forgot to lower his Hurricane's retractable undercarriage and accidentally made a belly landing. He was unhurt, and the aircraft was repairable. The squadron entered action in the last phase of the Battle of Britain. František's first confirmed victory was shooting down a Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighter on 2 September 1940. His fifth victory nearly cost him his life. On 6 September he shot down a Bf 109E of III/JG 52 near Sevenoaks in Kent, but František's Hurricane was damaged so badly that he had to make a forced landing near Falmer. An unruly pilot, he was seen by his commanding officers as a danger to his colleagues when flying in formation. His British CO, Squadron Leader Ronald Kellett, offered to get František transferred to a Czech squadron. František, perhaps due to his clash with the Czechoslovak air attaché in Paris, chose to stay with his Polish colleagues. As all pilots were valuable, a compromise was reached whereby František was allotted a "spare" aircraft so he could fly as a "guest" of the squadron as and when he wanted. Thus František fought his own private war – accompanying the squadron into the air and peeling off to fly a lone patrol over Kent, patrolling in the area through which he knew the German aircraft being intercepted would fly on their way back to base, possibly damaged and low on fuel and ammunition. Between 2 and 30 September he shot down 17 German aircraft and 1 probable, including nine Bf 109 fighters, six Heinkel He 111 bombers and one Junkers Ju 88 bomber. This made him one of the top scoring Allied fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain and on 20 September, King George VI decorated him with the Distinguished Flying Medal. A bar was later added to his DFM. His final confirmed victory was a Bf 109 near Brooklands in Surrey on 30 September 1940. On 8 October 1940, František's Hurricane crashed in Ewell, Surrey, on return from a patrol. The cause is not known. It has been suggested that he may have been making aerobatic figures to impress his girlfriend, who lived nearby, or it might have been a result of battle fatigue and physical exhaustion. František is buried in the military section of Northwood cemetery in Middlesex, with a Polish headstone and alongside Polish and British RAF colleagues. Legacy František was the first non-British pilot to have a