Air Power

od created man according to his image and inspired him with a constantly searching spirit. The spirit that gives birth to progress and leads our civilization to the tempting future of a better and free life. Freedom as notion has been defined in various ways and the definition is the product of the hard labour of many great scientists. The feeling of real freedom comes to us, the people, only when thanks to our common sense and skills we succeed to over­come the gravitational law and we leave the warmth of our natural earth environment, heading for the sky. This is a hard way and its beginning lies in ancient times when the dream, and later the idea to fly, was born. This era was followed by centuries of acquiring necessary knowledge and decades of unsuccessful trials used by man to break his earth chains. All of this was compensated by our civili­zation with the blood of its elite of intelligent, searching and brave men whose self-sacrifice was the base to build our heavenly future.

Why was it necessary for man to fly? What is the purpose of dwelling in a space not assigned by God? These are all logical ques­tions answered by scientists hundreds of years ago. Even at that early time, scientists foresaw that the three-dimensional space over us offers unlimited opportunities for making progress and its imple­mentation by man using man-made aircraft would give exceptional chances for rapid development of civilization. Now we understand

how far-sighted this great effort of human mind and will was, irre – gardless of the cost of thousands of human lives. We, contemporary generations owe those heroes the memory and reverence in return to their great deeds.

Commandant of Bulgarian Defence and Stuff College “G. S.Rakovski” Major General Manev