Thank you, VoyTech.
I would appreciate any further details, since there is nothing about it in
http://www.polishsquadronsremembered...309_story.html
or
http://www.bbm.org.uk/Gorzula.htm
Patton is unclear about the aircraft, saying it "looked like a Spitfire" which means it could easily have been a Mustang.
But Patton is clear the pilot attacked him and crashed into the ground.
Patton wrote in 'War As I Knew It';
"Just before we got there (Reidfeld (sic)), I noticed some tracers coming by the right side of our plane, which, at that instant, dove for the ground, very nearly colliding with the plane that looked like a Spitfire. This plane made a second pass, again firing and missing....... On the third pass, our attacker came in so fast and we were so close to the ground that he was unable to pull out of the dive and crashed. While Codman (Patton's aide-de-camp in another L5) and I were engaged in hedgehopping to avoid this belligerent gentleman, four other planes were circling over us, but did not engage in the attack".
Wilcox writes; "Shortly after they landed, a search party was sent out to find the attacker's wreckage", and Wilcox quotes the source for this as 'Patton's Last Battle' by Charles Whiting - who is an historian I don't trust.
Patton's Diary for April 20, 1945 states, according to Wilcox, that, "the Spitfires "were probably a Polish unit flying for the RAF. Why they were out of their area, I don't know?"" - Well, that's answered if the unit was 309 Squadron.
Wilcox adds that in Codman's book 'Drive' ..... a story went out that the Polish pilot was inexperienced and had made a mistake".
Wilcox speculates that this attack was an attempt to kill Patton by Polish pilots flying in Russian Spitfires and working for the Russians, who eventually did succeed in December 1945 in having Patton assassinated by Wild Bill Donovan's OSS, for which there is much evidence including that of the man who claimed to have done it.
Tony