In the service of the Gendamerie
Text: Jan Zdiarský
Illustrations: Piotr Forkasiewicz
Cat. No. 948012
The roots of the post-war Police Air Patrol of the Security Air Force in Czechoslovakia date back to the First Czechoslovak Republic. As early as the 1930s, the Gendarmerie Air Patrol (Četnické letecké hlídky - ČLH) was established, which was a relatively modern tool of the young Czechoslovakia state for the surveillance of its territory, especially its border areas. These units of the Ministry of the Interior were formally established on July 1, 1935, and were based on the Czechoslovak Air Police, which had been established by parliament shortly before (June 12, 1935). The main tasks of the ČLH were observation, search and communication activities, monitoring the state borders, searching for wanted persons, assisting in natural disasters, and supporting gendarmerie units in difficult-to-reach terrain. The ČLH did not constitute a separate armed force, but was closely linked to the army air force in terms of organization and personnel. The ČLH also played a special role during the May and September mobilizations of 1938, when their reconnaissance flights around the borders not only helped to monitor the situation in the border area of Nazi Germany, but also contributed to efforts to calm the hot situation in the Czechoslovak Sudetenland. The fact that these efforts were subsequently thwarted by the betrayal of Czechoslovakia's allies, and that the border areas were torn away from the country and annexed primarily to Germany, in no way detracts from the merits of the ČLH members during this tense period. After the German occupation in March 1939, the ČLH was disbanded. Some of its members subsequently left the country and joined the fight against Nazism, particularly as members the RAF.
After the occupation and World War II, Czechoslovakia found itself in a completely new security and political situation. The restoration of state power after 1945 led to the creation of the National Security Corps (Sbor národní bezpečnosti - SNB), which included an air force component. The tradition of the ČLH was continued in 1945 by the National Security Air Force, renamed the Police Air Patrol of the Security Air Force in December 1947. Similar to the ČLH, its main task was to control the borders and support the security forces. While in the interwar period, the primary use of aircraft was for police and observation purposes, post-war tasks were linked to the problems of Czechoslovakia, which was still finding its feet in the turbulent years of 1945–48. At that time, the main tasks were to protect Czechoslovak airspace, control civil air traffic, search for criminals, search service after air accidents, and provide rescue services in the event of natural disasters.
From 1946 to 1948, a total of ten Security Air Force air patrols were established in Czechoslovakia. These air patrols were again deployed with an emphasis on the border areas. However, given the anticipated tasks, the interior was not neglected either. At that time, they were stationed in Prague, Pilsen, Carlsbad, Jičín, Brno, Olomouc, Bratislava, Rimavská Sobota, and Košice.
The Police Air Patrol, began a completely new chapter after the communist coup in February 1948. Its tasks were adapted to the needs of the communist government, which was enslaving Czechoslovakia within the Eastern Bloc and, last but not least, to the needs of the emerging Iron Curtain.
With the establishment of the Ministry of National Security in 1950 and the transfer of powers between the SNB and the army, or rather the military air force, the Police Air Patrol underwent a significant decline until it was abolished a day before the Christmas Eve 1950.
However, the spherical triangle, a specific variant of the Czechoslovak aircraft insignia used by the pre-war ČLH, did not disappear. In January 1951, the Security Flight was established, later renamed the Aviation Unit (Letecký oddíl) of the Ministry of the Interior, whose tasks were similar to those of the Police Air Patrol, but with greater emphasis on transport and courier activities, and from the 1970s onwards also as support for the traffic police. Helicopters found wider application, gradually replacing classic aircraft. From the late 1980s, the aircraft of the Aviation Administration of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (as this unit was renamed in 1979) were used increasingly for rescue and search operations. This is also the function and form in which we perceive the police helicopter fleet in the Czech Republic today.
The use of Avia S-199 aircraft between 1947 and 1950 represents a special chapter in the history of the Police Air Patrol. This type, which arose from post-war efforts to resume the production of fighter aircraft in conditions of a shortage of suitable engines, was originally intended primarily for the army air force. Its inclusion in the arsenal of the Police forces was largely a temporary solution, resulting from the availability of technology and the tense situation at the end of the 1940s, when the boundaries between military and police tasks were often blurred.
The Police Air Patrol represented an important chapter in Czechoslovak aviation history. It combined the experience of the ČLH service during Czechoslovakia’s early years, with modern post-war technologies and, in the form of Avia S-199 aircraft, with technical compromises that were typical of both the post-war reconstruction of the state and the coming decades of the Cold War.