Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: aviation

I had meant to visit the aviation museum at Kbely airport for many years, and in 2014 I finally got around to it. The photos I'm posting today barely scratch the surface of what I found there, as I took pictures of almost every public exhibit with my cameraphone. However, these are examples of what I took with my Zeiss-Ikon Contina LK, loaded with Kodak Tmax 400. These two fighters are the first in the series, being both Soviet-built MiG-17 jet fighters. They look different because the one on the right has radar, with the distinct bulge in the intake (a very imaginative design), and appears to be two-seat, hence the longer canopy. These were some of the earliest jet fighters used by the Czechslovak air force, other than some Messerschmidt Me-262's built at the end of World War II, some of them by Avia. The Czechoslovak air force also had MiG-15 fighters, but older pilots have told me they were only used as trainers. Of course, the Czechs also built the Aero Delphin, which as an entirely Czech design, and the museum has at least one. However, the Delphin was only a trainer.

The textbook trivia answer as to the first jet airliner, is obviously the DeHavilland D.H. 106 Comet, introduced in 1952 after a 3-year testing period. However, it was initially a disaster, quite literally, as four crashed fatally in only the first two years of operation. Later variants fared better (after the initial losses were traced to a badly-designed fuselage that couldn't deal with both pressurization and high subsonic flight), although in total 26 of 114 Comets were lost, a rate of 22.8%. The second ever jet airliner to be introduced was the Tupolev Tu-104, seen here, and it fared far better. Introduced in 1956, 204 were built, and 32 lost to crashes (37 were lost in total, as 5 were destroyed by terrorists), a loss rate of 15%, if you exclude terrorist attacks. In addition, many Tu-104 crashes were non-fatal, to the point were over a third of passengers survived on average. A particularly notable incident was the first one, in 1958, where the pilot successfully landed with no engines (they had run out of fuel) albeit short of the runway. The reason this Tu-104 is displayed at Kbely, though, has nothing to do with any accident. Instead, it is significant to Czech aviation history because CSA were the only export customer for the Tu-104, thus making them only the third airline in the world (after BOAC and Aeroflot) to operate jet airliners. Another surviving CSA Tu-104 can be seen in a park in Olomouc, where it has been converted to "The Aeroplane Bar."

This Ilyushin Il-14 airliner appears to be ex-air force, but Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie (Czech Airlines, or CSA), were the primary users in Czechoslovakia. The Il-14 was one of a series of improved DC-3 and DC-4 copies developed in Russia during the 1950's, and many survived into the 1980's. Today, while they no longer work for Aeroflot or CSA, they are used by smaller airlines and charter services, especially in Africa, as they can land safely on dirt runways. This applies mostly to 4-engine Il-18's, though, rather than 2-engine Il-14's (the Il-18 was more than simply a DC-4 copy, however, and was by far the most advanced of the series). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-12 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-14 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-18 This is not unlike the fate of the surviving Douglas DC-3's. As historians will note, Ilyushin were not the first Soviet design bureau to copy the DC-3, as the Lisunov Li-2 was an even closer copy produced during World War II. The Kbely museum actually has one that they keep in one of their hangars with other World War II aircraft.