General Eisenhower gets the red carpet treatment. His C-121, 48-614, is now at the Pima Air Museum.
Although defector pilot Mira Slovak gained freedom in America, most of his fellow Czechs aboard his DC-3 opted to return home to their jobs and families.
With the Rhein-Main airflield (and a C-47) behind him, a beaming air policeman poses with a Mercedes taxi.
One of the two C-119s destroyed in a mid-air collision, May 15, 1953.
Tail of the F-84 that brought the two C-119s down.
A few photos from a USAF air policeman during his tour at Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, during the early 50s. The Ceskoslovenské Aerolinie DC-3 was flown by Mira Slovak when he defected to the West in March 1953. Later, a famed air racer, champion hydroplane skipper, and all-around dare-devil, Slovak was piloting this DC-3 on a routine flight when he locked his copilot out of the cockpit, dove beneath radar coverage, and slipped into West Germany. The aircraft sat at Rhein-Main while the diplomatic niceties were worked out before returning home to Czechoslovakia. (It crashed a few years later.)
The photos of aircraft wreckage are sad reminders of a fateful day in May 1953, when an F-84 of the 22nd Fighter Bomber Squadron plowed into a formation of C-119s, causing two of them to crash as well as the F-84. Although the Thunderjet pilot who caused the mayhem parachuted to safety, eight of the 10 crewmen in the two C-119s were not as fortunate.
The Jive Bomber 