Avia/Letov C-2 v československém vojenském letectvu – Irra Miroslav (2024)

The first decade of post-war construction of the Czechoslovak Air Force is inextricably linked (of course, apart from other types of aircraft) with the advanced training aircraft, originally produced by the German company Arado Flugzeugwerke GmbH, which specialized in aircraft manufacturing and became a household name particularly during World War II. Its aircraft, the Arado Ar 96, which under the Czechoslovak designation C-2 bore the entire weight of advanced flight training at the Air Force Military Academy and the Air School from 1945 to 1951, and then continued to do so until the mid-1950s at the Air School, was a true phenomenon of that time in our aviation, commonly known simply as "Arado." In addition to its primary role in aviation schools, it also served training purposes with combat units of the Czechoslovak Air Force and, in some cases, during transitional periods of a shortage of combat aircraft, even replaced them in training. Regarding its dominant position in the field, the C-2 aircraft was directly predisposed by the course of its wartime production in the Protectorate's aviation industry at the Prague companies Avia and Letov, from whose factories 2,375 machines were produced for the needs of Luftwaffe training units by the end of the war. Some of them were located at our airports at the moment of the war's end, mainly in...