http://www.airforcesmonthly.com #378 September 2019 // 71in 1995 we had to transfer to another
unit at Pula in the middle of the night.
Basically, we didn’t know what was going
on. They put us into buses, and we had
to travel six hours to the north. This
was done to enable a counteroffensive
against the enemy around Zadar.
“During Yugoslav times, the base had always
housed a training unit. But we didn’t have
any aircraft – we had to buy new ones. We
took the UTVA 75s from aeroclubs and they
were flown with civil 9A registrations. Some
of them were even camouflaged and used
in the war. One of the instructors during that
time conducted night flying missions with the
UTVA. A number of UTVAs had hardpoints
for bombs, rocket launchers and improvised
aiming devices. Those were crazy times! We
also had some An-2s. Most of them had an
agricultural background but, once impounded
by the military, they were used in the war as
well, including dropping ‘boiler bombs’ [barrel
bombs using domestic boilers] at night. The
only advantage of operating the An-2 at night
was that it moved so slowly that the enemy
couldn’t see it and it was often mistaken for
a flock of birds on
the radar!”Pilatus
Croatia, including the aircraft based at Zadar-
Zemunik. However, certain regions of Croatia
retained a Serb-majority population. Unwilling
to become part of the new country, they in turn
proclaimed the independent republic of Krajina
within the boundaries of Croatia. Fighting
between Croatian and Serbian factions
continued until 1995, when most of Krajina
was regained by Croatian government forces.Starting from scratch
The former commander of the Eskadrila aviona
(EA, Fixed-Wing Squadron), Lieutenant Colonel
Željko Harapin accomplished 2,500 flying
hours on the UTVA 75, PC-9M and Zlin 242L.
He held this role from 2014 until succeeded
by Lt Col Robert Ribaric ́ on April 8 this year.
Returning to the squadron to speak to AFM,
Harapin recalled: “We started in 1992-93 when
we were still at war. In 1992, academic training
began in Zagreb and the first flights were
made here in Zadar in 1994. We could only fly
on the southern part of the traffic pattern as
the villages to the north of the air base were
occupied. Can you
imagine? During the
first part of my
screeningThe unit began life with 12 UTVA 75s in 1995.
They were joined the following year by three
PC-9As bought from Australia, followed by
17 new PC-9Ms in 1997. The former Royal
Australian Air Force (RAAF) PC-9As were
modified to PC-9M standard soon after. The
latest addition to the squadron is the Zlin 242L,
bought in 2007 to replace the UTVA 75 fleet.
Currently, the EA consists of four flights,
three maintenance
platoons, 24 pilots- of whom 19
are qualified
N ATO
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