Stříbrný tryskáč MIG-15

This Czech-language factual book by Libor Režňák examines the beginnings of jet aviation in Czechoslovakia. The period from 1950 to 1957 represents the first stage of this revolutionary development. The modest beginnings involving captured Me-262 aircraft give way to the major expansion of flight training for young pilots, who filled the personnel shortage in the Czechoslovak air force after experienced wartime pilots were forced to leave between 1948 and 1950. Training took place amid tense international politics, when the public expected a new armed conflict with almost complete certainty. Five training regiments prepared hundreds of new pilots, while aircraft disasters and crashes involving the C-3, C-104, C-5 and especially the S-199 became a routine part of aviation life. The individual events are supplemented by archival photographs, most of the more than 600 images being published for the first time. The book documents each year’s training in detail, along with changes in the military air force’s organisational structure, tables of pilot and aircraft numbers, and a complete summary of serious aviation incidents. It also traces the introduction and gradual expansion of training on jet aircraft, including the Jak-23, MiG-15, MiG-17 and IL-28, whose early appearances in the skies over Czechoslovakia were far from simple.