Every war the Czech Air Force and its forerunners have fought
Much of the record belongs to Czechoslovak airmen in exile, flying with the French air force, the RAF and units formed in the Soviet Union, before the Czech Air Force existed. Where a consolidated sortie or loss figure exists in the official record it is given here; where accounts disagree, the range is shown and the disagreement named. Blank cells are blank because no figure could be verified, not because the fighting was small.
From Munich in 1938 to NATO air policing today.
| Conflict | Years | Against | Main aircraft | Sorties | Aircraft lost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Munich crisis and German occupationmobilised, then disarmedCzechoslovak Air Force | 1938–1939 | Germany | Avia B-534, Letov Š-28, Aero MB.200 | |||
|
Mobilised against Germany in September 1938 but never ordered to fight; disarmed when Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. In September 1938 the Czechoslovak air force was the product of twenty years of national effort. When it mobilised on 23 September it had more than 100 airfields and about 1,300 aircraft, some 650 of them front-line machines, most from Avia, Letov and Aero. Its fighter was the Avia B-534, of which 568 were built, a fine biplane at a moment when Germany was fielding the Bf 109; Wikipedia judges that by 1938 only the Aero MB.200 bomber among Aero’s types was still competitive. The government accepted the Munich Agreement, and the air force was never ordered into action. Six months later, in March 1939, Germany occupied what was left of Bohemia and Moravia and the Luftwaffe confiscated every aircraft. A few airmen tried to leave at once: of seven pilots who took off from Hradec Králové, three reached Poland, two the USSR and two crash-landed. Most of the others escaped overland, to Poland and then France, and formed the core of the squadrons that fought in 1940. Outcome The Munich Agreement ceded the border regions without a fight; in March 1939 the Luftwaffe took the entire air force. Slovakia’s separate air force fought Hungary in March 1939 after the Slovak state was proclaimed; that belongs to Slovak, not Czech, lineage and is not covered here.
|
||||||
| Battle of FranceCzechoslovak airmen in the Armée de l’airCzechoslovak airmen in French service | 1940 | Germany | French fighters and bombers | |||
|
Czechoslovak pilots who had escaped in 1939 flew with French fighter and bomber units. Most of the Czechoslovak airmen who escaped in 1939 reached France, which under its pre-war treaty obligations accepted them into the Armée de l’air; they were scattered among French units rather than formed into a national squadron. They fought through the German offensive of May and June 1940. Wikipedia records that seven were awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration, five the Médaille militaire and 70 the Croix de Guerre. When France fell, the airmen made their way to Britain, where on 12 July 1940 the RAF created an Inspectorate of the Czechoslovak Air Force under Karel Janoušek, commissioned as an Air Commodore. It was a short, scattered campaign, but it produced the combat-experienced pilots who made No. 310 and No. 312 Squadrons effective within weeks of forming. Outcome After the French armistice the airmen were evacuated to Britain. Victory claims and losses of Czechoslovak pilots in French service were not confirmed on the pages checked and are left out.
|
||||||
| Second World War with the Royal Air ForceNos. 310, 311, 312 and 313 SquadronsCzechoslovak squadrons of the RAF | 1940–1945 | Germany | Hurricane, Spitfire, Wellingtonand 1 more | |||
|
Fighter squadrons 310, 312 and 313 flew Hurricanes and Spitfires from the Battle of Britain to 1945; 311 flew Wellingtons with Bomber Command and then Liberators with Coastal Command. No. 310 Squadron formed at Duxford on 10 July 1940, the first RAF squadron crewed by foreign nationals, and was in the Battle of Britain within weeks; it claimed 37.5 victories there and 52.5 by the end of the war, and on 8 July 1944 Flt Lt Otto Smik shot down three V-1 flying bombs in 32 minutes. No. 311 formed at Honington at the end of July 1940 as a Wellington bomber squadron and paid the heaviest price of any Czechoslovak unit: of the 318 airmen it sent over Germany in 19 months, 94 were killed and 34 captured, a loss rate above 40 per cent. Moved to Coastal Command in April 1942, it recorded the highest success rate of any Coastal Command squadron between June 1942 and April 1943 and helped sink U-971 in June 1944. Nos. 312 (August 1940) and 313 (May 1941) completed the fighter wing. The Military History Institute counts nearly 2,500 Czechoslovak military airmen in Western air units and 529 dead or missing. Their reward at home, after 1948, was persecution. Outcome The squadrons returned to Czechoslovakia in August 1945 and were disbanded as RAF units on 15 February 1946. Deaths differ between 529 killed or missing (VHU) and 511 killed (Wikipedia); the VHU figure includes the missing.
