Book "Skrzydła we krwi " - Nina Britton Boyle

"Never before have so many owed so much to so few," Winston Churchill said of airmen after the Battle of Britain. Among those few, the best were the Poles. Wings in the Blood is the fruit of forty years of work by the author.

As a Northolt native, Nina Britton Boyle has been collecting materials and cultivating the memory of Polish airmen who fought for Britain since the 1980s. When she was a child, she listened to stories about her father's World War II experiences. Her family lived less than a mile from the RAF base at Northolt, while her father's stories filled her imagination with the roaring Hurricanes and Spitfires that flew out of the base during the war. Her father's stories made a deep impression on her and left a lasting mark.

During one of the many visits she made to the Polish War Memorial with her husband and children, Nina decided that she would write a book about the fate of Polish airmen as a tribute to their service and sacrifice. Over the next forty years, she conducted meticulous research at the British National Archives, the Sikorski Institute and the RAF base at Hendon. With the help of the Polish Air Force, the Ministry of Defense, as well as thanks to the British Vice Consul in Poland and the support of people who placed advertisements in the Polish press, Nina also reached out to the veterans of 303 Squadron. Their achievements, some of them poorly known, she presented to the reader in a very accessible form. The book consists of five parts and several appendices. The first shows profiles of the "founding fathers" - 36 people associated with Squadron 303 since its inception. Part two contains the recollections of the pilots. In the third and fourth parts, based on memoirs and combat reports, Boyle reports on 303 Squadron's participation in the Battle of Britain and discusses the formation's operation at the RAF base at Northolt. Part five includes a collection of short thematic articles related to the squadron. In addition, the book includes a summary of the achievements of Polish aviation in 1940-1945, a selection of letters and documents, a glossary and an index.

The entire study is supplemented by photographs and documents, including many previously unpublished. In 2014, the Polish Air Force Memorial Committee, in recognition of the care for the graves of Polish airmen exercised on behalf of Polish families, honored Nina Britton Boyle with a Commendation Certificate for her significant personal contribution to perpetuating the memory of Polish airmen and their achievements in the West.

The book in Polish version.

Technical data
Author: Nina Britton Boyle
Release date: 2020
Format: 160 x 230 mm
Binding: hardback with wrapper
Number of pages: 440
Publisher: Replika