Operational History
Based upon results of preliminary testing, the Royal Yugoslav Air Force ordered a production batch of 12 IK-2 fighters, which were all delivered in 1937. When German forces invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, the only unit of the Yugoslav Air Force armed with the IK-2 was the 4th fighter regiment, composed of 33rd and 34th air force groups stationed at Bosanski Aleksandrovac airfield, in northwest Bosnia. The 4th fighter regiment was equipped with 18 Hawker Hurricanes and eight Ikarus IK-2 fighter aircraft.
Rovine airfield, situated north of Banja Luka, was the base of the Yugoslav 8th bomber regiment and its 24 Bristol Blenheim I bombers. During a German attack on the base on 7 April, five IK-2s together with five Hawker Hurricanes engaged German Messerschmitt 109 fighter aircraft. In the ensuing dogfight, the Yugoslav fighters managed to repel the 27 attacking German fighters, destroying two in the process at the cost of two Hurricanes and one IK-2 . For the rest of the short conflict IK-2s were used for strafing advancing German columns and on several occasions they scrambled in pursuit of German reconnaissance aircraft, but to no effect. At the end of the brief campaign the four surviving IK-2s were overhauled at the Ikarus aircraft plant in Zemun before being transferred by the Germans to the newly formed Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia.
Read more about this topic: Ikarus IK-2
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)