Most fighter aces fight one enemy. Witold Urbanowicz fought two of history’s most feared air forces — the Luftwaffe over England and the Imperial Japanese over China — and beat them both. The Polish pilot did it while exiled from a homeland he would not see free again for half a century.

His is one of the great untold stories of the Second World War: a man who kept finding new skies to fight in, and a new enemy to face, long after his own country had been overrun.

The Poles who saved the day

When Poland fell in 1939, Urbanowicz was among the pilots who refused to stop fighting. He led cadets out through Romania and France, and eventually reached Britain. There he joined No. 303 — the Polish-manned squadron that would become the highest-scoring RAF unit of the entire Battle of Britain.

The Polish pilots had a fury and a skill the RAF initially underestimated. Urbanowicz took command in September 1940 after his predecessor was badly burned, and led from the front, twice claiming four German aircraft in a single day. He ended the battle credited with around fifteen victories.

From the Luftwaffe to the Japanese

Here the story takes its extraordinary turn. After the war in Europe ground on, Urbanowicz did something almost no other European ace did: in 1943 he travelled to China and flew P-40 Warhawks with Claire Chennault’s 14th Air Force — the outfit born from the famous "Flying Tigers." In December 1943 he tangled with Japanese fighters and added kills against a second empire to his tally, one of the only Polish pilots ever to shoot down Japanese aircraft.

A hero without a country

Victory brought Urbanowicz no homecoming. Poland had fallen under communist rule, and men who had fought with the West were treated with suspicion; he was arrested and harassed, and eventually fled to the United States, where he worked in the American aviation industry. Only after communism collapsed did his own nation finally honour him — promoting him to general in 1995, a year before he died.

He had fought for Britain, for America, and for a free China, in the cockpits of two continents. All he had ever really wanted was the one thing the medals could not give him back: his own country.

Sources: Wikipedia; New Oxford Review; accounts of No. 303 Squadron and the American Volunteer Group / 14th Air Force. Victory tallies are attributed and, for China, disputed between sources.