Quote:
Originally Posted by Mohoender
You forget about navy and air force. The Poles were operating several naval units, including a cruiser and destroyers.
In addition, they were extremely active in the air force, first with the French and then with the British after the capitulation of France.
In France the Polish air force numbered 7990 men with the "Varsovie Group" quickly becoming operationnal and destroying 56 ennemy aircrafts. Further squadrons were constituted beofre june 1940. As a matter of fact, one of these squadrons was located at Fayence (3 miles from my place), using Caudron C-714.
When France capitulated in June, 6000 of these 8000 men left France for Britain through Spain and Gibraltar (as a point of comparison, only 400 out of the 10.000 Frenchmen evacuated at Dunkirk chose to remain in UK).
At first, the British were reluctant to use them but by August 1940 they had constituted 6 squadrons: 4 bombers and 2 fighters (302 "Poznan") and (303 "Kosziusco"). During the battle of England they will destroy 201 aircrafts out of the 1733 lost by the Luftwaffe (135 for the sole 303 "Kosziusco"). All over the war, Polish pilots will have destroyed no less than 1120 aircrafts (including these destroyed over Poland and France).
A last point, the Czech were quite involved as well.
|
Actually, I didn't forget about the Polish Air Force and Navy, I simply didn't have firm details when I first posted.
I'm a former ground pounder so my focus is on the services I know best...narrow minded I know, but what the hay!
When the Poles first arrived in England, the British Army was scrambling to requip its own forces following the Dunkirk evacuation, so most of the Poles were posted as garrison troops in Scotland. Since a lot of the Poles who fought for the Western Allies remained in the west, if you flip through the Scottish phone directories....you will see a lot of names starting with 'Mac' and a lot of names ending in 'ski'...