World War II › Special Units › Invasion of Poland
Special Units · Invasion of Poland, 1939
The Kościuszko Squadron: 111th Escadrille and No. 303
A squadron named by American volunteers in 1919 defended Warsaw in September 1939 under their stars-and-stripes badge, and its survivors carried the same badge into the Battle of Britain.
- Polish military aviation and RAF
- Lwów, Warsaw, Northolt
- 1919–1940
Americans at Lwów
The squadron began with an American offer. In 1919, as the new Polish state fought for its borders, Merian C. Cooper, an officer working for the American Relief Administration in Poland, met the Polish head of state, Józef Piłsudski, and offered to raise a squadron of American pilots. Cooper, born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1893, had flown bombers with the U.S. 20th Aero Squadron and had been shot down in flames and captured in the Meuse-Argonne offensive on 26 September 1918. His first recruit was Maj. Cedric Fauntleroy, a fellow flyer of the American Expeditionary Force from the 94th Aero Squadron (HistoryNet; IPN).
The volunteers said they had come to repay the nation that had given America Tadeusz Kościuszko and Kazimierz Pułaski, and they called themselves the Kościuszko Squadron. The first of them met Piłsudski on 14 October 1919 and were assigned to the 7th Air Escadrille at Lwów, a unit formed at Kraków in November 1918 that had already flown nearly 200 combat sorties against the Ukrainians. Fauntleroy took command on 18 October, and the escadrille formally adopted the Kościuszko name on 31 December. Some 21 Americans served with it in all, beside Polish pilots and an all-Polish ground crew (IPN; Cisek).
Theirs was not a war of dogfights. When the Polish army advanced into Ukraine in April 1920, the escadrille found almost no enemy aircraft and turned to reconnaissance and ground attack, strafing Semyon Budyonny’s First Cavalry Army at low level in Albatros D.III and Ansaldo Balilla fighters. In the defense of Lwów in August 1920, with five uninjured pilots left, it flew 18 ground-attack sorties a day on 16 and 17 August; over the year it flew more than 400. Lt. Edmund Graves was killed in an exhibition flight over Lwów in November 1919, Arthur H. Kelly was shot down and killed in July 1920, and Edwin Noble was badly wounded. Cooper was brought down on 13 July 1920, gave a false name, was held in Moscow and escaped in April 1921. Poland awarded him and Fauntleroy the Virtuti Militari (HistoryNet; IPN; Cisek).
Cooper went on to co-direct King Kong (1933) and, in the Second World War, to serve in China and the Pacific, including as chief of staff of the Fifth Air Force. The man who made King Kong had founded the squadron whose badge Polish pilots carried over Warsaw in 1939.
The badge
The emblem was designed by one of the Americans, Lt. Elliott Chess. It joined the red and white stripes and thirteen stars of the American flag, for Kościuszko’s service in the American Revolution, to the crossed war scythes and four-cornered Kraków cap (krakuska) of the peasant scythemen who fought in his uprising of 1794. The pilots called it “the Scythe” and themselves “the Scythemen” (IPN, “Scythes on planes”).
The Americans went home after the war, and Polish pilots took over. The unit was renumbered more than once and became the 111th Fighter Escadrille of the 1st Air Regiment in Warsaw. Through the reorganizations of the 1920s and 1930s, when other units adopted simple geometric markings, the 111th kept the Kościuszko badge. In 1934 it was the first unit in Poland to receive the new PZL P.11c (IPN; Chapter 4).
The 111th over Warsaw
In September 1939 the 111th Escadrille was part of III/1 Fighter Squadron of the Pursuit Brigade, flying from the field airfield at Zielonka northeast of Warsaw. On 1 September it had nine aircraft, seven P.11c and two P.11a, under Capt. Gustaw Sidorowicz, with Lt. Wojciech Januszewicz as his deputy and sixteen other pilots, among them 2nd Lt. Mirosław Ferić (Pawlak, Polskie eskadry w Wojnie Obronnej 1939).
The first day was costly. 2nd Lt. Jerzy Palusiński was credited with a Do 17 and was wounded. In a later fight Sidorowicz was credited with a German fighter before he was shot down and wounded himself, and Januszewicz took command. On 3 September Januszewicz and Cpl. Stanisław Karubin were credited with two Bf 110s over Wyszków, and claims against Ju 87s and Bf 110s followed on 4, 5 and 6 September. When the brigade left Warsaw on 7 September the 111th went east with it, to Kierz near Lublin, briefly to Ostrożec in Volhynia, then to Strzelce and Werba. Ferić was credited with a Henschel Hs 126 reconnaissance aircraft on 9 September, and Lt. Wróblewski with an He 111 on 11 September, the escadrille’s last confirmed victory (Pawlak).
In all the 111th was credited with 8 German aircraft, 7½ in some counts, and lost 9 P.11c fighters. After the Soviet invasion it crossed into Romania with its four remaining aircraft. Its men did not stay there. Like thousands of Polish airmen, they slipped out of internment and made their way to France and then to Britain (Pawlak; Chapter 8).
