Last Hope Island

by Lynne Olson

  But Beneš’s will collapsed when he was informed that France and Great Britain would not stand behind him. To the horror of Czech military leaders, the demoralized president ordered the country’s forces to stand down. “We are only adding our name to the cowardice of our allies!” a distraught general exclaimed. “It is true that others have betrayed us, but now we alone are betraying ourselves.” Beneš paid no heed. The army and air force were disbanded, and the news was announced to weeping crowds in Prague’s Wenceslas Square.

  After the Sudetenland was surrendered, thousands of Czech soldiers and pilots streamed out of their country; more followed after Germany’s occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The fact that a number of them joined Poland’s air force and army and took part in the Polish fight against Germany meant little or nothing to the British.

  In the end, the RAF did change its mind about using eastern European fliers—but only because it had no choice. On August 13, the Luftwaffe launched its all-out air assault against Britain, blitzing airfields, radar installations, and aircraft factories in the southern part of the country. “We have reached the decisive point in our air war against England,” Göring declared. “Our first aim must be the destruction of the enemy’s fighters.” Day after day, hundreds of German bombers, closely guarded by swarms of fighters, swept over the Channel with the intent of blasting British defenses into rubble.

  To help counter this onslaught, dozens of Polish and Czech pilots were integrated into already existing RAF squadrons. In addition, the RAF agreed to form two squadrons made up solely of Poles, as well as two all-Czech units. The new squadrons, however, were firmly under British command and subject to British regulations; their pilots wore dark blue RAF uniforms with “Poland” or “Czechoslovakia” flashes on their jacket sleeves. If Polish and Czech “air units in this country are ever to become efficient,” said one RAF report, “their command must never be taken out of British hands.” The eastern Europeans, especially the Poles, the report added, needed to suppress their “inherent individualism and egotism,” show some discipline, and “learn by example” from their British counterparts.

  That kind of condescension only compounded the grievances already held by the Poles and Czechs against the country that, along with France, had failed to come to their nations’ aid. The fliers also were less than impressed by the quality of the British military effort thus far. “My mind was still reeling from the desperately heroic Polish shambles and the insouciant French shambles,” recalled a Polish airman. “Therefore it was with some apprehension that I awaited the first symptoms of some third variety of shambles—a British shambles.”

  Most of the Polish fliers in Britain were already battle-hardened pilots. The problems they had faced in defending their country had had little or nothing to do with their flying skill. Many had been flying at Polish aeroklubs since they were boys, and most were graduates of Djblin, one of the most difficult and demanding air force training academies in the world. Virtually all had flying experience against the Luftwaffe, which was more than most British pilots, including those who commanded them, could claim.

  That was particularly true of one of the all-Polish units, known to the RAF as 303 Squadron but called the Kościuszko Squadron by those in its ranks. Named for Tadeusz Kościuszko, the young Polish patriot who became an American hero in the Revolutionary War, the unit contained some of Poland’s most skilled fliers. It was assigned to Northolt, a key RAF station only fourteen miles from central London, which was under the umbrella of the all-important 11 Fighter Group. The twenty-one squadrons belonging to 11 Group would be in the thick of the Battle of Britain, responsible for protecting London as well as the rest of southeast England. As such, the group’s squadrons would be crucial to Britain’s defense, and many in the RAF had serious doubts that the Poles of 303 were up to the challenge.

  Polish pilots from the RAF’s 303 Squadron.

  Even as German air activity increased markedly over the Channel and the English coast, the RAF insisted that the squadron could not become operational until its personnel learned British tactics and basic English. “I’m not having people crashing round the sky until they understand what they’re told to do,” declared Group Captain Stanley Vincent, the station commander at Northolt. When they arrived in Britain, none of the Poles or Czechs knew the basic English vocabulary for flying. At language school, they learned RAF code words—“angels” for altitude; “pancake” for landing; “bandits” for enemy planes; “tally ho” for launching an attack. They learned how to count to twelve in English so they could understand the clock-face system for giving bearings—for example, “bandits at twelve o’clock.”

  During their early training in Hurricanes, the Poles of 303 also struggled with the many unfamiliar intricacies of modern aircraft controls. Having trained in primitive planes and being unaccustomed to having radios in the cockpit, they often violated proper radio-telephone procedures or failed to respond properly. In Polish planes, to accelerate you pulled the throttle back, whereas in British planes you pushed it forward. “We had to reverse all our reflexes,” said one of 303’s pilots. There were several instances of overshooting the runway, and because most of the fliers had never flown aircraft with retractable landing gear, a number of landings occurred with the wheels still up.

  At one point, the Poles were ordered to ride a fleet of oversized tricycles—each fitted with a radio, compass, and speed indicator—in flying formation around a football field. As they rode, they were directed to “interceptions” from an “operations room” at the top of the bleachers. The indignity of it all infuriated the Poles—skilled veteran pilots being forced to ride around a field on trikes.

