Yugoslavia, The Air War

Current Events 1991

by J.D. Webster

As anybody who has been following the news knows, the civil war between the federal forces, and the provincial forces of Slovenia and Croatia is not quite likely to be ending soon. While the Yugoslavian government looks for a solution, the federal Army, Navy, and Air Force is busy blasting away at various rebel cities. While the overall impression is that of a low intensity conflict, the Air War is quite active if decidedly one sided.

Only the feds, have aircraft. However, Slovene and Croatian militia have managed to acquire a lot of light antiaircraft guns and SA-7/14 missiles. To date (mid-October), a number of Yugoslavian helicopters and gunships have been downed. MiG-21s, Oraos, Galebs and Jastreb light attack jets have been photographed rather indiscriminantly firing rockets into Croatian villages. At least two of the light attack jets have been shot down as well. Mentioned only briefly on CNN one day was the fact that two Yugoslav jets were shot down by Romanian Air Force jets when they strayed into Romanian airspace while raiding a village near the Romanian border. The impression I got was that MiG-29s got the kills. I have no further details on the event.


Current Events 1991


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