KITS 09/2022

S-199, D-106, Modi Alon, 101 Squadron (tayeset), Cheyl ha-avir, Aqir, Israel, June 1948

The aircraft with the fuselage code D-106 was delivered to Israel on May 30, 1948, during Operation Balak’s

Flight No. 16. As all the S-199s of the first batch it was

equipped with an oil cooler under the nose. On June 1,

it joined the fighting and just two days later Modi Alon

achieved the first two air-to-air kills for the S-199

fighter and, by extension, the newly established

Israeli Air Force. Alon’s victims were two Egyptian

C-47s makeshift bombers of the Royal Egyptian Air

Force’s No. 3 Squadron. On the fateful day of the kills,

“Messer” coded D-106 was the only airworthy fighter

available to Israel, as the other three S-199s delivered up to that time were either destroyed, damaged,

or in various stages of assembly. The following day,

No. 101 squadron pilot Dov Ben Zvi damaged D-106 on

takeoff, leaving the squadron without any airworthy

fighter. To counter REAF air raids, No. 101 squadron

relocated to an improvised dirt airstrip set up in the

town of Herzliya. Repaired “Mule” D-106 was made

airworthy again, but not for long. On takeoff, while

flown from the Herzliya airstrip, one of the wheels

hit a patch of mud, causing the airplane to flip over.

Gideon Lichtman survived the crash, but D-106 was

scrapped.

S-199.302, rtm. Josef Filus, Squadron 1, Fighter Air Regiment 7, Brno-Černovice, Czechoslovakia, August 1949

This “Mule” was manufactured in the Aero factory and

was assigned to the Fighter Air Regiment 7 on August

4, 1948. There it served with first squadron and got the

code IV-3. On August 1, 1949, this “Mule” was damaged in

the landing accident. Pilot, rtm. (Master Sergeant) Josef

Filus was lightly wounded and the airframe was sent for

repairs to the factory. After the repair the aircraft was

assigned to the Air Military Academy in Hradec Králové and was damaged again – this time during take-off

accident at the Malacky airfield on March 31, 1951. Another damage happened on November 20, 1950, and it was

still not the last one. During the take-off at the Zvolen

airbase, where it served with the Training Air Regiment

5, the trainee svob. (Private 1st Class) Antonín Kepr

crashed it for the fourth time. It is interesting the S-199

of this production number is stated as one of the Mules

sent to Israel, but numerous records about its service in

Czechoslovak Air Force are contrary to it.

S-199.??, Stíhací výcvikové středisko, Planá u Českých Budějovic, Československo, květen 1948

The Fighter Training Center was set up on February 1, 1947, in order to provide new pilots with fighter

training after they gained their basic and advanced

piloting skills in the Aviation Training School. It was

located at the Planá, the airfield near to České Budějovice. The personnel and aircraft of the Fighter Air

Regiment 5 formed new Fighter Training Center with

Aviation Regiment 4 and Training Squadron No. 2 also

September 2022

contributing. After the proper training of instructors,

the first batch of student-pilots started their training

on September 1, 1947. Very important course started

in May 1948. As a part of the DI operation (DI stands

in Czech for Restricted, Israel) several Israeli pilots,

mostly foreign volunteers, undergone conversion

training on the S-199 to fly them for Israeli Air Force. They used several different aircraft, and the one

coded JV-9 was one of them. The serial number of

this aircraft is not known, there are several numbers

which would fit in time and location and are not assigned to any known code. We have chosen number

73 from them as one of probable. The marking was

standard, and the aircraft probably lacked the blue

highlighting of all the air inlets.

INFO Eduard

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