|
||||||
| Slovak National Uprisingthe 1st Czechoslovak Independent Fighter Regiment at Zolná and Tri Duby1st Czechoslovak Independent Fighter Air Regiment | 1944 | Germany | La-5FN | 561 | ||
|
Flew air cover, reconnaissance and ground attack for the insurgents from inside the uprising’s territory. The regiment was formed in the Soviet Union from Czechoslovak pilots, some of whom František Fajtl had led east from Britain in February 1944. On 17 September 1944 it flew 22 La-5FN fighters into insurgent-held central Slovakia, landing first at Zolná near Zvolen and later moving to Tri Duby. For five weeks it flew from inside the rebel pocket, often against targets on the ground. The Ministry of Defence’s war graves office credits it with 561 combat sorties, 10 enemy aircraft shot down, two probables and six damaged, and up to 20 aircraft destroyed in an attack on Piešťany airfield. Three of its pilots were killed by flak on ground-attack missions and a fourth was captured and escaped; a fifth man died fighting on the ground after the regiment had gone. It left on 25 October 1944, as German forces closed in. The date of its arrival, 17 September, is still kept as the day of the Czechoslovak and Czech air force. Outcome The regiment withdrew on 25 October 1944 as the uprising collapsed. Claims are the regiment’s own as recorded by the war graves office; German losses were not cross-checked.
|
||||||
| Moravian-Ostrava Offensivethe 1st Czechoslovak Mixed Air Division1st Czechoslovak Mixed Air Division | 1945 | Germany | La-5FN, Il-2 | 540 | ||
|
Fighter cover and ground attack for the Soviet 38th Army and the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, as part of the Soviet 8th Air Army. The division was formed at Przemyśl on 25 January 1945 under Lieutenant Colonel Ludvík Budín, with two La-5FN fighter regiments and a ground-attack regiment of Il-2s; on formation the ground-attack regiment had 26 pilots and 33 aircraft. It came under the Soviet 8th Air Army and went into action on 14 April 1945, supporting the Moravian-Ostrava operation that took the industrial region around Ostrava. The war graves office counts 540 operational flights in April alone, 270 of them combat missions, for the loss of six men. It was the first Czechoslovak air formation to fight over its own country, and it became the nucleus of the post-war air force alongside the returning RAF squadrons, with the La-7 as its fighter. Outcome Operations ended on 9 May 1945. Totals for May 1945 and aircraft losses were not published in the source checked.
|
||||||
| Air battle over Merklínthe 1953 F-84 shoot-downCzechoslovak Air Force | 1953 | United States | MiG-15 | 2 | 0 | |
|
Air defence interception of US F-84s at the border. At about 10:45 on 10 March 1953 two Czechoslovak MiG-15s, flown by Captain Jaroslav Šrámek and his wingman Captain Milan Forst, met a pair of USAF F-84 Thunderjets near Merklín in south-west Bohemia. Šrámek hit one; its pilot, Captain Warren Brown, reached West German territory and ejected. The Czechoslovak position was that the Americans had violated its airspace and were engaged over Czechoslovak territory; the United States said the MiGs had fired over Germany. A Czech popular-history account, drawing on period documents, concludes that the engagement began over Czechoslovakia but that both MiGs probably crossed into German airspace in pursuit. Šrámek is credited as the only Czechoslovak pilot ever to have shot down a jet aircraft in combat; he later flew the MiG-23, retired in 1989 and died in 2015. Outcome One USAF F-84 shot down; each government said the engagement took place over its side of the border. Official documents from either government were not checked; the F-84 sub-type (E or G) varies between accounts, and the crash location is reported differently.
