Ah! 300 Sqn, then?

If he was a pre-war trained pilot, he would have been subsumed into the RAFVR on arrival in Britain - like nearly all of the wartime expansion.

I'm not especially well-versed on the politics of the Poles during the time, but a lot of the allied Air Forces had their own policies on commissioning. For example, there was a certain push from the RAAF and RNZAF to get their lads promoted and commissioned. Most aircrew reached their first operational Squadron as Sergeant (No aircrew were of lower rank - only a certain percentage of outstanding trainees were commissioned on completion of training) and, assuming they didn't "put up a black", could expect to be promoted at periodic intervals - assuming they survived! There is also occasional weirdness where someone was shot down as an NCO and later commissioned while a PoW; this being back-dated to the day before they were shot down.

Another thing to consider is, your grandfather would have been financially better-off in Warrant rank than a junior commissioned rank!

You probaly know about this already, but there is an excellent project from a Polish group to put all their Squadron Operations Record Books online. You can find it here:-

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Posted By: Iwan Husarmi, Jun 11, 16:48:40