  For almost a month at the height of the Battle of Britain, the British and the Poles of 303 engaged in a tense, stormy conflict of wills. It had been nearly a year since Germany had swept into Poland. In that time the Polish fliers had experienced nothing but frustration, bordering on despair. Their inaction fed their already considerable guilt about not being able to save Poland. They also agonized about escaping and leaving their country, especially their families, to suffer under the twin occupations of Germany and the Soviet Union, which, under a secret codicil to the Ribbentrop-Molotov nonaggression pact of 1939, had invaded and annexed eastern Poland in mid-September of that year. Hungry for combat, the Poles of 303 discovered that, in the words of one of them, “we were not to be let off the leash.” Adding to the torture was the knowledge that at least forty other Polish pilots were already operational—in otherwise all-British squadrons.

  The pilots of 303 particularly objected to being forced to take orders from British officers, whom they considered arrogant and condescending. They were in no mood to be lectured to about their language abilities or their tactics, least of all by the likes of their squadron leader, Ronald Kellett, a wealthy London stockbroker in civilian life who had never flown in combat for as much as a minute.

  The emotional, high-spirited Poles showed their rebelliousness in various colorful ways. They were constantly being reproved for not conforming to regulations in dress (unbuttoned uniform jackets, missing belts, nonregulation shirts and shoes) and for sneaking into Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) housing at night or smuggling WAAFs into their quarters. “They were a complete law unto themselves,” recalled a British air mechanic.

  As the training continued, however, the Poles’ British commanders gradually began to show more understanding and respect. Despite the belly landings and other early problems, it soon became clear to Kellett and Kent that the pilots under their command were very good indeed. Kent was impressed with both their flying ability and their unusually quick reaction times, and Kellett even developed into something of an advocate for them, quick to challenge any disparaging remarks by other RAF officers—remarks such as he himself had made in the beginning. When Northolt officials offered the squadron the use of a battered old truck, instead of the usual car, to take them from the officers’ mess to th
e airfield, Kellett declared that such a shabby form of transportation simply would not do. He brought in his own Rolls-Royce, a roomy 1924 open touring car that could ferry as many as twelve pilots at a time to their planes.

  Meanwhile, the intensity of the battle over southern England was steadily mounting. Every day, the three-hundred-plus Hurricanes and Spitfires of 11 Group hurled themselves against massive enemy bomber and fighter formations. The days were clear and hot, and the RAF pilots scrambled from dawn to dusk, which in Britain at that time of year amounted to about fifteen hours a day. Their lives had suddenly become a madness of activity—fierce combat, followed by frenzied refueling and rearming on fields that German bombing was turning into lunar landscapes. The stress of several sorties a day took an enormous physical and psychological toll: some fliers were so exhausted after a sortie that as soon as they landed they immediately fell asleep in their cockpits. Nerves were frayed, morale began to slip; more and more mistakes, including faulty landings, were made, and accidents occurred.

  During this period, both the RAF and Luftwaffe suffered severe losses of both men and planes. The planes were replaceable—and, in the RAF’s case, were being replaced by British industry—but the men were another matter. From August 8 to 18, 154 RAF fliers were killed, seriously wounded, or missing in action—more than twice as many as could be replaced. By the third week of August, Fighter Command was short more than two hundred pilots.

  “Most people who went into 11 Group didn’t last,” recalled one flier fortunate enough to have survived the Battle of Britain. “They couldn’t last. They had no chance at all.” Many years after the battle, another former RAF pilot was paging through a book listing the names of the pilots who had been in his squadron. “Some I couldn’t remember,” he said. “They passed through, and had been shot down before I could get to know them.”

  During this period of “intense struggle and ceaseless anxiety,” as Winston Churchill called it, the Germans were relentless. As August drew to a close, they launched raids in such numbers against RAF airfields and radar stations that the controllers in 11 Group were forced to choose which attacks should get priority attention from their depleted squadrons. “On virtually every occasion that the Germans operated in force, they grossly outnumbered the defending squadrons,” noted the official postwar RAF account of the Battle of Britain. For the most part, RAF squadrons went into combat one unit at a time, sometimes engaging enemy formations of fighters and bombers that outnumbered them more than tenfold. Yet despite the crisis, the Poles in 303 Squadron were kept far from any action.

  On August 30, the Germans mounted their most concentrated assault yet, cutting the electricity to seven radar stations and knocking them temporarily off the air. Most key air bases in the south were hit as never before. That evening, Ronald Kellett put in a call to Fighter Command headquarters, urging that it make 303 operational. Having lost nearly a hundred pilots in the previous week, the RAF finally gave in and ordered the squadron into battle the next day.

  The fighting on August 31, as it turned out, was even more intense than the day before. On that single, white-hot day, the Luftwaffe flew more than 1,400 sorties against the beleaguered airfields and radar stations encircling London. Shortly before 6 P.M., 303 Squadron finally got its orders to fly. It had been one year, almost to the day, since the Luftwaffe had devastated Poland and humiliated the Polish air force. Now, after twelve months of anguish, anger, and frustration, the time had come to begin settling the score.

