Otto Smik DFC (20 January 1922 – 28 November 1944) was a Czechoslovak pilot of Slovak-Russian Jew origin who became a fighter ace in the Royal Air Force. He joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in July 1940 and was in training until the end of 1942. Between March 1943 and June 1944 he shot down 13 Luftwaffe fighter aircraft probably shot down one more and shared in the shooting down of two others. In July 1944 he shot down three V-1 flying bombs. He became the highest-scoring Slovak fighter ace in the RAF.
In October 1944 Smik survived being shot down behind enemy lines in the Netherlands, successfully evaded capture and returned to Allied-held territory. In November 1944 the RAF promoted him to Squadron Leader and put him in command of No. 312 (Czechoslovak) Squadron RAF. On 28 November he was shot down again over the German-held territory in the Netherlands and was killed.
Early life Smik was born in Borjomi, a spa town in the Georgian SSSR. His father Rudolf Smik was a Slovak from Tisovec who had served in the Royal Hungarian Honvéd in the First World War, been captured by the Imperial Russian Army and interned at Borjomi as a prisoner of war.
Smik's mother Antonina (née Davydova) was the daughter of a Russian Army officer (of Jewish origin) who had guarded Rudolf Smik. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Rudolf and Antonina were married and the couple lived in Borjomi in the briefly-independent Democratic Republic of Georgia, which in 1921 was taken over by the Bolsheviks and became part of the Soviet Union in 1922.
Antonina bore Rudolf Smik three sons, of whom Otto was the second. Smik grew up fluent in Russian and Georgian and with some knowledge of Hungarian. (Tisovec had been in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary when his father lived there.) In 1934 the Smik family were allowed to return to Czechoslovakia, where they initially lived in Hájniky near Sliač in central Slovakia and then in provincial capital Bratislava.
Smik learnt Slovak, which he spoke with a Russian accent. He also learnt English. As a child his hobby was aeromodelling. As a teenager he became a glider pilot, and by the age of 17 he had completed 22 flying hours. From 1937 to 1939 he trained at a private business school. He then got a job as a clerk in the head office of a power station in Bratislava.
Battle of France On 15 March 1939 Nazi Germany partitioned the Second Czechoslovak Republic. Bratislava remained the capital of the Slovak Republic, which became a client state of Germany. Smik, being Jewish, decided to escape to France to fight Germany. On 18 March 1940 he crossed illegally into Hungary, planning to reach the French Consulate in Budapest. Hungarian authorities arrested him and detained him in Toloncház prison, but was soon released.
Smik obtained a false passport and joined 12 other Czechoslovak refugees. People smugglers got them into Yugoslavia by helping them to cross the River Drava near Terezino Polje in Sava Banovina. They reached Zagreb, where they joined a larger group of Czechoslovak refugees. The group travelled through Bulgaria to Thessaloniki in Greece, whence they went by train to Istanbul in Turkey. There they crossed the Bosphorus and continued by train to Beirut in French-ruled Lebanon. There they embarked on the Messageries Maritimes passenger ship Mariette Pacha which took them to Marseille in France.
By now Germany had conquered the Netherlands and Belgium and reached the River Somme in northern France. Smik and his compatriots disembarked in Marseille in the south of France just as Operation Dynamo was evacuating encircled British, French and Belgian troops from Dunkirk in the north.
On 3 June 1940 Smik joined the Czechoslovak Army, which the Czechoslovak government-in-exile had reconstituted in France since October 1939. He was posted to a Czechoslovak training unit in Agde on the coast of Languedoc, where he applied to transfer to the Czechoslovak Air Force group in the French Armée de l'Air.
But the Armée de l'Air was now fighting the Luftwaffes increasing air supremacy and had no spare resources to train any more Czechoslovak recruits. On 5 June German forces launched Fall Rot to advance west and south from the Somme, and on 22 June France capitulated. Czechoslovaks based in Agde evacuated west to Vendres, where on 24 June the Elder Dempster Lines ship Apapa rescued them. The ship brought them to Liverpool in England on 7 July.
Royal Air Force Years of training Many of the RAF Volunteer Reserve's new Czechoslovak recruits had qualified as pilots with the Czechoslovak Air Force and then retrained on modern French or American fighters with the French Armée de l'Air. Some had fought in the Battle of France and a few had previously fought in the Invasion of Poland. The RAF was able quickly to teach these experienced pilots about RAF structures and tactics, give them conversion training to fly and fight using RAF aircraft. Many were ready to be posted to combat squadrons within weeks of enlisting.
But Smik had only been a civilian glider pilot. On 24 July 1940 he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve as an Aircraftman 2nd Class. He then spent almost two and a half years in training. His first few months were as a batman at the RAF's new central training depôt for Czechoslovak recruits, which was at RAF Cosford in Shropshire. In March 1941 he was promoted to Leading Aircraftman and posted to No. 1 Reception Wing at Babbacombe in Devon to start training to be a pilot. From June to September 1941 he was at No. 4 Initial Training Wing at Paignton.
From September to the end of November he was in a group of Czechoslovak trainees at No. 3 Elementary Flying Training School, where they learnt to fly the de Havilland Tiger Moth II. At the end of November four of them completed the course and went to RAF Clyffe Pypard in Wiltshire for further Tiger Moth training. At the end of 1941 they sailed to Canada for training at No. 39 Service Flying Training School at Swift Current airfield in Saskatchewan under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Smik completed his course, rated as an "excellent" pupil.
