[Cracken]

Hi, greetings from Czechs of the Czech Republic to our distant cousins in the States!

I have recently compiled all available skins of Czech and Slovak pilots who flew for the Allies. You may find it here:

http://www.mission4today.com/index.php? ... ls&id=5046

(It also contains the skins of La-5FNs of our airmen in the USSR: the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Fighter Air Regiment. This unit had two squadrons.)

And a brief history:

The unit was formed from former RAF Czech pilots and Slovak pilots who had flown for the Axis and then defected to Russians. (Our president Beneš thought the Russians would get to our territory faster than the Western Allies and he wanted to have a unit that would directly participate in our country's liberation.)

By the spring of 1944 the regiment had been proclaimed fully operational but it did not seen any action until there began an uprising in Slovakia. The unit was sent to aid the Slovaks in mid-September 1944 (they operated over the area of the uprising, well behind the front lines, so, they were a sort of air partisans), it helped the insurgents very much (the vast majority of the regimental air victories was scored there, but it could not turn the war-tide into a victory. When Germans were getting closer to the Tri Duby airfield, the regiment flew back to the soviet-held territory. They spent the winter by regrouping - another 2 units were formed - the 2nd Czechoslovak Independent Fighter Air Regiment (equipped with La-5FNs) and the 3rd Czechoslovak Independent Bomber Regiment (equipped with Il-2s) which together formed the 1st Czechoslovak Combined Air Division - the whole winter they trained and prepared for action in the area of Lvov. In April 1945 they were proclaimed fully operational and in mid-April they took part in the Ostrava operation - the fight for libertion of Czechoslovakia on Czechoslovak soil. (But they did not score many victories there, just some Fw-190s were claimed damaged).

The division was the first Czechoslovak foreign unit to return to Prague in May 1945.

Here you can find all the Czechoslovak pilots who scored kills over the Eastern front:

http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/czech-sssr.html

Here is a detailed link of all kills claimed (involves the enemy units too - it is the last column. Should you need to translate anything, do not hesitate to get in touch.)

http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/vi ... -sssr.html

And of course, the whole web site might come very handy too!

http://aces.safarikovi.org/


All the best.