General Patton's L5 attacked by an RAF Spitfire.

[tcolvin]

Is anything known about the crash on April 20, 1945, reported by General Patton in his book “War As I Knew It”, of an RAF Spitfire, piloted in one account by an inexperienced Polish pilot, that had attempted to shoot down his L5 a few miles from Reidfeld (sic) near Munich? Patton saw four other Spitfires flying top cover for the crashed aircraft.


Robert K Wilcox in his book, 'Target: Patton', published in 2008, wrote that “ Maciej Stancki, a graduate student at both Warsaw University and Poland's National Academy of Defense”, had told him by e-mail that “the Polish Air Force lost no planes or pilots on April 20, 1945”.


The only Polish RAF pilots flying in Germany on that date, according to Wilcox, were 131 Wing comprising 302, 308 and 317 Squadrons, all equipped with Spitfire XVIs, but stationed at Nordhorn and out of range of Munich.


Tony

[VoyTech]

F/Lt Mieczyslaw Gorzula of No. 309 Sqn escorted Sgt Stefan Zagroba whose aircraft had an engine problem. Both flew North American Mustang IIIs. Don't know who “Maciej Stancki, a graduate student at both Warsaw University and Poland's National Academy of Defense” is, but the story was described in Polish aviation publications. I remember reading it in an obituary of Mieczyslaw Gorzula after he died in 2005. IIRC nobody tried to shoot Patton down, they just visually identified his aeroplane (which involved approaching it, and that may have been what frightened him). I think Franek Grabowski can provide more detail.

[tcolvin]

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

[Peter S]

Nothing in Gorzula's log book...