Pyongyang, February 8 (KCNA) -- It has been nearly 70 years since the air force was organized for the first time in the DPRK.

On November 29, Juche 34 (1945), President Kim Il Sung visited the Sinuiju Aviation Association and delivered a speech "Let Us Create the Air Force of the New Korea".

In the speech, he put stress on the significance and importance of the creation of the air force in building a national regular army and indicated in detail the orientation and ways for creating the air force of the new Korea.

He took measures to organize the Korean Aviation Association (KAA) by merging branches of the Sinuiju Aviation Association in Hamhung, Chongjin, Hoeryong and other areas into one.

The President personally took the chairmanship of the KAA and wisely led the work to build a regular air force.

He also took measures to organize an air training class at the Pyongyang Institute to train elite young men into pilots, maintenance men and signalmen.

Under his guidance, the first air corps was created on August 20, 1947 with graduates from the Pyongyang Institute and air technicians.

In the Fatherland Liberation War, pilots of the Korean People's Army (KPA) shot down B-29s, which the U.S. imperialists boasted themselves as "flying fortress", and dashed their planes against enemy warships.

During the Vietnam War, they shot down the U.S. imperialists' latest-type planes.

In defending the socialist motherland, the KPA air force shot down the U.S. spying plane "EC-121" and drove "RC-135" away when they violated the airspace of the DPRK.

Now, the KPA air force is reliably defending the territorial sky of the country under the leadership of Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un who ushers in a golden era of Juche-oriented army building.