Text: Richard Plos

Illustration: Adam Tooby

Cat. No. 7471

The beginning of the fifties was marked by political purges in the Czechoslovak army, and therefore also in the air force. Pilots with any western combat backgrounds or other suspicious ones were gradually weaned from flying. However, the influx of new blood in the form of properly trained and indoctrinated sons of the workers and peasants, supposedly “ruling” the Czechoslovakia under Communist government, was still insufficient, so it was necessary to turn a blind eye here and there and keep in service pilots who found themselves below the line after the political screenings for admission to fly the then state-of-the-art technology, which was the MiG-15, referred to in the Czechoslovak Air Force as S-102. They represented a quantum leap for the renewed Czechoslovak Air Force, which until then had guarded its western border with WW2 aircraft. By day with the worsened Messerschmitt Bf 109Gs, i.e., Avia S-199s, while the night readiness was served with one of two airworthy LB-79s, i.e., with German Heinkel He 219 night fighters.

Pilots who had failed political screenings at the beginning of the Czechoslovak Air Force’s jet era were condemned to still fly the S-199s. These aircraft were already obsolete at the time of their creation in 1947, and less than five years later they were just a caricature of a fighter aircraft. Thus, the 22nd Air Division was created, which was established on June 1, 1951, at the Plzeň-Skvrňany airfield. It included the 4 Aviation Regiment (not the original Aviation Regiment 4 based in České Budějovice, which had already been renamed LP 6) and the 18 Aviation Regiment. The latter was established on the same day as the 22 Air Division and had 29 S-199s, two CS-199s and nine C-2s aircraft in its inventory. Zdeněk Praus was appointed the CO of the regiment. It is not certain what rank he held at that time. According to some sources he even was only a lieutenant. What is certain is that in 1954 he was already a lieutenant colonel and from November 10 of that year he was the commander of the entire 22 Air Division, which at that time consisted of three Air Fighter regiments (slp): the 3 slp in Brno, the 4 slp and the 18 slp, both in Pardubice. His career continued with a move to the same position with the 6 Fighter Air Division (from July 15, 1958) and from September 1, 1961, he became Chief of the Fighter Air Command of the 7 Army of Air Defence. He remained in this position until September 1962.

The aircraft of the staff flight of the 18 Air Regiment were given designations from DA-01 to DA-09, 1st squadron had aircraft with the designations from PS-10 to PS-29, 2nd squadron BS-30 to BS-49, 3rd squadron EX-50 to EX-69 and 4th squadron VT-70 and higher.

The 18 Aviation Regiment was designated with “piston” suffix from 1952 onward to distinguish it from the jet regiments. However, in November 1953 it was moved to Pardubice, by that time, it had already partly re-equipped with MiG-15s, and although it still had 31 S-199s and ten C-2s in service, it was renamed the 18 Air Fighter Regiment (jet) on April 1, 1954.

The two aircraft on the boxart of kit 7471 belonged to the 1st Squadron and are portrayed just after splitting formation, probably starting a dogfight exercise somewhere near Pilsen in 1952. This kind of training has always been, by the way, the most favored by fighter pilots of all time. And those politically not-enough-reliable pilots who were not entrusted by the Communist party to be given a chance to get their hand on the latest aviation technology, were flying their aging “Mules”, as were the S-199s nicknamed, on the edge. There were a number of experienced and well-trained pilots among them, and some of them did eventually get the chance to fly jets. Others, however, had to step down from the fighter pedestal and transfer to other types of aviation after the S-199 were all retired. Some of them changed fixed wings for the rotary ones, as the helicopters were just emerging at the time in Czechoslovak Air Force with the tests of domestic light helicopter HC-2 prototypes. In 1959 first ten of Mi-1 Soviet helicopters were delivered and the helicopter aviation became reality in Czechoslovak army. One of these former fighter pilots flying S-199s and subsequently transferred to helicopters, was teaching the author of this article to fly the Mi-2 helicopter in 1985 ... 

Avia S-199s, however unreliable and stubborn on take-off, were still, according to him, aircraft he loved to fly and fondly remembered. Given the long time lapse, some of the stories he told or the performance he stated were achieved seemed somewhat implausible, but it was evident that he was one of those who took a liking to this stopgap fighter, which ensured the fighter pilots’ were able to maintain their trained skills in the difficult post-war period.