Military flying at Dęblin began at the old Austrian airfield by the fortress where the Wieprz meets the Vistula. In May 1920, during the war with Soviet Russia, a French pilot school worked here for a short time. The permanent school came later. The Officers’ Aviation School (Oficerska Szkoła Lotnictwa) was founded in Grudziądz on 5 November 1925 under Colonel Roman Florer. Some secondary accounts give 1 November. It moved to Dęblin on 14 April 1927, so that, in the school’s own words, everything needed for flying training was in one place.

The first observers finished on 15 September 1927. The first formal commissioning, on 15 August 1928, made 77 graduates second lieutenants. The class included Zdzisław Krasnodębski, later the first commander of No. 303 Squadron, and Walerian Jesionowski, later commander of No. 308 Squadron. In 1928 the school became the Szkoła Podchorążych Lotnictwa (Cadet School of Aviation). From 6 April 1929 it was part of a larger centre for training aviation officers, with its own training squadron and air base.

The first course for pilot cadets began in autumn 1934, and it was demanding: of 40 cadets who started, 30 were commissioned as pilots in 1936. From 1935 the course lasted three years. On 17 July 1937 the centre became Aviation Training Centre No. 1 (Centrum Wyszkolenia Lotnictwa Nr 1). It had six training squadrons and could hold 600 cadets at once. In June 1939, as Poland partly mobilised, the third-year cadets finished early and went straight to combat squadrons.

The Institute of National Remembrance puts the pre-war output at 973 pilots and air observers. A Lublin heritage lexicon says more than one thousand, and the difference probably comes down to which courses are counted. Former cadets include Stanisław Skalski, Poland’s top-scoring fighter pilot of the Second World War.

The school was not caught asleep. Polish combat squadrons had already moved to field airstrips, and on 1 September pilots of the Higher Piloting School formed an improvised fighter group under Captain Stanisław Brzezina. The school’s history says the group had 27 PZL P.7a fighters and that Lieutenant Henryk Szczęsny shot down two He 111 bombers on 14–15 September. By then the group had moved away from Dęblin.

The heavy blow came on 2 September. The IPN historian Tomasz Osiński describes dozens of Dornier bombers around midday, followed a few hours later by a similar number of He 111s, which badly wrecked the school’s buildings. A Lublin lexicon puts the day’s casualties at about 40 killed and wounded. The dead included Lieutenant Marian Odorowski, NCOs of the training centre and Czechoslovak airmen who were then at the school. The museum names three of them: Zdeněk Rous, Štěpán Kurka and Ondřej Šandor. Lieutenant Colonel Jerzy Bajan was badly wounded and lost the use of an arm.

On 6 September, 46 Heinkels attacked the fortress, and Lieutenant Colonel Edward Błaszczyk of the 28th Light Artillery Regiment was mortally wounded. Between 2 and 9 September cadets and staff were moved out in groups to Końskowola. From there many went on through Romania and France to Britain. German troops entered Dęblin on 15 September 1939. The town was not liberated until 26 July 1944.

The school’s graduates made up much of the Polish Air Force in Britain, and in early 1941 one new fighter squadron was named after Dęblin. No. 315 “Dębliński” Squadron, whose badge was a black fighting cock, flew in the main Allied air operations and over the Normandy landings in 1944. Its commander from 15 February to 18 August 1944 was Eugeniusz Horbaczewski, credited with 16.5 aircraft destroyed, one probable and one damaged. The Air Force Museum opened a permanent exhibition on the squadron on 14 August 2019.

Airmen who went home after the war were often treated badly. Stanisław Skalski, a School of Eaglets graduate and Poland’s leading ace, was taken into the People’s Army and then arrested in June 1948 on an espionage charge. On 7 April 1950 a show trial sentenced him to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951. On 11 April 1956 the Supreme Military Court quashed the conviction. In 1996 two of his former interrogators were sent to prison.

The present base keeps that line alive. When the 41st Air Training Base was named after Horbaczewski by a Ministry of National Defence decision of 25 July 2011, it took over the traditions of eight predecessor units. No. 315 Squadron (1941–1946) comes first, followed by the 58th Training and Combat Aviation Regiment (1958–1989), the 58th Training Aviation Regiment (1989–2000), the 1st Aviation Training Centre (2001–2010) and the 6th Air Base (1994–2010), along with several supply and technical units. Horbaczewski’s personal pilot’s badge, number 277, is on show in the museum’s exhibition.

