222 Squadron RAF Otto Smik DFC (20 January 1922 – 28 November 1944) was a Czechoslovak pilot of Slovak-Russian Jew origin who became a fighter ace in the Royal Air Force.

In October 1944 Smik survived being shot down behind enemy lines in the Netherlands, successfully evaded capture and returned to Allied-held territory.

After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Rudolf and Antonina were married and the couple lived in Borjomi[1] in the briefly-independent Democratic Republic of Georgia, which in 1921 was taken over by the Bolsheviks and became part of the Soviet Union in 1922.

In 1934 the Smik family were allowed to return to Czechoslovakia, where they initially lived in Hájniky near Sliač in central Slovakia and then in provincial capital Bratislava.

People smugglers got them into Yugoslavia by helping them to cross the River Drava near Terezino Polje in Sava Banovina.

Smik and his compatriots disembarked in Marseille in the south of France just as Operation Dynamo was evacuating encircled British, French and Belgian troops from Dunkirk in the north.

[1] But the Armée de l'Air was now fighting the Luftwaffe's increasing air supremacy and had no spare resources to train any more Czechoslovak recruits.

Czechoslovaks based in Agde evacuated 30 km (19 mi) west to Vendres, where on 24 June the Elder Dempster Lines ship Apapa rescued them.

At the end of November four of them completed the course and went to RAF Clyffe Pypard in Wiltshire for further Tiger Moth training.

[1] At the time 122 Squadron was operating the Spitfire Mk IXC, with which it escorted bombers over German-occupied Europe.

On 13 March 1943 Smik achieved his first "probable" shooting down of an enemy aircraft: a Messerschmitt Bf 109G-4 over Lumbres in the Pas-de-Calais.

On 15 July 1943 he shot down a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-4 near Le Crotoy on the Baie de Somme.

[1] After four years of war many RAF airmen had been killed, captured or too badly wounded to resume flying.

By June 310 Squadron was based at RAF Appledram in West Sussex, where it provided air cover for the Allied Invasion of Normandy.

But the squadron's senior officers recognised Smik's achievements and suitability for the job, and resentment of him was quashed.

On the way to Steenwijk they had seen three railway trains in a rail yard at Raalte, so on the way back Smik and his flight attacked it.

[1] On 3 September 1944 Smik took part in the escort of Ramrod 1258, which was bomber raid on Soesterberg Air Base in Utrecht Province.

On the way back Smik saw about 30 Junkers Ju 188 medium bombers on the ground at Gilze-Rijen Air Base in North Brabant.

Smik led his flight of four Spitfires to attack, but the airfield's ground defences retaliated with intense and accurate anti-aircraft fire.

Then Dutch resistance members hid him first in Breda and then in the village of Ginneken, where he was joined other RAF and USAAF airmen who were evading capture.

The squadron was based at Grimbergen Airfield in Belgium and helping Allied ground forces such as the First Canadian Army to liberate the Netherlands.

Many Czechoslovaks serving in Allied armed forces took precautions to prevent being identified if they were killed behind enemy lines or captured, as otherwise the Germans carried out reprisals against their families in occupied Czechoslovakia.

The Belgian pilot had a fiancée, who had the body exhumed and reinterred in a family burial vault in Brussels.

[1] On 12 May 1965 workmen digging in the dyke at Kampen found Spitfire RR229 and the remains of Henri Taymans' body.

As a result, Smik's body was removed from the vault in Brussels and reburied, this time at Adegem Canadian War Cemetery near Ghent in East Flanders.

In 1994 the government of Slovakia had Smik's body exhumed again and on 12 September he was reinterred in Slávičie Údolie cemetery in Bratislava.

From the air he also destroyed numerous targets on the ground, including two Ju 188 bombers, two tanks, 22 other military vehicles and six railway locomotives.

[1] Smik was the RAF's highest-scoring Czechoslovak ace in 1943 and again in 1944: a period when Luftwaffe presented far fewer airborne targets than it had earlier in the war.

[1] In 1994 Slovenská televízia broadcast a documentary Stratený syn Slovenska ("Lost Son of Slovakia") about Smik.

In 2006 the British Ambassador in Bratislava presented a replica of Smik's DFC to the Slovak Air Force headquarters at Zvolen in central Slovakia.