Aeroarcheologie – výzkum havarovaných letounů

Abstract

The article focuses on aviation archaeology, i.e. the study of crashed plane sites. In the first part there is described the emergence of the discipline in the Great Britain, its development and the attitude of official institutions as well as the public towards the activities of the largely amateur researchers. This is followed by the description of the situation in the rest of the world and the emergence of the search for crashed planes in Czechoslovakia, which was largely determined by the political situation. This gave advantage to the planes from the former USSR, the research of the remains of planes from other countries being practically forbidden. A great change took place in 1989 with the fall of the communist regime. The second part of the article then deals with the definition of aviation archaeology and the aims of such research. These can be summed up in four main points – the search for missing pilots, the search for planes and events, the research on the construction of planes and their equipment and finally the search for planes about which there is no other record than the remains in the ground themselves. Whilst for the first two points archaeology is but a means for the recovery of new information or confirmation of the existing ones, the latter two points pose their own questions. In any case, there is always present the problem of relationships between the professional and amateur researchers.