Originally posted by Parallax I saw an interview of a Swedish pilot who flew for the RAF during WWII.
"Vell vone time ve ver flying over Germany and tree folkers came after us, but vee shot dem down. On another mission 6 folkers attacked us but vee ver able to shoot down 4 ov dem and get avey from de oters.
The interviewer said: Wait a minute. This was WWII, right? In WWII the Germans were flying Messerschmitts.
The Swedish pilot said "Ya dos folkers ver flying Messerschmitts!
There might have been more, but I can find only six Swedish pilots serving in the RAF during WWII. One of them, though, Ulf Christiernsson, is said to be the first Allied pilot to meet a Messeschmitt 262 - in his unarmed photo reconnaisance Mosquito. Eight minutes and a missing wing tip later he managed to escape into some clouds and limp across the Channel (lacking the fuel to go back to his base in Italy). I can well imagine him saying something about both Fockers and Messerschmitts
Another, Gustaf Lönnberg, was shot down on a bombing raid and was captured, but managed to escape via Switzerland back to England where he became a test pilot. By the end of the war he had clocked in some 5,000 hours in 119 different types of airplanes.
Tage Ståhlenberg served with the Norwegian RAF fighter squadrons based in the UK.
You need both guts and conviction to join a war while your own country remains neutral. Well, "neutral".