According to Sir Archibald Sinclair, Britain's wartime air force minister,
without the Polish pilots "our shortage of trained pilots would have made it
impossible to defeat the German air force and so win the Battle". This volume
focuses on a small group of five of them, from success to betrayal.Members of the Polish air force fought through the defeat of their own
country in 1939 and then alongside the French until the fall of France the
following year, when they made their varied ways to Britain. There the Poles
were among the Air Force's most successful aces. During the Battle of Britain,
the pilots of the all-Polish Kosciuszko Squadron - 303 Squadron to the RAF -
downed more German planes than any other squadron. According to Britain's
wartime air force minister, without the Poles 'our shortage of trained pilots
would have made it impossible to defeat the German air force and so win the
Battle'. This gripping book tells the story of the Polish pilots, focussing on
a small group of five of them, from defeat in Poland and France to victory in
the Battle of Britain, from their idolisation by the public to the harrowing
story of their betrayal, and Poland's, by Britain and the USA as the war came
to its closing stages. This is an utterly fascinating story, heroic, inspiring
and finally tragic, strikingly well-told.
