He was the most successful Polish fighter ace of the WWII. He fought during the Battle of Britain, led the Polish Fighting Team in North Africa, The Skalski Flying Circus and was the first Pole to command a RAF squadron.
On September 1, 1939, after the beginning of German invasion of Poland, he attacked a German Henschel Hs 126 reconnaissance aircraft, eventually shot down by Marian Pisarek. Full of the chivalric instincts of another age, he landed in a field beside the German bomber, pulled the two wounded crew clear of the wreckage and bandaged them up before handing them over to the police. But what he saw the Germans doing to his country soon turned him into a deadly killer. A brilliant flier, with extraordinary eyesight and lightning reactions, he thrived on danger and was entirely in his element in the thick of battle.
Skalski’s fame grew quickly, with Poles praising his ‘bird-like instinct’ and Germans calling him the ‘flying death’.
Skalski was remembered as a great individualist and man of action. One of his pilots described him as "an eagle in the air, he was a great commander and a brilliant leader and we would follow him to hell if necessary".
After the war Skalski was offered jobs in the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force but he believed it was his duty to devote his talents and experience to helping Poland. Between 1948-1956 he was imprisoned and tortured by the Communist regime.
Skalski received an amnesty in 1956 after the political thaw following Stalin’s death, and was fully rehabilitated. In 1957 he rejoined the Polish Air Force, from which he retired in 1968, continuing to take an active interest in flying. He died in Warsaw in 2004, aged 89.
