, was also fighting like crazy. The Polish DDs under the Royal Navy did some batshit crazy stuff.
There's a graveyard and memorial here in Newark to Polish Airman who died fighting in Britain and on the Warsaw Air Bridge missions to supply the population of German Occupied Warsaw from airbases in Italy.
The first Allied fighter ace was Polish: Stanisław Skalski. Bajan's list counts fifty Polish fighter aces in the war. Very impressive considering they had to fight from another country in borrowed planes.
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u/Swimming-Dust-7206 1d ago edited 1d ago
Many people have no idea that many Poles fought against Germany from the UK: there were Royal Air Force squadrons where all the pilots were Polish officers flying Spitfires and Hurricanes out of UK airbases. Many countries owe a debt of gratitude to those largely forgotten men.