WHEN THE FIRST wave of German planes swept over the English coast the next afternoon, September 7, there was little indication that the day's raids would be significantly different from the dozens that had preceded them over the previous three weeks. At exactly 3:54 p.m., a WAAF plotter at II Group's Uxbridge sector control station set down a marker on the large map table, indicating that radar had picked up twenty-plus enemy aircraft. Less than a minute later, the number had jumped into the hundreds—a flotilla of bombers and fighters even more massive than the one responsible for the previous day's devastation. "I'd never seen so many," marveled an RAF pilot whose squadron was one of eleven immediately ordered into the air. "As far as you could see, there was nothing but German aircraft coming in, wave after wave." Not until the raiders bypassed Biggin Hill, Kenley, Manston, and other hard-hit airfields did it become clear the Germans were altering their strategy once again. Now they had a new primary target: London.
       Actually, the Luftwaffe had been hitting London for more than a week. The attacks, though relatively minor and intermittent, had been enough to cause an angry Winston Churchill to order the first British bombing raids on Berlin. Then it became Hitler's turn to be angry, and, as the Führer had already amply demonstrated in Poland, his temper often led to major and irrational tantrums. "If they attack our cities," he thundered, "we will simply rub out theirs!"
       By this time, too, Hitler and Goring had persuaded themselves that the Luftwaffe had succeeded in neutralizing the RAF and was therefore free to concentrate on London and other cities. It was a spectacular miscalculation—and no less so for being almost true. In two weeks, the RAF had lost 227 fighters, had seen major damage inflicted on its air fields and sector control stations, and was close to being finished. What Fighter Command needed above all was time to regroup, and Hitler was about to provide just that. As Churchill wrote later: "In the fighting between August 24 and September 6, the scales were tilted against Fighter Command. If the enemy had persisted in heavy attacks against [RAF installations and communications], the whole intricate organisation of Fighter Command might have broken down."
       But Germany did not persist. Instead it began eight weeks of massive bombing of London—eight weeks that were the most intense chapter in the eight-month reign of terror called the Blitz.


At Northolt, the Kościuszko Squadron pilots had been on standby for hours. They waited in their planes, sweltering in their Mae Wests, as the sun beat down. Four pilots were in Hurricanes on loan from the Canadian squadron, replacing the ones that had been lost the day before. At 4:45 p.m., the pilots' earphones crackled with an urgent call: "303, scramble! 303, scramble!" Red flares shot into the sky. The planes jounced over the field, and in thirty seconds were airborne.
       The Poles joined forces with I RAF Squadron, also based at Northolt. Both squadrons were ordered to fly east, toward the London docks, where the full wrath of the Luftwaffe was about to be felt. Approaching the outskirts of the capital, Jan Zumbach could see below what looked like wads of cotton wool—the shell bursts of British antiaircraft guns in the vicinity of the docks. Then, off to the right, he saw about forty Dornier bombers, surrounded by Messerschmitts, on their way to drop their bombs. Zumbach waited impatiently for the order to attack, but Athol Forbes, who was leading the squadron that day, continued on course, seemingly oblivious to the enemy's presence. Zumbach was "writhing with frustration." If the squadron didn't strike in the next few seconds, more than 40 tons of bombs would rain down on London.
       Then, over the radio, he heard a voice barking in Polish: "Attack! Follow me!" It was Ludwik Paszkiewicz, who was leading Yellow section and once again was taking matters into his own hands. Paszkiewicz rocked his wings and broke formation, turned right and dived. Close behind was the rest of his section, then those commanded by Henneberg and Urbanowicz, and bringing up the rear, the section led by Forbes, who had finally caught on to what was happening. The entire squadron, wheeling around in a great arc, plummeted down, out of the sun. "We gave them all we had," Forbes reported later, "opening fire at 450 yards and only breaking away when we could see the enemy completely filling the gunsight."

Jan Zumbach in front of a Hurricane. (Jacek Kutzner)

