Author: Jiří Reichl, VHÚ
On Saturday, May 4, after the winter break, the doors of the Kbela Aviation Museum, adjacent to the 24th Air Transport Base, will open. Visitors can look forward to a new exhibit in the collections of the Military Historical Institute Prague. This is a Mi-35 helicopter, which served in the Army of the Czech Republic until recently. The exhibition “Rotors over Afghanistan” will also be opened, mapping the deployment of Mi helicopters in the missions of the Army of the Czech Republic. Several renovated objects from existing collections are also prepared. The start of the event is at 10.00.
Not long ago, it flew in the equipment of the Air Force of the Czech Republic, last year it was ceremoniously decommissioned together with other machines of this type, and now thanks to the good cooperation of the Military Historical Institute Prague with the Army of the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Defense of the Czech Republic, it will expand the collection funds of the Kbela Aviation Museum. It will be a big attraction for visitors on Saturday, May 4, at the opening of the 56th museum season. We are talking about a Mi-35 helicopter with production number 3369 in a special marking commemorating the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the 311th Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron RAF. The head of a tiger is depicted on both sides of the fuselage, which symbolizes the affiliation of the 221st helicopter squadron to the association of elite “tiger squadrons” of NATO.
To highlight the importance of Mi helicopters for the Czech army and to highlight the importance of the new addition to the collection fund of the Military Historical Institute Prague, the VHÚ Prague team prepared the exhibition “Rotors over Afghanistan”, which will present the actions of Czech members of the Czech Air Force in the difficult conditions of the ISAF and Resolute Support military missions. Objects from the Varia-Mise sub-collection, which have so far been hidden from the eyes of visitors in depositories, will be exhibited. Most of them were handed over to the VHÚ collections by the participants of foreign missions themselves.
Visitors will be welcomed at 10.30 by the director of the Prague Military Historical Institute, brig. gene. Aleš Knížek, Commander of the Air Force of the Army of the Czech Republic, Maj. Gen. Petr Čepelka and the commander of the 22nd base of the helicopter air force in Náměšt nad Oslavou, Brig. gene. Rudolf Straka. This is where the new addition to the VHÚ collections comes from.
The Military Historical Institute received a lot of help from the state-owned enterprise LOM Praha based on long-term cooperation. This time, LOM Praha experts participated in transporting the machine from its home base of the 22nd Helicopter Air Force to Kbel, where the employees put it back together. At the start of the 56th season, it will be exhibited next to an older model, the Mi-24D version, which was also prepared for exhibition purposes by the employees of this state-owned aircraft repair company for the Kbely Aviation Museum.
In addition to the helicopters, the reconstructed Northrop F-5E Tiger II aircraft, whose repair was completed at the end of last year by Česká aviatická, will also be on display at the static display. Only on the day of the ceremonial opening of the 56th season will the aircraft from the depository be exhibited. Visitors will uniquely see MiG-21UM 9332, MiG-21MFN 4405 and Fouga CM-170 Magister at the outdoor stand.
There is no idleness in the museum behind closed doors
Visitors can also see in the hangars of the museum that the workers of the Kbely Aviation Museum were not idle during the winter. Some exhibits were moved to make room for others and complement the exposition, especially on Stará Aerovka.
Proof of the skill of the restorers of the Kbela Aviation Museum is the exhibition premiere of the Taylor E-2 Cub airplane with production number 147, which entered the collections of the Military Historical Institute without wings as early as 1969. According to the documentation of the time, the restorers gradually put it together, and this year it will be exhibited for the first time as how he originally looked. You can read its eventful history, including specifications, in the Exhibit of the Day section.
The careful care of the restorers was entrusted to the PCK-53 Pilot Training Cabin, which was used to train pilots in flight according to “instruments”, i.e. without direct visibility. In the hangar, not only the cabin itself is on display, but also the control desk that controlled the trainer. “Visitors may notice that the cabin cover is a different color than the cover under the trainer’s fuselage. Colleagues discovered it hidden in a drawer during the renovation of the control table, so it was not exposed to light, so it is the original color,” says Miroslav Khol, head of the Kbely Aviation Museum. In the middle of his speech, he noted that when removing the pilot’s seat, his colleagues found a sunken period coin and the magazine Svět sovétů from 1962 in the table. During the renovation, the cabin itself was repaired first, followed by the table with the control desk. The control panel and cabling received a thorough cleaning. For the control panel in the table top, our restorers made switch levers that were broken. They mounted the undercarriage and flap position indicator in the control panel.
The first officially built Czechoslovak ultralight aircraft ŠP-1 Špunt, the renovation of which was also completed during the winter break, should certainly not escape the attention of visitors. The plug was created at CTU, specifically at the Institute of Aircraft Technology of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. It is the only Czechoslovak ultralight aircraft that passed state flight tests at the Aviation Research and Test Institute.
The renovated Grjazev-Šipunov GŠ-23 double-barreled cannon will also be exhibited in the hangars of the old Aerovka, which will be moved to the MiG-23BN aircraft in the new season. Attentive visitors will also notice the MiG 15 cannon mount, the LR-130 rocket section and the SRP-1 rocket motor section.
