Someone should write a book about those days, would be a highly interesting read..
There already exists a book about those days and I know that other one is being prepared. 😉
book
I know a few guys who spent time in Syria, Lybia, Irak fulfiling their duties as flight instructors and ground personal on the L-29,L-39, L-410. Well, they do not always remember those days with a smile. Every day they were confronted with situations they would rather not be confronted with. Our crews supplied their ground controllers to insure safe flight operations, sometimes they run their own airforce base under control, because Arabs were not able to keep the airbase operational every day. It happened often that their ground personal dissapeared, not going to work for a day, in some cases for a week, because of unknown reasons…….. The mentality far into middle age, their weak will to fight, lack of interest to solve own problems, sluggishness and disinterest in work, then no wonder about their morale in those MiddleEast conflicts.
Also, sometimes our technicians were involved in repairs of damaged soviet hardware. For example they worked on the Su-22, a few years before the Czechoslovakia received that plane from the Soviet union. To teach Arabs to fly was said to be an experience that none of them could ever forget. We got students from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria and other third world countries. I have heard many pilot life stories, their behaviour in the cockpit, comments on their skills. In general, an Arab flight student required approximately 20-30% more flight hours to make his first solo flight. Of course, we had also smart students, good for flying, but the majority demanded a special care of their flight instructors.
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