ForumGarden

In my Youtube wanderings this morning, I came across this:



When I was at the Battle of Britain memorial near Folkstone A fellow I met there mentioned something about a Polish Squadron.

I guess this may be what he was talking about.

Bit more than a footnote. Arguably if they hadn't fought in the battle of britain the outcome might have been very different.

They've made a film about it.



The way they were treated post war is shameful no polish servicemen (army, airfoce or navy) were allowed to take part in the victory parades at the end of the war for fear of offending the russians) Thew other bot that gets written out of history by ukip and the right is how we handed over hundreds of thousands of prisoners, not just troops but women and children were handed over and subsequently slaughtered by the russaans. I went to school in classes with a fairly large percentage of the children of some of the soldiers who remained in Scotland post war - there were polish army camps in several places.

If you believe the propaganda of the brexiteers no one else fought alongside us in ww2. sadly most of them don't actually know any better.

It was actually the poles that gave us an enigma machine early on in the war.

I met an old fella at a remote country air strip in Victoria about a decade and a half ago. We were just chatting and I asked if he flew and he said no, he liked to come down and just watch the planes.

Afterwards I spoke to another person and told them about the chat with the old guy . They laughed and said "do you know who that is?" ...I'm like "nope".

Turns out he was a spitfire pilot in England who also took part in the air battles over London. I was quite shocked because until that point I thought it was Brits who took care of all that. Not so . I looked into it afterward and found there were hardly any Brits in the skies over London at that time. They had missions elsewhere.

A spitfire pilot though....deep respect.

I actually live within walking distance of the birthplace of the Spitfire - Supermarine Woolston. This later became the Vosper Thorneycroft Shipyard. The site is now currently being developed into luxury appartments & a factory that makes Air Turbine Blades.

Surprisingly, though, the Spitfire was more of an iconic propaganda weapon. Of course it was a masterpiece of design, but because of the quality it was expensive & time consuming to make. The vast majority of the air force was made up of Hurricanes & Tornados, as these were cheaper & quicker to build.

In the middle of a roundabout near the entrance of Eastleigh there is life size Airfix model of a Spitfire put together as a BBC TV Project by James May.

Beautiful looking machine though eh?

Apparently the aeroplane noises we made as kids come from from the spitfire and hurricanes.