High ranking officials may have ended up in prison accused of nonsense…but no one bothered with pilots or lower ranking officers. I don’t think the Air Force was ever touched by this…People didn’t end up in jail on nonsense…they ended up in jail if they were in a position to carry out their nonsense. Besides some very high ranking officers in the Army who disagreed with the defensive strategies of the time…there were no “Purges” ala-Stalin in Albania.

I highly doubt that political reasons were the “only” criteria for selecting pilots…far from it I’d say…since I know several former pilots…one of my relatives was an An-2 pilot…and none of them could be considered as “communists” by any stretch of the imagination. They COULD have defected easily of course…as they did in 1997 when they were ordered to do crazy things by the government of the time. But they didn’t…and from what they say…nothing of the sort ever crossed their mind. First and foremost there was no reason to…they lived comfortable lifestyles…so why defect? Secondly, they were very patriotic…and a desertion and loss of a plane would be very harmful to Albania. Whether they agreed with the regime or not…they believed in their job and duties to defend the country from very real dangers. Thirdly, such an action would have reprocution for their families back in Albania…so no one would do that.

But I’d say the main reason was patriotism…there was a real danger…and they were the vanguard of defending Albania from that danger…and they believed in that.

Politically they were harrased much more after communism…not becasue they were communists…which they weren’t…but because they weren’t “loyal” to the new regime. And this ended up with most of the pilots being forced into “early retirement”…or just being fired. The pilots were always a big problem for the post-communist regime up to 97…and to show what they COULD have done if they weren’t pleased with the government…in 1996 the pilots of Rinas staged a sort of “mini-coup” to show their discontent with the policies of the new regime (which had just fired a lot of officers at that point). They took off on about a dozen J-6s as the then President Berisha’s plane was taking off and approached it in a clear sign of threat. They didn’t intened to shoot it down…just to scare him…but they could have. And then they proceded to make ultra-low altitude flights over Tirana…down the main boulevard…into neighborhoods flying between buildings…it was an amazing expericne actually since I saw them as they were flying probably no more than 15-20m from my balcony. And then in 1997 when the “civil war” broke out…they were ordered to carry out insane missions by the leadership of the time…something the pilots refused and defected.

But the reason they refused orders and defected was becasue their patriotism was too high…and they only did it aimed at the regime…never to harm or weaken the country.

I have no doubt whatsoever in the abilities, willingness and patriotism of our pilots…they showed this countless times…not only by never defecting in communist times…but also by their actions in 1997. They may have had limited resources and old planes…but when it came down to what the country needed…they would always be there.

This is some of the worst spelling and grammar I have ever seen on this board. The post is unintelligible.

Reading posts by Venik-clones is equivalent to smoking…takes away 5 minutes of your life with every sentance. So why do I keep smoking??

And what happened afterwards to the J-7 pilot that strayed to Yugoslav airspace ? Was he eventually sent to some forced labor camp as was the quick habit of the Albanian Commies?

Come come now…don’t exagerate so much. Nothing happened to the pilot…in fact he continued flying for several years afterword…but he died in a birdstrike on his J-7 in 1982. His name was Luto Sadiku…

Do you have more precise timing about the episodes you describe? I have the impression that there was only one Yugoslav Thunderjet forced to land. Was it in the 60′ or in the 70′?

I couldn’t tell you any other details…as this info I was told by a former pilot who couldn’t remember any other details…

The T-33 that was intercepted…it was forced down by two MiG-15s piloted by Anastas Ngjela and Mahmut Hysa. The plane was intercepted over the city of Elbasan…and directed towards the un-completed runway at Rinas. The plane landed on the runway but becasue it was still uncompleted or becasue of a hard landing…the front tire blew off.

The pilot which interecepted the F-84 you’r speaking off I think was Gezdar Veipi…heading a two-formation MiG-15 flight…and I think the Yugo plane was forced to land at the airfield of Kukes…not Rinas.

No its not an Igla…

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In addition to the above mentioned 3 episodes of planes being intercepted and forced to land in Albania (we never shot anyone down…we usually surrounded them and forced them to land)…there are at least another 4 episodes of aircraft being forced down…and 2 episodes of aircraft shot down by ground fire.

Besides the ones mentioned, there were 2 Italian aircraft which landed at Rinas (I think F-84s as well)…but the details behind the reasons are unknown to me. There was also a Cessna-type civilian aircraft force-landed at Vlora…and as well another incident involving a Yugoslav aircraft force-landed (at an unknown date but sometimes in the late 70s early 80s)

All the aircrafts…as far as I know…were returned with their crews. The only one remaining was the T-33…and I think the reason it wasn’t returned was realy becasue the aircraft had suffered some sort of damage to its landing gear.

Another similar incident happened when an Albanian J-7 was the target of being forced down…this time by Yugoslav MiG-21s. The Albanian J-7 accidentally entered Yugoslav airspace during an excercise and was intercepted by two MiG-21s…which forced it to make a landing approach at a nearby airbase. The story goes that the Albanian pilot touched down on the runway but then went on afterburner and took off once more…while the Yugo MiGs had already deployed their break chutes and couldn’t go up once more to intercept…so the Albanian J-7 managed to escape.

The two aircraft shot down by ground fire were both Greek aircraft shot down in 1948-49…one a Spitfire and the other a reconaissance byplane. The pilot of the Spitfire died…while the pilot of the recon plane was captured…and then released some years later with the rest of the Greek POWs taken in those years.

So we’r talking of about 8-9 “victories” for the AAF…

Yeah thats an HN-5. Great picture though!! Can you get more scans from that magazine?? I’d love to see the rest…

Here’s a bigger and better picture of that SAM the Alb soldier is holding that I posted earlier. Its the missile with a conical-cover…probably an Sa-18…

i’m looking at the mod magazine right now and i think i see an igla. it seems batalioni i RDKA, Kruje is equipped with them. if i had a scanner i would scan it. the soldier is carrying something that looks like an rpg but it has two tubes. one long for the missle and a very short one at the bottom towards the front. is this an igla? they’re being used in a training mission called “KRASTA-05”. it seems albania has some small spy drones also. lol

I don’t know…we’ll have to see the pictures. Where did you find them (on the magazine online??). What you’r describing actually sounds like an HN-5…not an Igla.

But we do have the Igla in service…thats obvious. In fact it is also mentioned in an MoD article about the same excercise…though they say “they’r using missiles of the type HN-5 and “Igel”…”Igel” would have to mean Igla…probably just an error in writing.

As for the drones…they could just be target drones…not spy drones. I don’t think we have those and since this is an AD excercise…target drones would be used.