Thanks to Lyric1 for sending me the photos for this skin and also to Hajo who sent Lyric1 the 56th FG book he got the photos from. This is an update to an orphaned skin originally submitted by Ratio in 2013.
Bolesław Michal Gładych received his wings in the Polish Air Force on the 1st September 1939. Too late to see combat before the fall of Poland he escaped first to Romania and later France where he flew with Groupe de Chasse I/145, a Polish volunteer unit. After the fall of France in 1940 he moved to Britain and joined the RAF where he flew with two Polish squadrons, 303 and 302,scoring seven kills with them. At the end of his second RAF tour in January 1944 Gladych was unofficially recruited into the 56th Fighter Group by its CO Major Francis Gabreski, an American of Polish descent who had also flown with the RAF. Flying with the 61st Fighter Squadron as Major "Mike" Gladych he scored a further 10 kills and survived the war. During his wartime career he was awarded the Polish Cross of Valour with three bars, the British DFC as well as the USA's Silver Star with two clusters and the Air Medal with three clusters.
All of Gladych's aircraft were named "Pengie" after his then girlfriend and future wife Elizabeth, a Canadian WAAF. This one "Pengie II" is shown as it would have appeared in late 1944, with D Day stripes on the lower rear fuselage and the 61st FS red painted nose and rudder.
