Montpellier Fighter Squadron

This latest book from Mushroom Model Publications (MMP) is in their usual 6 ½” x 9” soft cover format for their aircraft books. It is 128 pages long. The book is printed in Poland, in the English language, in cooperation with Stratus.

The book tells the story of the Polish fighter pilots, who escaped to France in 1939 and fought alongside the French in 1940. Officially, there was no such unit as the “Montpellier Squadron”, but it is a convenient shorthand for the group of Polish pilots who trained at the Centre d’ Instruction d’ Aviation de Chasse at Montpellier, before moving to a variety of operational units.

Mostly flying the Morane-Saulnier MS406, but also the Dewoitine D.530 and Bloch MB.152, the Polish pilots saw only limited action against the invading Germans, because of the confusions and indecisions of the time. They did achieve some successes, and suffered losses, but most of the pilots subsequently escaped to Britain and saw more extensive action with the RAF.

The author tells the stories of the individual pilots and their units, describes and illustrates the aircraft they flew and lists their victories and losses. There are many first-hand accounts of the time, 122 black and white wartime photos, 12 color profiles of the Morane-Saulnier MS406C-1 (one is a 2-view and two are 4-views), 2 color profiles of the Bloch MB152C-1 and a 2-view of the Dewoitine D.520C-1. Color illustrations include the cover art too.

The black and white photos include a post-war photo of the author with Stanaslaw Chalupa and a photo of Chalupa with the Consul General of France. There are 41 photos of pilots and other honoraries, with short biographies next to their pictures. Included also, are 14 information lists, 6 pictures of documents and 5 of group stamps. The last page of the book has photos of the metal and cloth Polish pilots cap badge, their breast badge and French pilot’s wings badge.

This is the complete combat history of the men of the Polish Montpellier Squadron – a group of Polish pilots who served with a number of Armee de L’Air units throughout the Battle of France in 1940. They were primarily with the Morane Saulnier MS406, as well as some Curtiss H.75A’s (not done as a color profile), the Dewoitine D.520 and Bloch
MB 152 aircraft. This book provides full details of the unit’s pilots and their victories and losses, plus details of the aircraft flown. The many photographs are rare and previously unpublished.
Bartomiej Belcarz has researched the air war in France in 1939/40 to PhD level. His published work in Polish, English and French is well known and highly regarded by military and aviation enthusiasts.

This is the first book in English which exclusively describes the heroic exploits of these WWII Polish pilots fighting for France.

On the back cover of the book is the cover arts for 2 other related MMP books: “13. (slow.) JG 52” and “Hurricane Ace Josef Frantisek, the true story”.

Highly recommended.

I want to thank Dr. Roger Roger M. Wallsgrove, Editor-in-Chief of Mushroom Model Publications for this review sample.