Flying training started again before the war was over. A wartime aviation school formed at Zamość on 31 October 1944 and moved squadron by squadron to Dęblin. On 13 April 1945 the Supreme Commander created the Military Pilot School there, and its first graduates were commissioned on 21 June 1945. The school’s own history says that it worked among war damage, with Soviet instructors, until 1947. In March 1947 it became the Oficerska Szkoła Lotnicza, with a fighter and ground-attack squadron at Radom and navigation and basic training squadrons at Dęblin.

The Cold War training regiment, the 58th Training and Combat Aviation Regiment, was formed in 1958 and flew until 2000. On 1 January 1968 the school gained higher-education status as the Higher Officers’ Aviation School (WOSL), and its first cadets matriculated on 17 March 1968. The first engineer-pilots graduated in 1971. An enthusiast survey of the airfield counts 66 TS-11 Iskras with the regiment and eight An-2s with a training squadron in 1991. Mirosław Hermaszewski, the first Pole in space, was commandant from 1987 to 1990.

After 1989 the school and the airfield were separated. On 1 October 1994 the school became the Higher Officers’ School of the Air Force (WSOSP). On 6 December 1994 the airfield became the 6th Air Base, which was placed under the 4th Air Training Wing on 17 December 2000. The 1st Aviation Training Centre took over the flying from 2001. On 31 December 2010 the two merged into the 41st Air Training Base, under an order dated 1 July 2010. The school’s present name, Lotnicza Akademia Wojskowa, took effect on 1 October 2018. The school’s own history dates the change to 28 August 2018.

Poland chose the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 in February 2014 to replace the TS-11 Iskra. The first contract, for eight aircraft with training and logistics support, was worth PLN 1,167,754,500 according to Polska Zbrojna. Defence24 reported a gross figure of PLN 1.432 billion. The first two aircraft arrived at Dęblin in November 2016. On 27 March 2018 Poland ordered four more for over EUR 115 million, with an option for four that was later taken up. Leonardo delivered the final four on 16 December 2022, bringing the fleet to 16.

The early years were hard. A Supreme Audit Office (NIK) post-audit statement to the 41st Air Training Base, dated 11 June 2021, found that the M-346 fleet was serviceable on average only 47.3 per cent of the time in 2020 and 56.4 per cent in 2021, against a contract figure of at least 75 per cent. In 2020 only 239 of 449 planned M-346 hours were flown. The base had 12 M-346 instructors. The press later reported the NIK’s wider finding that more than 40 per cent of jet-pilot graduates in 2019–2020 had not trained on jets at all.

To fix the support problems, Leonardo signed a long-term support agreement on 17 February 2023 with Wojskowe Zakłady Lotnicze Nr 1, the military aircraft works next to the Dęblin airfield. The fleet was grounded again on 5 December 2023, when a cowling came off a Bielik over Łuków county. It stayed on the ground until spring 2024. Then on 12 July 2024 a Bielik crashed at Gdynia-Babie Doły and its instructor pilot was killed. At the time of writing no final cause for that crash had been published.

The Air Force commander, General Andrzej Błasik, proposed a museum at Dęblin on 3 June 2009. An honorary committee of 17 members was set up that October. Błasik was killed in the Smoleńsk crash of April 2010, before the museum opened. A ministry decree created the museum on 10 January 2011, Waldemar Wójcik became its first director on 1 March, and it opened on 26 August 2011. Its later directors were Ryszard Hać (2013–2016) and Paweł Pawłowski from 2017.

Next door, the jet that trained most of these pilots has been retired. At the start of 2020 Dęblin still had 36 TS-11 Iskras, the first jet designed in Poland to enter production and service. They were built at Mielec between the 1960s and 1987, and sources give totals of between 400 and 424. The Iskra stopped training cadets on 9 December 2020. The White-and-Red Sparks, who flew seven of them, made their farewell flight at Dęblin on 27 July 2022, after the type had served the air force for more than 58 years.

The collection came mostly from aircraft and equipment the armed forces were retiring, with gifts from former pilots and collectors. It now has more than 80 aircraft. Among them are a C-130 Hercules, a MiG-29, a MiG-23MF, an Su-22UM3K, PZL-130 Orlik number 005 and the only Mi-6 helicopter in Poland. In September 2025 the base handed seven TS-11 Iskras from the disbanded White-and-Red Sparks team to a foundation in Mielec, where the type was built, to be restored for air shows.