       When it came Zumbach's time to shoot, he pushed the firing button and nothing happened. Realizing that he had left the safety catch on, he turned the air blue with his swearing as he wrenched his plane into a tight turn, the centrifugal force of the maneuver pushing him back against his seat. Once more, he managed to get a German bomber into his sights. After several bursts from his guns, the Dornier disappeared in a wall of fire. Zumbach dived after another and fixed on him easily. He pressed the firing button, and, moments later that bomber, too, exploded. Trying to avoid the ball of flame, Zumbach banked so violently that he blacked out. His plane plummeted downward. He regained consciousness and pulled out of the dive only a few hundred feet from the ground.
       By this time, nearly a quarter of the German bomber formation had been destroyed. "It was like twelve hounds tearing a boar's body to pieces," Urbanowicz declared. With another hunting simile, Forbes marveled at the sight of "the Dorniers fall[ing] out of the sky like partridges out of a covey, sometimes two at a time." The surviving bombers, after scattering in panic, turned and headed back to France without dropping their bombs. The Poles then focused their attention on the Messerschmitts, which already had come under attack from I Squadron.
       Marian Pisarek, who had been an infantry officer in Poland before joining the air force, picked off a 109, but was attacked and hit by another German fighter—one of three Kościuszko pilots to be shot down that day. With his plane in flames, Pisarek started to scramble out, but his left foot snagged on the edge of the cockpit. As the burning Hurricane spiraled down, Pisarek, dangling from it, desperately tried to wrench his foot loose. He finally managed to pull his foot out of his boot, fell free, and opened his parachute a few thousand feet from the ground. He landed in the backyard of a suburban cottage, in the middle of the owner's prized rose garden. Rushing out of the house, the owner proceeded to give the dazed young Pole a mild lecture about the importance of not trespassing on private property. But the English passion for privacy soon gave way to English cordiality: the man took Pisarek into his house and brewed him a pot of tea. Limping inside sans boot, the highly embarrassed Pisarek tried hard to conceal the large, ragged hole in his left sock.[2]
       Victory roll followed victory roll as the triumphant Hurricanes returned home to Northolt. "Everyone was dancing with excitement," Zumbach said. In less than fifteen minutes of combat, the Poles had shot down fourteen German planes, plus four "probables." Paszkiewicz and Zumbach had a pair of kills each; Urbanowicz had one, plus a "probable." Łokuciewski also had a kill, a German plane that he said "burst like a soap bubble" as soon as he fired at it. Perhaps even more significant than the number of kills that day was the Kościuszko Squadron's remarkable ability to disperse a German bomber formation before it could hit London. A day already filled with horror on the ground would have been that much worse if all forty Dorniers had made it through.
       The Poles' joy at their accomplishments was tempered by their dismay at the damage that the Germans had managed to inflict anyway. In that first raid of the Blitz, hundreds of Londoners were killed, thou sands injured and driven from their homes. Seeing the huge columns of smoke and the blood-red glow of the fires in the East End, the men of the Kościuszko Squadron were reminded of the way their own capital had been attacked and set ablaze just a year earlier. But, like Warsaw, London, about to endure fifty-seven straight nights of bombing, would prove indomitable because, like Varsovians, Londoners were willing to risk everything in the name of independence, liberty, and honor. His countrymen, Winston Churchill remarked during the war were "bred to value freedom far above their lives."

IN ITS FIRST week of combat, the record compiled by the Kościuszko Squadron was so impressive that some people in Fighter Command simply didn't believe it was true. Among the doubters was Northolt's station commander, Stanley Vincent, who wondered if the Poles might be guilty of inflating the numbers in their post-action reports.
       Questioned by Vincent, Kellett insisted that he maintained the strictest scoring standards. If anything, he said, the squadron's combat reports had understated its accomplishments. Vincent was not persuaded. He ordered his intelligence officer to "treat these claims with a lot of reserve—go through them with a toothcomb." After a brief investigation, the officer reported back that he could find no discrepancies. Still skeptical, Vincent decided he would find out for himself. On September 11, he was following the squadron in his own Hurricane when the Poles encountered a large enemy bomber formation over Horsham heading for London. Flying above the squadron, Vincent watched as two Hurricanes peeled off and dived almost vertically at the German bombers "with near suicidal impetus." Startled by the ferocity of the attack, the German pilots broke formation, whereupon the Poles began picking off the scattered bombers one by one. Several times during the combat, the Poles would close almost to a collision point before opening fire on a target. The results were devastating for the Germans. "Suddenly," Vincent declared, "the air was full of burning aircraft, parachutes, and pieces of disintegrating wings. It was all so rapid that it was staggering." An experienced fighter pilot himself Vincent tried to get into the fight, but every time he started to close on an enemy bomber, a "diving Pole would cut in between, and I had to pull away to avoid being hit myself." Remaining prudently on the sidelines, Vincent was finally persuaded. When he landed at Northolt that afternoon, he told his intelligence officer, "My God, they are doing it!"
       The station commander, who from that day on was a staunch supporter of the Poles, was hardly their only admirer. Indeed, by the middle of September, the pilots of the Kościuszko Squadron had become unofficial heroes of the realm. Government officials, senior RAF officers, private citizens, the prime minister, and the king himself joined at various times in paying honor to the squadron that shot down nearly forty planes in a little over a week.[3] Wrote the BBC's director-general: "The BBC sends warm greetings to the famous 303 Polish squadron, with lively congratulations upon its magnificent record and all best wishes for its future. You use the air for your gallant exploits, and we for telling the world of them. Long live Poland!"
       Most of these tributes were carefully copied by Ferić into his diary. Throughout the Battle of Britain, he never lost sight of his goal: to document the squadron's achievements in the little book he carried every where with him. When his fellow pilots, particularly Zumbach, refused on occasion to write about their victories, Ferić did it for them. "I am committed," he wrote, "to preserving all that may be forgotten, all that is most dear to us right now—the heroic battle deeds of our pilots."
       His commitment was still not much appreciated. "Ox has become a real plague for the pilots," Zumbach growled in mid-September. "The poor sods are still in their planes when he grabs them by their ties, pushes the pen and book towards them and hisses ominously into their combat-deafened ear: 'Start writing—now!' " As his colleagues discovered, it was almost impossible to elude Ferić's pursuit. From his hospital bed, a wounded Kościuszko pilot wrote on September 21: "So he finally got me: I mean Ox, of course. He came here, ostensibly on a visit, but he had the book with him and he ordered me to write."
       When he did deign to write in Ferić's diary, Zumbach, who was far less romantic than his friend and had no interest in proclaiming his or anybody else's heroism, would often parody the florid, overheated prose used by some of his compatriots. Writing about the hectic combat on September 7, Zumbach began: "The sun was just like it is today. Its hot rays caused the earth to give off a fragrance, as intoxicating as the scent of your beloved girl's body. Somewhere, hidden in the lilac thicket, a nightingale was warbling its song. This mood was shattered suddenly by the scream of sirens. . ."

