breath easily now.

On 15 December 1940, in recognition of their merits, Air Marshall Sholto-Douglas decorated Witold Urbanowicz, Zdzislaw Henneberg, Jan Zumbach and Miroslaw Feric with DFCs. The fifth one was posthumously given to Ludwik Paszkiewicz. Few days later S/Ldr Kellet, F/Lt Kent and F/Lt Forbes (both were given their own commands) left the unit, and No. 303 Squadron became purely Polish. By early 1941, the defense of the island remained the RAF Fighter Command prime task, but now it could venture into other jobs. The main German fighter Bf109 was still superior to Hurricane and Spitfire in climb rate and altitude performance, what caused the RAF planners to conceive a new fighter tactic called "Mosquito" (later called Rhubarb). Their objective was to harass and irritate the enemy bysurprised, hedgehopping attacks against a variety of its targets on the ground. This suited very well Polish spirit and mentality to seek and engage the enemy.

The 303 flew the first of such a sorties on January 22. Six Polish Hurricanes led by F/Lt Henneberg attacked two German airfields at the estuary of the Somme River causing considerable damage. F/Lt Lapkowski brought a souvenir from that mission; 25 feet of telephone wire somehow wound round the engine of his Hurricane.

Toward the end of January 1941, the squadron converted itself to Spitfires: first the Mk Is then Mk II. In February, the unit joined "Circus" operations, with the first such sortie being flown on the 2nd. Several more followed, and none was easy. If the squadron did not engaged enemy