Albanian military aviation was founded 71 years ago.

On April 24, 1951, the first Albanian military plane was flown.

Commander of the Rinas air group, Petrit Bebeci, said that during the 1997 turmoil, pilots were appointed duties, where they would practice the use of bombs and missiles.

“Pilots would never go where they were told to but they would drop their bombs in non-residential areas,” – said Bebeci.

In addition, he said that back then 2 pilots were given an order to conduct a mission during which they needed to bomb an entourage of tanks transporting food to citizens from the city of Tepelene to Gjirokaster.

However, according to Bebeci, the pilots didn’t obey that order and flew to Italy instead, at a latitude below 10 thousand meters, so they wouldn’t be picked up by Italian radars.