Stefan Sznuk

Who was Stefan Sznuk?

Stefan Sznuk, OC was a pioneering Polish aviator, as well as an Air Force Major-General and was among the first to join the new Polish Air Force in 1919.

Born in Warsaw, he was educated at the Warsaw University of Technology.

He fought in World War I for Imperial Russia and later, after the Russian revolution, with the counterrevolutionary White Russians.

During the Polish Defensive War of 1939, he was staff officer and commander of the Polish Air Forces in the Army Kraków, then in the Army Lublin. He escaped to Romania, later to France and Great Britain. In London he became the Chief Inspector of the Staff of the Polish Air Forces in Great Britain.

Addressing the language problems of each nation controlling its own trainees during the 1942 Ottawa Air Training Conference of 14 United Nations countries that was designed to coordinate future air power; Poland's Group Captain Stefan Sznuk explained: Only in one instance does a Polish airman speak this language distinctly and with the proper accent—it is when he speaks to the enemy using the eloquent language of the twelve English-made machine guns of his fighter plane.