A few pics of my recent visit to the museum / factory.

Shame no pics allowed inside the various manufacturing plants as we visited the panel pressing plant / engine and gearbox facility and Fabia assembley line. Museum in the process of been moved so the cars are spread acorss a few halls and also inside the main factory (motorsport cars).

Prototype never put into production :p

Prototype Yeti.

First Octavia:

Cheers,

Julian.

some good pics there, how much did it cost u to get into the factory and have a tour. can u go anytime or only certain times of the year.

Is it only Thursdays as this is what we were told in Prague but that might be just when they wanted to run out the Mlada and we were flying back Thursday.

The Technical Museum in Prague has got quite a few Skoda's and L&Ks before then as well as the motorcyles, bicycles etc.

No Nazi spinning bodies unsurprisingly but slightly disappointly: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread443773/pg1

Repeat

Edited 17 September, 201114 yr by lol

A few pics of my recent visit to the museum / factory.

Shame no pics allowed inside the various manufacturing plants as we visited the panel pressing plant / engine and gearbox facility and Fabia assembley line. Museum in the process of been moved so the cars are spread acorss a few halls and also inside the main factory (motorsport cars).

Prototype never put into production :p

Prototype Yeti.

First Octavia:

Cheers,

Julian.

That mark one Supurb prototype looks a very handsome car. I must get to this museum some day

The pictures are great, thanks for sharing. The statues of Laurin and Klement give me a better understanding of the name on the back of my Skoda Octavia.

I would love to go there some day. It also makes you think how body shapes and styles soon change and the huge leap they have made in such a short time.

Cheers, Julienhuey its appreciated

 

Oh the irony, a place I'd be interested to visit, I've got a Skoda, am buying another.....and my father's brother was shot down and killed in April 1943 trying to bomb the factory...

Just read-up the background to that raid.

 

1500 mile return trip, much of it in daylight, over enemy territory in relatively slow, minimally armed, two-engine Armstrong Whitworth Whiteleys - max cuise speed 220 (Although there were some Lancasters in the force).

 

That's further to go than the  RAF daylight low-level raid against the MAN submarine diesel engine works in Augsburg.

 

And after going all that way, the main force had to visually identify the target (At night and presumably without the aid of modern IR)  - due to a deficiency of intelligence photos the Pathfinders weren't briefed to do the final target marking.

 

Respect.

 

 

Nick

Fascinating stuff - "A shaky do" by Peter Wilson Cunliffe  probably gives more reliable details - some of the internet stuff |I was reading was in error.

 

Operation FrothBlower. - Designed to "Do a Krupps on the Skoda works" . The background was that one of Germany's principal armament companies, Krupps, had been devastated by an RAF raid earlier in 1943 and the high command had decided to move a fair bit of the Krupps capability to the Skoda works, where they hoped air-raids would be less of a problem.

 

327 aircraft, Lancasters and Halifax's, including aircraft from the Pathfinder force were tasked to attack the Skoda arms factory at Plzen, Czechoslovakia.  1800 miles there and back, about five hours flying time each way. They took-off (at 21:30)  from bases all along the east coast of England, with a high-lo-high mission profile - some crossed the nightfighter belt of France at between 500 -2000 feet altitude, before pulling up to 9,000 feet for the run into target. They were accompanied by 271 other aircraft tasked to attack Manheim (Operation Chub). The latter was designated a diversionary force. The two formations parted company half a mile north of Hockenheim and went their separate ways.

 

Because of a recent ****-up by Pathfinder Force target marking on a recent previous operation they were relieved of the task of final target marking and the main force did visual target identification, although some had H2S onboard. Unfortunately, the majority of the main force load was dropped on a mental asylum 7 miles away from the Skoda factory, with little damage being done to the latter,  and quite a lot of the raiders got shotdown (36 I think) including your fathers brother's aircraft ED564, 100 Squadron.

 

They flew low-level on the way back shooting-up targets of opportunity at will.

 

199 bomber crew lost their lives.

 

The crews were a real multinational bunch drawn from the Empire (As it then was)  and other countries, including the scandanavian countries. Amongst the dead was a 17 year old mid-upper turret gunner who had lied about his age !

 

Nick

Edited 19 February, 201412 yr by Clunkclick

Good research Clunkclick. A time of war I know, but amazing what can be done.

They paid the price though. The loss rate was 7.6% for this op, which was higher than the average for RAF Bomber Command during 1943-1944 of 5.1% (Loss rate for RAF BC over whole of WWII was approx. 2%) and getting near the highest recorded loss rate of 11.8% for the Nuremburg raid of 30 March 1944 - generally 10% was considered the extreme upper limit of "Sustainable losses".

 

Then again, in context, the American 8th Airforce losses were huge. I think they lost 25% of the force (60 machines and crews) on the first raid against the ball-bearing plant at Schweinfurt in August 1943. The losses were so great that the planned repeat of this op had to be postponed two months so that replacement aircraft and crews could be flown across from the States.

 

Nick

Edited 20 February, 201412 yr by Clunkclick

nice! i think we should know the history of our cars

I must say, I do like the Skoda jeep, that looks quite a nice bit of kit. I wonder if I could fit one of those in my garage??

 

Nice article Julianhuey!

loving the safari spec Octavia

That mark one Supurb prototype looks a very handsome car. I must get to this museum some day

It's called the Tudor.

I drove to Mlada Boleslav about 6 years ago in my Superb MkI.  Looking at the photos above, some of the exhibition has changed and I can't remember the entrance fee, but it'll be out of date now.

 

In a couple of weeks, I'm staying in Eisenach in Germany and will visit the motor museum in the old Wartburg car factory.