Letov Š-328
The Letov Š-328 was a two-seat Czechoslovak biplane, the pre-war Czechoslovak Air Force's most widely used single-engined observation and light bomber aircraft. Developed from the Š-28 family for a Finnish order that was cancelled, it entered Czechoslovak service in 1935 and 412 were built. After Germany's March 1939 occupation most were taken over by the Luftwaffe; the type also served Slovakia and Bulgaria, whose aircraft were named Vrana, and Slovak insurgents flew it against the Germans in 1944.
Why It Mattered
The Letov Š-328 was the pre-war Czechoslovak Air Force's most widely used single-engined observation and light bomber aircraft. It grew out of the Š-28 family and was developed for a Finnish order; when Finland cancelled, Czechoslovakia adopted the type for its own squadrons. Production reached 412 aircraft, the largest run of the family. At the Munich crisis of September 1938, the Czechoslovak Air Force held 227 Š-328s with operational units and a further 87 in training schools and mobilisation depots. Within six months the state that built it had been dismantled, and the biplane spent the Second World War in Slovak, German and Bulgarian service.
Design Notes
The Š-328 was a two-seat, single-engined biplane of all-metal construction: a truss fuselage of chrome-molybdenum steel tube and two-spar metal wings. Pilot and observer sat in open cockpits. Its engine was the Walter Pegas II-M2, a licence-built Bristol Pegasus nine-cylinder radial; later production series received the more powerful Pegas III-M2. Armament comprised two fixed 7.92 mm vz.30 machine guns in the lower wing and a flexible twin gun on a Škoda mounting for the observer, and the bomb load could reach 500 kg. Four airframes were fitted with British Short floats as Š-328v target tugs, serving a Czechoslovak anti-aircraft artillery training depot in the Bay of Kotor. Fifteen aircraft of the first production series were equipped for night flying as the Š-328n, because the air force also expected the type to serve as a night fighter.
Operational History
The type began equipping the Czechoslovak Air Force in 1935. Its first combat came in October 1938, when Š-328s of the 13th Squadron fought Hungarian forces near Berehovo in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. A German report of 18 March 1939 recorded 338 Š-328s among the 1,029 Czechoslovak combat aircraft the occupation administration took over. Slovakia kept the 45 aircraft based on its territory and later received 19 more from completed production, 64 in all. Slovak Š-328s flew reconnaissance and attack duties in the brief Slovak–Hungarian War of March 1939, and reconnaissance and bombing sorties in support of the invasion of Poland that September. From 1941 Slovak aircraft flew patrol and reconnaissance over the Soviet Union, and a few attacked Soviet trucks and cars. The Luftwaffe used its captured aircraft as trainers and, in the winter of 1942–43, in the night attack role on the Eastern Front. Bulgaria bought 62 aircraft from Germany in 1939 and named them Vrana, "Crow". The Bulgarian aircraft flew anti-submarine patrols over the Black Sea until 1942 and remained in service until at least September 1944. In the Slovak National Uprising of 1944, insurgents seized at least 11 Š-328s and flew them against the Germans, though never with more than three operational at once. On 7 September 1944 a patrolling Š-328 damaged a German Fw 189 reconnaissance aircraft and forced it to land in insurgent-held territory — one of the last air victories achieved by a biplane.
Afterlife
The Š-328 was withdrawn from service in 1944, at the end of its uprising operations. Slovak pilots had nicknamed the obsolete biplane Kravka, "little cow". No complete Š-328 is recorded as preserved in the sources consulted; what Prague's Kbely Aviation Museum holds is a piece of rudder fabric reportedly taken from an observation Š-328. On the khaki fabric the Czechoslovak roundel is still visible, overpainted with the white-edged swastika that was the Luftwaffe's tail marking in 1939. The fragment is displayed in the foyer of hangar 40 at the museum — a small trace of the 338 aircraft handed over to the occupation in March 1939.