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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-45516556

Winston Churchill described the Battle of Britain pilots as "these splendid men… who will have the glory of saving their native land". But they weren't all British. A new film, Hurricane, tells the story of the Polish pilots of 303 Squadron - and also highlights the brilliance of an often-overlooked Czech flying ace, Josef Frantisek. 

He was "remarkable - some thought a little crazy", wrote the historians Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud. A Czech "who flew with a fury none of the others could match".

Josef Frantisek has been credited with shooting down 17 enemy aircraft in one month at the height of the Battle of Britain - September 1940 - as Hitler sought to achieve the air superiority he needed to invade the UK. 

The Imperial War Museum calls Frantisek the "top scorer" of the Battle of Britain, external, and he is generally considered to be one of the top scorers of the entire war, despite his death in its very early stages.

Beyond the statistics, however, Frantisek remains an elusive figure. "His aplomb in the sky is documented, of course, but not much else," Hurricane's director, David Blair, tells me. But Blair says he became fascinated by Frantisek - a "lone wolf" pilot who kept breaking away from the squadron to chase enemy planes on his own - and worked hard to discover more about him.

"I like his freedom and wildness, his romantic attitude," says Czech actor Krystof Hadek, who plays Frantisek in the film. "He didn't have discipline - but he was the best." 

So how did he end up in Northolt, west London, flying with a squadron of Poles?

Frantisek was born in 1914 in a village that became part of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Habsburg empire. He was a boisterous child, driving cars from the age of 12. But after training in the Czechoslovak air force he had to watch in huge frustration as that country's military was ordered not to resist Nazi invasion in 1939. Driven by what his mother called a "deadly hatred" of the Nazis he escaped across the border to Poland and started flying for the Polish air force but witnessed defeat later that year against overwhelming German power. Stories of Frantisek flying low in primitive planes to drop hand grenades on German units hint at his seemingly reckless courage against daunting odds.

He fled Poland after its defeat and eventually made his way to France where he managed to fly in combat for exiled Polish and other units. Then, after the fall of France in June 1940, he headed for Britain, where he joined the RAF and the new Polish 303 Squadron.

Frantisek chose to fly with the Poles because he admired their fighting spirit, but his Czech origins reinforced his status as something of an outsider. Another pilot in the squadron remembered Frantisek as tall, well-built but "sometimes a bit absent-minded, as if shrouded in a strange sadness".

With their previous combat experience and burning desire to avenge what Nazi invaders were doing to their countries 303 Squadron's pilots longed to begin active RAF service. But their Canadian and British commanding officers were wary of the pilots' lack of English language skills, experience of radio communication and tight-formation flying.

It was a situation guaranteed to frustrate Frantisek in particular - constantly challenging and exasperating authority throughout his career. But Frantisek's formidable flying skill was what counted when 303 Squadron was finally given permission to enter combat, at a time when the RAF, facing a growing Luftwaffe onslaught, was desperately short of trained pilots. 

Claims of enemy "kills" are a much-disputed area - researchers have found that Allied and German statistics do not match - but Frantisek's achievements certainly gave him one of the highest personal scores of any Battle of Britain pilot in Fighter Command.

Why was he so successful? Peter Devitt from the RAF Museum in London points to his willingness to fly close to the enemy before opening fire. His courage, says Devitt, like that of the Polish pilots around him, may have come from a sense of having "nothing to lose" given what had happened to his home country. But Devitt also points out that 303 Squadron lost fewer pilots during the Battle of Britain than most RAF units.

Frantisek submitted his own laconic reports of his successes. On one action against a vastly superior German force he wrote of "swarms of Messerschmitt 109s diving to attack us" after which he "played hide and seek with them in the clouds", nearly collided with a German bomber and then shot down two enemy planes in a few minutes before he was hit. But north-east of Brighton he "found a cabbage field and made an excellent landing".

What marked Frantisek out was his habit of breaking away from strict squadron formation to chase enemy planes on his own, often pursuing stragglers back across the Channel towards France. The Poles flew and fought as a team, and some of his comrades resented what they called "Frantisek's method". František’s colleagues disliked his habit of just dropping out of the Squadron’s formation and going off on his own to hunt for targets, and some RAF and Polish officers in the squadron initially disliked his lack of discipline, arguing that it endangered everyone's safety. There was also a fear that younger pilots would seek to emulate him. 

But as his successes grew, there came about what Devitt calls a "remarkable compromise". In a unique compromise, František as a Czech was officially considered a ‘guest’ in the Polish Squadron and was therefore allowed to break formation and fight alone, as long as in so doing he did not endanger the lives of any of his colleagues. "The Czech ace was permitted to fight what was in effect a private war against the Germans," Devitt says.

The squadron's impressive record did not go unnoticed. "Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry," wrote Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, head of RAF Fighter Command, "I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle (of Britain) would have been the same."

King George VI visited 303's Northolt base near London, and the Polish and Czech airmen were feted in the media.

But within weeks there was a final, characteristically mysterious twist in the Frantisek story. The pilot who had survived so many hours of hazardous combat was killed in on 8 October 1940 after he broke away from his squadron and then apparently crash-landed in a field in Surrey. His aircraft flipped over, and he was killed instantly. 

Rumours quickly circulated that suggested a death more befitting a romantic hero - that he had perhaps been performing low level acrobatics showing off to a girlfriend. But the reality is likely to have been more mundane - lack of fuel, exhaustion perhaps, a final, fatal misjudgement.

František personally claimed 17 kills and was the highest-scoring individual on the Squadron at the time of his death in October 1940, a day after his 26th birthday. 

František was awarded a number of medals and decorations:

the Polish Virtuti Militari Silver Cross, the Cross of Valour 4 times, the Czech War Cross , Československá medaile Za chrabrost před nepřítelem (“Bravery in Face of the Enemy”) , Československá medaile za zásluhy, 2. stupně (“Medal of Merit, Second Class”,  the French Croix de guerre with palm leaf, and the British awarded him the Distinguished Flying Medal and bar for a second award, and the 1939-45 Star with Battle of Britain clasp.  in 2015, František was further honoured with the posthumous award of the Order of the White Lion 1st Class Military Division by the Czech President, Miloš Zeman.

RIP to a hero amongst heroes.