The Myślenice commons (błonia) were once a stretch of meadows extending from the Hołuj sawmill and the courthouse building to the Raba River. The first fully confirmed information about Myślenice’s connection to aviation is the report of a crash of an RWD-8 aircraft on the Myślenice commons, which took place around 1935. In the 1930s, aero club pilots, as well as military pilots from the 2nd Air Regiment in Kraków, visited this area during air shows. Aircraft such as the RWD-8 and Lublin R-XIII landed here. Nevertheless, little is known about the field airstrip located in the bend of the Raba River in Myślenice.
Based on preserved recollections of residents of Stróża near Myślenice, it can be established that in the spring of 1943, the Germans began organizing a field airstrip on fields located south of the manor in Stróża. After preparatory work consisting of leveling the terrain, approximately 30 soldiers of the German Luftwaffe, commanded by an officer, were quartered in the “Firków” guesthouse (a house built in 1924 by Stanisław Firek in a villa style). These were — as determined by Polish underground organizations operating in the area — mechanics and meteorological service soldiers serving a grass runway from which light reconnaissance and fighter aircraft could operate. An account has been preserved that the unit was commanded by a German officer in the rank of major, while another officer from the crew was shot dead by a partisan liaison over the Raba River when he tried to detain him. The airstrip in Stróża — officially “Flugplatz Myslenice” — was one of several airfields in the Kraków district that the Home Army was to seize as part of the general uprising plan and remained under constant surveillance by Home Army intelligence. In the light of preserved recollections, it is known that aircraft “landed on the strip and took off from it daily, while the airstrip commander sent out patrols throughout the village every night.” The evacuation of the German unit took place on January 19, 1945, two days before the front rolled through Stróża.
Other accounts indicate that from January 1945, for several weeks, the level stretches of the Myślenice commons — where landings had taken place even before the outbreak of war — were used by Soviet liaison aircraft Polikarpov Po-2 and R-5, flying into local commands with orders and to field hospitals with mail. One of them crashed when, on approach to landing, the engine failed. In early spring 1945, aircraft belonging to the Red Army Air Force were presumably still stationed there. However, it is not possible to determine either the units or the time frame of their presence there — it can be assumed, however, that after the front moved on to the territory of Czechoslovakia, the Myślenice launch field was no longer used.
