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Originally Posted by WTE_Galway
Well the stories told say they just seriously hated the Germans because of what had happened to their country and did not see the air war as a "chivalrous" battle. They fought ruthlessly, took huge personal risks and had little regard for their own safety, often disobeyed orders to get a kill, pursued any damaged aircraft relentlessly making sure they were destroyed, showed no mercy. They were not after glory they just wanted to kill as many Germans as possible.
How true those stories are, who can tell these days.
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...I do get rather tired of this fallacy that somehow Polish pilots were way better than all of the other nations in the BoB
Not entirely a fallacy. The Poles, along with Czechoslovaks, made a significant contribution to the BoB:
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[The RAF was] bolstered by the arrival of fresh Czechoslovak and Polish squadrons. These had been held back by Dowding, who mistakenly thought non-English speaking aircrew would have trouble working within his control system. However, Polish and Czech fliers proved to be especially effective. The pre-war Polish Air Force had lengthy and extensive training, and high standards; with Poland conquered and under brutal German occupation, the pilots of No. 303 (Polish) Squadron, the highest-scoring Allied unit, were strongly motivated. Josef FrantiĊĦek, a Czech regular airman who had flown from the occupation of his own country to join the Polish and then French air forces before arriving in Britain, flew as a guest of 303 Squadron and was ultimately credited with the highest "RAF score" in the Battle of Britain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...n_contribution
This contribution is well documented, in numerous reliable sources.
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And this is exactly why I think it is skewed. Nobody is doubting contribution however little attention is paid to very important details such as how long a squadron actually spent on the front line given the frequent rotation system and how many pilots or aircraft they actually lost by a squadron, or which airfield they operated from, or which aircraft types they attacked. It's pretty meaningless. The trouble is that the raw figure is somehow seen as a measure of skill and ability which is very misleading.
The Luftwaffe may have lost 258 aircraft in Poland but that does not mean that 258 were shot down my Polish fighters - there are many ways to lose an aircraft.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not belittling contribution, but I don't accept that Poles were simply better than everybody else. That's nonsense.