Squadrone 303 - La grande battaglia

A good film, and a serious attempt to represent 'how it was' for Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain. The flying sequences are excellent, and they correctly portray the stupid Fighter Command early tactics, finally moving to 'finger 4' formation late in the battle.

One gripe. "The Battle of Britain" 1967 started the idea that Polish (and other) squadrons were kept out of the battle because of racism. That is not correct. It was Dowding's decision and he wouldn't have them because of sloppy R/T procedure, which the film highlights BTW. Going into the battle Dowding had a very clunky radar (far, far behind German radar although he didn't know that) which meant that the battle had to be controlled from a battle control room that collated the information. That was entirely new, but turned out to be a huge strength. The battle control room controlled the battle over radio, again entirely new, one voice channel for the whole battle. If any pilot left his R/T on send it jammed communication and control was lost, battle control lost communication with their pilots in the air. The Poles were wonderful pilots and very brave, but they wouldn't shut up, they kept leaving their R/T on send in training. So they were kept in reserve until it got desperate, then we saw what they could do. They still didn't shut up.