SPITFIRE WITH A PUNCH - ROYAL AIR FORCE FIGHTER IN POLISH COLORS

Squadron Leader Clive Rowley, MBE RAF (Ret.), a former officer commanding the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, tells the story behind the latest color scheme for the Flight’s Spitfire Mk XVI TE311.

- CLIVE ROWLEY

May 5, 1945. Flying at 8,000 feet and at just over 200 mph in his personal Spitfire Mk XVI TD240, Group Captain Aleksander Gabszewicz, the Commanding Officer of No. 131 (Polish) Wing, led 11 heavily laden, bomb-carrying Spitfires of 302 Squadron towards their target, an enemy troop concentration in a German village. Navigating by a handheld map to the map reference he had been given, he identified the target some distance out and ordered the other Spitfires into close echelon starboard formation.

He judged the best direction of approach so that the final dive would not have a difficult crosswind component and would take advantage of the sun, and then he flew over the target so that it ran just outside his port cannon barrel and disappeared under his port wing. When it reappeared behind the trailing edge of the wing, he rolled his Spitfire onto its back and let the nose drop through the vertical, using ailerons and elevator to position the target in the center of the gunsight (the Spitfire never had a bomb sight), settling the aircraft into a screaming dive about 20 degrees off the vertical (a 70-degree dive angle).