The Gloster Meteor in an alternate post-war Poland

[Spinners]

PZL-60 Meteor F.8 - No.302 Squadron, Polish Air Force, 1952

 

The stunning success of Operation Market Garden and the subsequent push through Holland and across the North German Plain during the Autumn of 1944 shook the German Military High Command to it's core and eventually led to the assassination of Adolf Hitler on November 10th, 1944 when his Ju-52 transport aircraft was shot down by unknown rogue Luftwaffe pilots as the part of the Fighter Pilots Conspiracy.

 

The new German Military High Command concluded that it would be in the best interests of the country to throw everything into the defence of the Eastern Front and allow Allied forces in the West to advance without opposition, although the logistical chain made this advance slower than expected. On the Eastern Front there was an almost immediate slowdown in the rate of the Soviet advance and soon Soviet forces inside Poland were held at the Bialystok-Rzeszow line. By January 1944 Allied forces in the West were reaching the borders of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland hampered only by roads clogged by evacuees and surrendering German troops but by the middle of January 1945 General Patton's Third US Army had punched through to liberate Warsaw before swinging north to meet up with Montgomery's 21st Army Group at Gdańsk. By February 8th it was all over and the formal German surrender was signed at Lublin in Eastern Poland by Grand Admiral Karl Donitz and General Walter Bedell Smith and witnessed by Russian General Ivan Susloparov and French General Francois Sevez.

 

The rescheduled Yalta Conference held on March 1st, 1945 saw Stalin demanding a "Soviet sphere of political influence" in Eastern and Central Europe in return for Soviet support in the Pacific War against Japan by invading Japan through Manchuria. However a last minute briefing made to President Roosevelt by Major General Kenneth Nichols on the progress on the Manhattan Project led to President Roosevelt's decision not to rely on Soviet support in the Pacific and to wholeheartedly support Winston Churchill's demand for free elections and democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe and specifically in Poland. Churchill reminded all present that in September 1939 Britain and France had gone to war with Germany in support of Poland and nothing other than a free and democratic Poland would suffice. Roosevelt knew that Soviet spies at Los Alamos were aware of the power of the atomic bombs and also how close to operational status and used this knowledge that Stalin also knew to stiffen his resolve. In the horsetrading that followed the Western Allies essentially got what they wanted with regard to Poland with the new border essentially following the 1940 version of the Curzon Line but the the rest of Central and Eastern were handed over to the Soviet sphere of political influence.

 

The Allied withdrawl from Poland followed during the Spring and Summer of 1945 and culminated in the declaration of "The Third Polish Republic" on November 11th, 1945 a date chosen to coincide with the existing National Independence Day. Also on this day, and wisely for a country now surrounded by Communist states and within the Soviet sphere of influence, the new Polish Government declared its neutrality as an Act of Parliament as part of the Constitution of Poland. Led by Stanisław Mikołajczyk the new Republic of Poland had a difficult birth but the Polish people reconstructed their battered country with such vigour that by 1948 they had recovered their economy and infrastructure to pre-WW2 levels and continued this economic miracle into the 1950's and beyond.

 

During this tumultuous time the new Polish Air Force had a similarly difficult birth commencing with the dove-tailing of the Polish elements of the Royal Air Force (active since 1940) with the Polish People's Air Force (created in 1943 in defence of the Soviet Union). Some RAF Spitfire IX's and USAAF P-51D's were left behind at airfields in the West of the country to reform No.302 Squadron at Świdwin and a handful of elderly Yak-1 and damaged Yak-9 fighters were scraped together in the East of the country to reform the the 1st Fighter Regiment at Warsaw later renamed No.303 Squadron. During the Spring of 1946 ex-RAF Tempest V's replaced the Spitfires and Mustangs of No.302 Squadron but No.303 Squadron had to wait until 1948 to re-equip with the unpopular Avia S-199 supplied by Czechoslovakia. During 1950 both squadrons began to receive Gloster Meteor F.8's from a cancelled Egyptian order following the UN arms embargo and No.302 Squadron operated the type until 1961 when they were replaced by Dassault Super Mystères. A production licence was granted to PZL (Państwowe Zakłady Lotnicze - the State Aviation Works) to manufacture the Gloster Meteor F.8 and a total of 96 aircraft were manufactured between 1952 and 1956.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finflash is fictional as I didn't want to repeat the checkerboard on the fin/rudder.

Edited August 10, 2014 by Spinners

[dsawan]

Nice. plz release if can. I do like the backstory:Fighter Pilots Conspiracy, original though.

[Ngr]

Everything great, but in Poland before 1939 sheme of using insignias was diffrent. Something like this:

 

 

squadron insignia in place checkerboard on fuselage,

checkerboardon the fin/rudder

Edited August 10, 2014 by czarny900

[dsawan]

oops i stand corrected, the fighters conspiracy did exist but different from what you propose and actually had a different outcome in real life;

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Pilots_Conspiracy

[Spinners]

oops i stand corrected, the fighters conspiracy did exist but different from what you propose and actually had a different outcome in real life;

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Pilots_Conspiracy

 

That's why we're in the 'what if' section and an alternate timeline.

[Spinners]

PZL-60 Meteor F.8 - No.317 Squadron, Polish Air Force, 1956

 

 

 

 

[Derk]

GREAT story mate !!!!

[Spinners]

PZL-60R Meteor - No.318 Fighter-Reconnaissance Squadron, Polish Air Force, 1959

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+76.IAP-Blackbird]

Damn that looks great! some german skins for 46`in the planning?

[Fubar512]

Czarny900,

 

Your avatar seems to be almost the same as the logo for Clay Smith Cams....lol

 

[Spinners]

 

All three schemes are included.