Jan Zumbach and Mirosław Ferić with a squadron mascot. (Imperial War Museum)

       That, Zumbach noted, was how a writer would begin his account "Not being one," he went on, "I will tell how things really were. Well, the sun was there all right, but not like it is today, because today, it is raining and the sky is overcast. There are no lilac bushes on the aerodrome and the nightingale is a beast entirely unknown in England.[4] There was no fragrance either.... The one thing that did happen was the alarm."
       While Zumbach played down his and his comrades' victories, the British, including the prime minister were doing the opposite. Over dinner at 10 Downing one September night, a major topic of conversation was the success of the Polish pilots. "It was generally agreed that they were magnificent fighters," John Colville wrote of the evening's discussion. There was some debate, however, about just how good the Poles really were. Winston Churchill averred that one Pole was easily worth three Frenchmen. Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, once so skeptical about the Polish fliers, strongly disagreed. The ratio, in their view, was more like ten Frenchmen per Pole.
       At Buckingham Palace, George VI's secretary, Alexander Hardinge, admiringly referred to the Polish pilots as "absolute tigers." In a letter to Lord Hamilton, Hardinge wrote: "One cannot help feeling that if all our Allies had been Poles, the course of the war up till now, would have been very different." An RAF squadron leader, speaking of the Polish airmen, was quoted as saying: "They are fantastic—better than any of us. In every way they've got us beat."
       Over and over, the question was asked: what made the Poles so good? The answer was complex. Generally older than their British counter parts, most Polish pilots had hundreds of hours of flying time in a variety of planes, as well as combat experience in both Poland and France. Unlike British fliers, they had not been trained to rely on a sophisticated radio and radar network and had learned to fly in primitive, outdated planes. As a result, said one British flight instructor, "their understanding and handling of aircraft was exceptional." Although they appreciated the value of tools like radio and radar, the Poles never stopped using their eyes to locate the Luftwaffe. "Whereas British pilots are trained.. . to go exactly where they are told, Polish pilots are always turning and twisting their heads to spot a distant enemy," an RAF flier noted. To become a pilot in prewar Poland, one had to have virtually perfect vision, and Polish airmen worked hard to maintain and even improve their ability to spot objects at long distances.
       A British pilot spoke with awe about two Polish fliers assigned to his squadron. The two Poles would lie on their cots in the dispersal hut and track the progress of flies creeping up and down the wall. Later in the war, Witold Urbanowicz, attached briefly to the fighter group that succeeded the legendary Flying Tigers in China, astonished his young American comrades with his visual acuity. "To me, Colonel Urbanowicz was like a swami or seer—someone who sees all and knows all," said Donald Lopez, a rookie pilot with the group. "I couldn't believe the details he could give you after a fight. He saw everything that happened and everything that everybody did."
       The Poles' exceptional concentration was equaled only by their daring. British pilots were taught to fly and fight with caution. They were instructed not to get in too close, to open fire on the enemy at a distance of not less than 150 yards. The Poles, by contrast, had been trained at home to be aggressive, to use their planes the way a cavalryman uses his charger, to crowd and intimidate the enemy, to make him flinch, and then to bring him down. After firing a brief opening burst at a range of 150 to 200 yards, just to get on the enemy's nerves, the Poles would close almost to point-blank range. That was where they did their real work. "When they go tearing into enemy bombers and fighters they get so close you would think they were going to collide," observed Athol Forbes. Only then did the Poles unleash their devastating broadsides, which, as Forbes noted, "will cut chunks out of any part of a German bomber and generally disable it in one attack."
       In the airborne war of nerves, Polish pilots, more often than not, were the winners. On several occasions, Forbes reported, crew members of Luftwaffe bombers, seeing that Kościuszko's Hurricanes were about to attack, baled out before their planes were hit. Even allowing for the hyperbole of war, the squadron's ability to break up bomber formations and send them fleeing back to France was just as important in the defense of Britain as its ability to shoot planes out of the sky. Indeed, the Poles' daredevil style proved so effective that Ronald Kellett and John Kent both adopted it on occasion. Kent, when commanding "these intensely brave men" in combat, liked to think of himself as leading a charge of the famed Polish cavalry. "In fact," he said, "the Poles seemed to transport their cavalry tactics, and certainly its élan, from the ground into the air."