  Shortly after taking off, the Poles hurtled down on the surprised enemy like avenging furies. In less than fifteen minutes, six of them had each shot down a Messerschmitt in the skies over south London. While the squadron would go on to compile a brilliant overall record in the Battle of Britain, it is doubtful that its contribution was ever more urgently needed than on its first day of combat. For it was on August 31 that Fighter Command suffered its heaviest losses of the entire battle—thirty-nine fighters shot down and fourteen pilots killed. The Germans, however, lost an identical number, with 303’s pilots credited with 15 percent of those kills—and no losses of their own.

  The RAF senior command, which just the day before had been so loath to let 303 fight, now deluged the squadron with congratulations. “Magnificent fighting, 303 Squadron,” cabled Sir Cyril Newall, chief of the air staff. “I am delighted. The enemy is shown that Polish pilots [are] definitely on top.” And that was just the beginning. On September 5, 303 was credited with destroying eight enemy aircraft—20 percent of that day’s RAF kills.

  Two days later, the now-familiar waves of German bombers and fighters failed to head for their previous targets—the coastal defenses and RAF bases of southern England. Following the curve of the Thames, they were aimed straight at London. Hitler had ordered attacks on the British capital in retaliation for a few scattered RAF bombing raids on Berlin. He and Göring had also persuaded themselves that the Luftwaffe had neutralized the RAF and therefore was free to concentrate on London and other British cities. It was a spectacular miscalculation—and no less so for being almost true. In the previous two weeks, the RAF had lost 227 fighters, had seen major damage inflicted on airfields and sector-control stations, and was close to being finished. What Fighter Command needed above all was time to regroup, and Hitler provided just that. Instead of persisting in heavy attacks against RAF installations and communications, the German air force began eight weeks of massive bombing of London—the most intense chapter in the eight-month reign of terror called the Blitz.

  On that frenzied first day of the Blitz, the Poles of 303 shot down fourteen German planes in less than fifteen minutes. They also managed to disperse a German bomber formation before it could hit London. With nearly a quarter of the formation destroyed, the surviving bombers turned and headed back to France.

  In just over a week of combat, the all-Polish squadron had destroyed nearly forty enemy aircraft—by far the best record in the entire RAF—and in doing so had become unofficial heroes of the realm. Government officials, senior RAF commanders, private citizens, Churchill, and the king himself joined at various times in paying honor to 303’s fliers. “You use the air for your gallant exploits, and we for telling the world of them,” the BBC’s director general wrote the unit. “Long live Poland!”

  At Buckingham Palace, King 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.”

  Again and again, the question was asked: What made the Poles so good? The answer wasn’t simple. Generally older than their British counterparts, most Polish pilots had hundreds of hours of flying time in a variety of aircraft, as well as combat experience in both Poland and France. Unlike British fliers, they had learned to fly in primitive, outdated planes and thus had not been trained to rely on a sophisticated radio and radar network. As a result, said one British flight instructor, “their understanding and handling of aircraft was exceptional.” Although they appreciated the value of tools such as 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.

  The Poles’ intensity of concentration was equaled only by their daring. British pilots were taught to fly and fight with caution. The Poles, by contrast, had been trained to be aggressive, to crowd and intimidate the enemy, to make him flinch and then bring him down. After firing a brief opening burst at a range of 150 to 200 yards, the Poles would close almost to point-blank range. “When they go tearing into enemy bombers and fighters they get so close you would think they were going to collide,�
�� observed one RAF flier. On several occasions, crew members of Luftwaffe bombers, seeing that 303’s Hurricanes were about to attack, baled out before their planes were hit.

  On September 15, the Poles of 303 were given their biggest opportunity to date to show off their exceptional combat skills. More than a month had passed since the Battle of Britain began. The RAF was still flying, and London, after a weeklong battering, was still defiant. Although Hitler was having doubts about Operation Sea Lion, he decided to give Göring another chance to make Götterdämmerung possible. And so Göring gave the order: every available Luftwaffe aircraft was to be unleashed in an all-out push to end RAF resistance. All of 11 Group’s squadrons were engaged in combating the furious daylong assault, plus much of 12 Fighter Group, which included the other Polish squadron and a Czech unit. In all, some one hundred Polish and Czech pilots participated in the dogfights of September 15, making up about 20 percent of the total RAF force.

  Churchill would later call the September 15 melee “one of the decisive battles of the war.” The Luftwaffe had thrown nearly everything it had at the British but had failed to achieve its main objective: elimination of the RAF as a defensive force. There would be more German raids in the future, more destruction and death visited on London and other English cities. Nevertheless, the myth of the Luftwaffe’s invincibility was forever shattered. Two days later, Hitler decided he’d had enough and canceled Operation Sea Lion until further notice.

  Years after the war, a Battle of Britain historian would write, “Even though it was equipped with the Hurricane, the least effective of the main fighters, 303 Squadron was by most measures the most formidable fighter unit [RAF or Luftwaffe] of the Battle.”