1:72 DC-3/C-47 Československé Aerolinie - Escape To Freedom, The Daring Flight From Communist Czechoslovakia, 24 March 1950

The three Dakotas that did not land in Prague on 24 March 1950

That Friday morning three domestic services of the national carrier took off from Brno, Ostrava and Bratislava. Not one of them reached its destination. The crews, which included former members of the Royal Air Force, turned west, flew low out of radar cover and landed at the American base of Erding near Munich. It was the largest mass departure across the Iron Curtain that postwar Europe had seen.

What happened to the people on board

Altogether there were around eighty passengers and crew members in the cabins, and the great majority of them knew nothing of the plan beforehand. After landing they were given a choice; about a quarter asked for asylum and the rest went home. For the regime of the day the whole affair was a heavy embarrassment and it set off a wave of harsh reprisals against airmen who had served in the West during the war.

Sheet contents

• the postwar colors of the transport aircraft of the national carrier
• registration marks, titles and small technical stencils
• 1:72 size, the most widespread for this twin-engine type
• a sheet tied to one particular event, not a general set

The artwork is intended for the available kits of the civil and the military form of the machine. Before applying it, check the layout of the windows and doors on your model, because the individual batches differ in this detail. You will find no plastic parts and no paints in the envelope.

For a modeler this subject is rewarding because it also leads to a whole scene. A machine in the postwar colors of the national carrier can be built as the quiet picture of a scheduled service, or on the contrary with the crew at the steps on a foreign airfield. Both tell the same story, only from a different end.