       Thanks to the Poles, Kellett also cut back on the use of the RAF's tight V-shaped flying formations and the use of outdated, prewar text book tactics.[5] The rigid, close formations, with a "tail-end Charlie" or "weaver" behind, were "simply suicidal," said one Polish pilot. He spoke for all the Poles, whether in British or Polish squadrons. They hated flying in close formation, because it forced them to worry about avoiding collisions with their own planes instead of concentrating on finding the enemy. In their view, loose formations, spread out fairly wide, with planes at slightly different altitudes, were far more effective, if for no other reason than that they gave everyone in the squadron a clear view of the sky.
       For the Poles, the idea of using set-piece attacks (and expecting the Germans to follow British textbooks) was also ridiculous. The pilots of the Kościuszko Squadron were constantly devising new tactical variations in response to the latest German maneuvers. "It was just common sense, really," Kellett said after the war. "Besides, once you'd gone in to attack, there was no time to worry about what anyone else was doing." In other words, combat rarely, if ever, went by the book. Once the shooting began, it was every pilot for himself.
       Up to a point. The Poles also believed in protecting one another as much as possible. They were noted for going to the aid of other pilots under attack, and in many post-action reports, there are references to Kościuszko Squadron pilots shepherding damaged planes or protecting pilots who had baled out from German strafing attacks. During one sortie in early September, John Kent was chasing a German bomber when he realized a 109 was closing in on him from behind. In a flash, Zdzisław Henneberg's Hurricane cut in front of the Messerschmitt and forced him to break off. Henneberg stayed with Kent, acting as his bodyguard, until the British pilot shot down the bomber and gained cloud cover. Back at Northolt, Kent thanked Henneberg for chasing the German fighter off his tail. No thanks necessary, the Pole said. By the way there were six Messerschmitts chasing you, not just one.
       Ronald Kellett, who also had been protected by the Poles on a number of occasions, credited them with keeping him alive during the Battle of Britain. "Unless the leaders are well supported by those behind them, they fall an easy prey to the enemy fighters," he wrote after the war. "In this connection it is greatly to the credit of the Polish airmen that the three English pilots who commanded the Squadron and flights survived the Battle.. . ."
       Another reason, often overlooked, for the squadron's success was the extraordinary skill and dedication of its Polish ground crew members. "I don't believe that any squadron had better... aircraft maintenance than 303," Kellett wrote. From the first days of the campaign in Poland, the mechanics of the Polish Air Force were noted for the fiercely protective care they lavished on their aircraft. In his diary, Miroslaw Ferić recalled how, on the second day of the war in Poland, his mechanic presented him with a special brush to clean his P-n's windshield in the air. And when Ferić was shot down two days later, "my mechanic could not console himself after the loss of my machine, which he took such loving care of."

Five Kościuszko Squadron pilots seen behind the wing of a Hurricane (from left): Mirosław Ferić, unidentified pilot, Jan Zumbach, Zdzisław Henneberg, and John Kent. (Imperial WarMuseum)

       When the squadron was first organized in England, Kellett suggested to members of the ground crew that they keep the same hours as the pilots—in readiness from one half hour before sunrise to one half hour after sunset. But during the frenetic weeks of the Battle of Britain, the squadron's mechanics worked round the clock to keep the planes flying. They were such wizards at repairing badly damaged planes that only four times during the battle did the squadron take off with fewer than its full complement of twelve Hurricanes, an accomplishment that obviously increased the squadron's effectiveness.
       The climactic day of the Battle of Britain—September 15, 1940— turned out to be the ultimate test of the ground crew's skill. At the end of that day of ferocious fighting, Kellett declared that nine of the squadron's aircraft were good for nothing but the scrap heap. Control fins had been shot off cables severed, wings and engines punctured with bullets, radiators smashed. But the mechanics were determined to prove the squadron leader wrong.
       After working through the night, they had all nine planes on the runway the next morning, ready to sortie.