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, and he is generally considered to be one of the top scorers of the entire war, despite his death in its very early stages.
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.
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... there came about what Devitt calls a "remarkable compromise". Frantisek was given permission to take off with 303 Squadron as a kind of "guest" who could head off on his own. "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."
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45516556
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