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Husák's Right Arm: Military of Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in Photos


Tied

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With all the stories of Tied whompin and a whoopin on Czech dissidents and the odd revolution every couple of decades and the fact that Czechoslovakia was very much a Western nation before that unfortunate Munich business, how reliable did the Soviets really feel about their Czech Warsaw Pact brethren? 

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They had a decent interpretation of Marxism/Leninism, a good military that was innovative at the time compared to most HATO nations in terms of air assault doctrine and paratrooper insertions, and they were the only Warsaw Pact nation to produce domestically high performance vehicles

 

Aside from their youth getting rowdy every few decades, i have nothing bad to say 

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On 11/7/2015 at 6:32 AM, Tied said:

3btWYQm.jpg

This photo brings me some personal memories. It was in 1998 I think. As a child I was on a school visit to the Čáslav airbase. That day there was a farewell ceremony for the MiG-23 and as far as I remember the pilots were rather sad because the only supersonic birds which were left for them were the old MiG-21 and it would still take more than six years for the Gripens to replace them. They had a lot of accidents with MiG-23 which they nicknamed "Crate" and lost some friends piloting them (it's fair to say that in the 90' most of the accidents were related to the general lack of order in the airforce) but still they knew it was a much more modern plane than what was now left for them. As far as I remember the main reason for decomissioning them was not the commonly named lack of spare parts but the fact they crashed all two-seaters (the last one was lost in April 1998). 

 

The bird on the photo was one of the last two operational ones (and the one on display during that my school visit in 1998). Today it's placed near now demilitarized České Budějovice airfield as a part of a larger memorial site. 

 

As a note. This photo comes not from the ČSLA era but definitely from the 90'. 

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