User:Chetsford/skyocean

"The Air is Our Sea" ("Vzduch je naše moře") is a slogan used in interwar Czechoslovakia and, to a lesser extent, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, to promote aviation and avionics.

Background
Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 from the former Austrian crown lands of Bohemia and Moravia, with which were merged Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia. The state's borders made it landlocked, and many of the nations landlocking it — including Germany, Poland, and Hungary — had active or dormant claims to Czechoslovak territory. A strong air force and robust civil aviation sector was, therefore, identified by Czechoslovak authorities as critical for deterrence and independent trade and, in 1920, the Czechoslovak Army launched its "One Thousand Pilots for the Republic" campaign, an initiative to recruit and train the largest air force in central Europe.

Under the intensity of Czechoslovakia's focus on its aviation industry, the nation became one of Europe's leading aircraft manufacturers in the interwar period, with "The Air is Our Sea" was refreshed as a marketing slogan for Czechoslovak military and civil aviation in the post World War II period. Its perspective that it could only compete economically with the world at large through extensive airlinks, heightened its sympathies for post-colonial African states seeking to establish independent national airlines and, according to George Washington University historian Philip Muehlenbeck, civil aviation assistance became a "vitally important component of Czechoslovakia’s Africa policy".