In 1942 Smik and his group then waited at No. 3 Personnel Reception Centre at Moncton, New Brunswick for a ship back to the UK. Smik returned to Britain in July. He then had further training at No. 5 Advanced Training Unit at RAF Ternhill in Shropshire and final training to become a fighter pilot at No. 61 Operational Training Unit. Also in 1942 Smik was commissioned as a Pilot Officer.
Friction On 5 January 1943 Smik was finally posted to an operational unit: No. 312 (Czechoslovak) Squadron RAF at RAF Church Stanton in Somerset. But he lasted only a week there before being transferred to a different Czechoslovak unit, No. 310 Squadron RAF.
Some of the more experienced Czechoslovak pilots quickly resented Smik. Many had fought in the Battle of France and some had fought in the RAF from the Battle of Britain onwards. Some had first fought in the defence of Poland in September 1939. They had many flying hours' of operation experience, had frequently been in combat, but many of them were still only sergeants. Smik was younger than they, had no combat experience, had only just qualified to fly a Supermarine Spitfire but was already an officer.
Smik responded by requesting a transfer to a non-Czechoslovak squadron. The RAF agreed, and on 15 January sent him to No. 131 Squadron RAF, which at the time was at RAF Castletown in Caithness, Scotland for a period of rest and recuperation. But then in March 1943 Smik was transferred again, to No. 122 Squadron RAF at RAF Hornchurch in Essex.
Spitfire ace
At the time 122 Squadron was operating the Spitfire Mk IXC, with which it escorted bombers over German-occupied Europe. On 13 March 1943 Smik achieved his first "probable" shooting down of an enemy aircraft: a Messerschmitt Bf 109G-4 over Lumbres in the Pas-de-Calais. On 29 April No. 222 Squadron RAF arrived at Hornchurch, and on 18 May 122 Squadron moved to RAF Eastchurch in Kent for R&R. But Smik was still a fresh arrival, so he was transferred to 222 Squadron in order to remain at Hornchurch.
With 222 Squadron Smik became a fighter ace. On 15 July 1943 he shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-4 near Le Crotoy on the Baie de Somme. It was the first of 10½ enemy aircraft that he shot down between then and 27 September: five Fw 190s, five Bf 109s plus a shared victory when he and a South African pilot, Flight Lieutenant J Lardner-Burke DFC, brought down a Bf 109G-6 near Boulogne-sur-Mer on 8 September.
Smik acquired a reputation as a talented and aggressive pilot who took every opportunity to attack the enemy. He was the RAF's highest-scoring Czechoslovak pilot for the year 1943. On 1 November he was posted to the Central Gunnery School to be trained as in instructor. In the same month he was awarded the DFC. On 12 December he completed his course and was posted to No. 13 Armament Practice Camp at RAF Llanbedr in Merionethshire, Wales.
After four years of war many RAF airmen had been killed, captured or too badly wounded to resume flying. The RAF tried to attract Czech and Slovak Americans and Czech and Slovak Canadians to join its Czechoslovak squadrons, but with little success. So on 15 March 1944 Smik was recalled to combat service.
Smik's posting was to 310 Squadron, where his fellow-Czechoslovaks had made him so unwelcome 14 months earlier. But in the meantime he had won 10½ victories and a DFC, and many of the sergeants who had resented him had been commissioned as officers. From 28 March to 3 April Smik received a week's fighter-bomber training at Southend in Essex. By June 310 Squadron was based at RAF Appledram in West Sussex, where it provided air cover for the Allied Invasion of Normandy. On 8 June Smik shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A fighter near Lisieux as Twelve Focke-Wulf fighters equipped with bombs attacked the Sword landing beach. Otto Smik dived from behind onto a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, fired a short cannon burst at it, and saw the pilot bailing out by parachute. The German 69-kill ace Oblt. Eugen-Ludwig Zweigart, Staffelkapitän 8./JG 54 Grünherz, may have been heavily wounded by gunfire during the bailout and died during the descent. Smik wrote in his combat report: "... I fired two short half-second bursts only from the cannons. I climbed up to try to gain speed and thereby shorten the distance. I dived headlong into the enemy aircraft below from behind and reached a speed of over 480 miles per hour... When I estimated its height to be between 2,000 and 3,000 feet, I leveled off and fired a four-second salvo of machine guns and cannons from 300 yards with a correction of 5 degrees to the left. Its left aileron was shot off, the leading edge of the left wing also flew off and I recorded a hit in the engine, which stopped and black smoke and oil were pouring out of it. The pilot threw off the cockpit canopy and I kept shooting until he parachuted out. I saw the pilot pull the line in mid-air and narrowly miss my right wing. I used only the photo machine gun as he fell down a few miles south from Lissieux (about 45 km east of Caen). I also photographed the enemy aircraft after it hit the ground with the pilot nearby..." On 17 June he shot down another Fw 190 near Caen. Also he and another 310 Squadron pilot, F/O František Vindiš, shared in shooting down another one.
V1 flying bombs On 13 June 1944 the first German V-1 flying bomb had hit London. Allied countermeasures included training fighter pilots to intercept them. In one sortie on 8 July Smik brought down three V-1 bombs in 32 minutes.
Promotion and more friction