No. 303 at Northolt
The RAF formed two Polish fighter squadrons in the summer of 1940 after courses in English, RAF procedures and the Hurricane. No. 303 moved to RAF Northolt, west of London, on 2 August. Its British commander, Squadron Leader Ronald Kellett, served alongside a Polish commander, Maj. Zdzisław Krasnodębski, who had led III/1 Squadron over Warsaw. Many of the 111th’s pilots and ground crew were in the new squadron, and it took the Kościuszko name and painted the 111th’s badge on its Hurricanes (IPN; Chapter 9).
On 30 August, during a training flight, Flying Officer Ludwik Paszkiewicz broke away to attack a formation of German bombers and shot down a Bf 110. The squadron was declared operational the next day. In the six weeks that followed, during the heaviest fighting of the Battle of Britain, No. 303 claimed 126 German aircraft destroyed, the highest total of any squadron in Fighter Command in the battle. Postwar research against German loss records has reduced the figure, as it has for every squadron: the Polish historian Jacek Kutzner’s count is 58.8, and other estimates are about 55 to 60. The squadron lost 18 Hurricanes and seven pilots killed (Wikipedia, citing Kutzner).
Krasnodębski was badly burned on 6 September, and Witold Urbanowicz, a former Dęblin instructor, led the squadron through the rest of the battle with 15 confirmed victories of his own. Its top scorer was Sgt. Josef František, a Czech who had escaped to Poland in June 1939, flown for the Poles in September and chosen to stay with them; he was credited with 17 victories before he was killed in a crash at Ewell, Surrey, on 8 October 1940. The squadron went on to fly Spitfires and later Mustangs to the end of the war. Arkady Fiedler’s book Squadron 303 (1942) became a bestseller and was banned in Stalinist Poland from 1948 to 1955. Polish Air Force MiG-29s at Mińsk Mazowiecki carry the badge today (IPN).
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. The real badge, designed in 1919 by Lt. Elliott Chess, set the stripes and thirteen stars of the American flag behind a Kraków cap and crossed scythes; a period example is shown in the photographs below.
Timeline
- The 7th Air Escadrille is formed at Kraków.
- The first American volunteers meet Piłsudski; Fauntleroy takes command of the 7th at Lwów.
- The escadrille formally adopts the Kościuszko name.
- Cooper is shot down and captured; he escapes in April 1921.
- Defending Lwów, the squadron flies 18 ground-attack sorties a day.
- As the 111th Fighter Escadrille, it becomes the first unit to receive the PZL P.11c.
- Over Warsaw Palusiński and Sidorowicz are credited with victories and wounded.
- Lt. Wróblewski’s He 111, the escadrille’s last confirmed victory.
- No. 303 Squadron moves to RAF Northolt.
- No. 303 is declared operational, a day after Paszkiewicz’s first victory.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 4: The Air War: The Pursuit Brigade, the Bomber Brigade and the Kościuszko Squadron
- Chapter 9: Occupation, Exile and Memory
- The Invasion of Poland collection and atlas
By the numbers
The Kościuszko Squadron by the numbers
The 111th Escadrille over Warsaw, September 1939
Aircraft, pilots, victories and losses, 1–17 September 1939.
Source: Jerzy Pawlak, Polskie eskadry w Wojnie Obronnej 1939 (1982), as cited in Wikipedia, “111th Fighter Escadrille”; Chapter 4 of this collection.
No. 303 in the Battle of Britain
Claims against postwar research, and the squadron’s own losses, 31 August to mid-October 1940. Research figures are estimates; others put the total at about 55 to 60.
Source: Jacek Kutzner, as cited in Wikipedia, “No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron”; Jerzy B. Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War, vol. 1 (1998).
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
.jpg){kind=link}
Sources
- Janusz Cisek, Kosciuszko, We Are Here! American Pilots of the Kościuszko Squadron in Defense of Poland, 1919–1921 (McFarland, 2002); Kenneth Malcolm Murray, Wings Over Poland (1932); Merian C. Cooper, Faunt-le-Roy i jego eskadra w Polsce (1922).
- Institute of National Remembrance (IPN): “Scythes on planes” and Mariusz Niestrawski, “The path of American volunteers to serve in the Polish Army” (Przystanek Historia, 2023); Nie tylko Dywizjon 303.
- HistoryNet, article on Merian C. Cooper as a fighter pilot.
- Jerzy Pawlak, Polskie eskadry w Wojnie Obronnej 1939 (WKiŁ, 1982), as cited by Wikipedia, “111th Fighter Escadrille.”
- Jerzy B. Cynk, The Polish Air Force at War, vol. 1 (1998); Jacek Kutzner, as cited by Wikipedia, “No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron.”
- Further reading: Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud, A Question of Honor: The Kościuszko Squadron (Knopf, 2003); Adam Zamoyski, The Forgotten Few (1995); Arkady Fiedler, Squadron 303 (1942).