|
||||||
| ISAF and Resolute Support in AfghanistanTask Force Hippo and the Mi-24 advisersCzech Air Force | 2008–2019 | Taliban | Mi-171Sh | 0 | ||
|
Transport helicopter support with Mi-171Sh and training of Afghan helicopter crews. The first Czech Air Force advisory group went to Afghanistan in April 2008. Czech instructors trained Afghan pilots on Mi-24 attack helicopters in Kabul from 2008 to 2019 and by 2015 commanded the unit, flying Afghan-owned aircraft rather than Czech ones. The air force’s own aircraft arrived with Task Force Hippo: three modernised Mi-171Sh transport helicopters deployed in January 2010 and entered ISAF operations on 25 January 2010. For a small helicopter force it was the first sustained operation abroad and a hard test of the Mi-171Sh in hot and high conditions. Outcome Advisory work on Afghan Mi-24s continued until 2019. The end date of Task Force Hippo and its flying totals were not confirmed. |
||||||
| NATO air policingBaltic states, Iceland and SlovakiaCzech Air Force | 2009– | JAS 39C/D Gripen, L-159 | 0 | |||
|
Gripens hold national quick reaction alert inside NATO air defence and deploy on NATO air policing rotations. Czech air defence has been part of NATO’s integrated system since 12 March 1999. Abroad, the Gripens first flew Baltic Air Policing from Šiauliai in Lithuania from 1 May to 31 August 2009 with four aircraft and about 75 people, and returned in September 2012 to January 2013, to Ämari in Estonia in September–December 2019 with five aircraft, and to Šiauliai from 1 April to 31 July 2022 with five aircraft and about 95 people. Iceland followed in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and a fourth Iceland deployment from Keflavík began in May 2025, the first for which the unit passed a NATO tactical evaluation beforehand. Since 1 September 2022 Czech and Polish fighters have also protected Slovakia’s airspace. At home the L-159s have backed up the Gripens on request since 2008. Outcome Continuing. Scramble totals and the 2025 Iceland detachment size were not published in the sources checked.
|
||||||
Nothing matches that search.
Every figure, checked
- VHU Praha: V Británii bojovali za Československo. A to je pak pronásledovaloNearly 2,500 airmen; 529 killed or missing; 1,359 returned; 13 left by 1950; over 400 emigrated; persecution and rehabilitation.
- Ministerstvo obrany, Válečné hroby: Čs. letci ve Slovenském národním povstání22 La-5FN arrived 17 September 1944; 561 sorties; 10 victories; losses; withdrawal 25 October 1944.
- Ministerstvo obrany, Válečné hroby: Padlí 1. čs. smíšené letecké divize v SSSRFormed 25 January 1945 at Przemyśl; La-5FN and Il-2 regiments; first combat 14 April 1945; six killed.
- 100+1 zahraniční zajímavost: Souboj nad železnou oponou10 March 1953; Šrámek and Forst; US pilot Warren Brown; competing claims.
- Armáda ČR: Za 20 let služby nalétaly gripeny 38 tisíc hodin (21 April 2025)14 Gripens (12 + 2); first arrival 18 April 2005; 38,000 hours; Baltic and Iceland missions.
- CZDefence: Konec vrtulníkové legendy Mi-24/35 v AČRFarewell 14 October 2023; first Mi-24D 24 August 1978 at Prostějov; fleet counts; Afghan training 2008–2019.
- 21. základna taktického letectva: 212. letka L-159L-159 fully in service 19 December 2001; squadron history; national air defence support since 2008.
- 21. základna taktického letectva: Historie základnyČáslav built 1952–54; Su-7 from 1964; MiG-23 from 1977; NATO air defence 12 March 1999; Gripen April 2005.
- Zahraniční mise AČR: České gripeny budou počtvrté střežit nebe nad Islandem (7 March 2025)Iceland 2014, 2015, 2016 and May 2025; Baltic 2009, 2012, 2019, 2022; first TACEVAL.
- Czech Air Force (czechairforce.com): České Gripeny se v dubnu znovu vrátí do Pobaltí (10 January 2022)2022 Šiauliai mission 1 April – 31 July; earlier missions with dates, aircraft and personnel.
Figures verified 2026-09-29. Back to the Czech Air Force.