The strange-sounding local name “Rajszula” is neither a Hungarian curse word nor an archaic piece of women’s clothing… It was a field used for teaching mounted riding to lancers of the 1st Imperial and Royal General Brudermann’s Own Lancer Regiment, stationed in Bochnia. This cavalry training field was located in a bend of the Raba River, near the village of Proszówki. In the early period of the Great War, shortly after the Austro-Hungarian forces had pushed back the troops of the Russian 3rd Army of General Radko Dimitriev, aircraft belonging to Flik 1 and 15 — Austro-Hungarian aviation companies transferred there from the Rakowice airfield — landed on the Bochnia horse training ground. They were stationed in Bochnia only briefly, as they were transferred at the beginning of January 1915 to the airfield at Jasień Brzeski.
The aviation traditions of Bochnia’s launch fields lasted much longer, however. It appeared as a reserve landing strip in the records of Kraków’s 2nd Air Regiment. A mysterious aspect of the history of Bochnia’s airfields is the period of World War II, when on the fields of Proszówki (though not on “Rajszula”) the Luftwaffe established a large grass-surface airfield. Transport Junkers Ju-52s landed there, and according to (unconfirmed in written sources) accounts from residents, night fighters also landed there, hunting for aircraft making supply drops for the Home Army. German airmen were quartered in a distinctive villa with a turret, standing by the road from Szarów to Proszówki. It is also worth noting that Würzburg radar station positions were located in the Bochnia area as well.
Today, one would search in vain for traces of the airfield on the “Rajszula” grounds — the name has been taken over by a single-family housing estate situated along the former main road that crosses this historic launch field. The former German airfield at Proszówki is somewhat more discernible in the landscape — although a small manufacturing facility has been built on it.
