Kościuszko's Squadron

Kościuszko Squadron
Kościuszko Squadron
	Fighter squadron
Patron	Tadeusz Kościuszko
Engagements	Polish–Soviet War;
Insignia
Roundel	Albatros D.III (Oeffag), Ansaldo A.1 Balilla

The Kościuszko Squadron (officially:

Polish Army during the Polish–Soviet War

. To encourage the recruitment of Americans of Polish descent, the Polish military set up a unit called the Polish–American Air Group.

The most famous successor to this original Kościuszko Squadron was the World War II

No. 303 "Kościuszko" Polish Fighter Squadron (Warszawski im. Tadeusza Kościuszki), the most successful fighter squadron in the Battle of Britain

.

Formation

First formed after Poland regained independence following World War I, it consisted of a small group of American volunteers independent of the United States State Department or the American Expeditionary Forces.^[2] The fliers came from a number of militaries. Members included Ludomił Rayski (commander and of the Turkish Air Force), Jerzy Weber (of the Imperial Russian Air Service), Władysław Konopka , Aleksander Seńkowski (of the Austrian Air Service), and Ludwik Idzikowski (of the Imperial Russian Air Service).^[3]

One of the most famous pilots was Merian C. Cooper, producer of the 1933 movie King Kong, who was decorated for valor by Polish commander-in-chief Józef Piłsudski with the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari. During World War II the Kościuszko Squadron was formed by refugee Polish pilots who joined the Royal Air Force and played an essential role during the Battle of Britain.^[4]

The Kościuszko Squadron emblem depicts the distinctive four-cornered Polish peasant cap characteristic to the

war scythes. Thirteen blue stars encircle the badge, representing the thirteen original American states.^[5] The rogatywka cap and scythes commemorate the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794: ten years after General Tadeusz Kościuszko returned to Poland from America, and led a Polish insurgency marked by peasant participation (himself donning the traditional folk dress of the peasants in the region of Kraków

, where the uprising was proclaimed) in an attempt to liberate Poland from Russia and Prussia. This later led to a mistaken belief that the simple to make polearms used by many footmen in the uprising were in fact actual scythes used for shearing wheat.