HISTORIE
It was a dreary, foggy Sunday morning in December 1971. There were five days left until Christmas
Day and only several hours until the moment which
changed the lives of the number of people. On that
day, the former World Champion in aerobatics, Ladislav Bezák emigrated from than Czechoslovakia to
West Germany by air. Captain Karel Fiedler, a pilot of
the air defense alert system, was tasked to stop Bezák. He failed and the question remains until today
if he could not have done it or just did not want to.
Bezák’s private OK-MUA as it appeared shortly before his
escape, already carrying the commercial for Becker’s aviation equipment (photo: Jasoň Kučera).
aircraft systems are properly cooled off. But despite flying at
full power, I was not able to gain enough speed. Also, the oil
temperatures were rising, and I was losing oil pressure. So I was
sweating to gain altitude for long minutes,“ recalled Ladislav
Bezák twelve years later in an interview for „Západ” (The West)
magazine for Czechoslovak emigrants living in Canada. At 13:07
The name Ladislav Bezák has its place in the annals of the
Bezák’s Trener was captured on Air Defense radar screens and
world aerobatics. In 1960, flying Zlin Z 226 T at the first official
an interceptor was scrambled from Line airport. It was a MigWorld Championship in Aerobatics in Bratislava he became wi-15bis fighter piloted by Capt. Karel Fiedler. What was Bezák’s
nner and so not only domestic but also an international aviation
Trener location at that moment is uncertain. In some interviews
celebrity. Eleven years later he was fleeing the homeland with
he stated that the interceptor appeared while he was around
four children and wife in his own Trener aircraft. On December
Rakovník, on other times he stated he was nearby Cheb. That it
19 this year it will be 50th anniversary of this event.
is quite a spread…
A drama in the air
Bezak’s overloaded Trener became airborne at Kladno airport at 12:45 pm on December 19, 1971. The worlds‘ aerobatics champion had his whole family on board leaving behind
the problems and dangers which supposedly threatened him. „I
was flying north and when I was out of audibility at the airfield
I turned west. I could not climb too much, however. I was trying
to fly at full power and gain speed. At the proper speed the
A Mig interceptor covered the distance to the target in approximately seven minutes and most likely caught up with it somewhere around Tachov, approximately 18 kilometers from the
border. That corresponds to a distance flown by an airplane at
a speed of 160 kph in seven minutes. Therefore, captain Fiedler
did not have too much time to engage. At 13:28 he established
visual contact with a target and was ordered to fire a red flare which means “follow me”. He did just that, but Bezák later
claimed that he started to shoot right away. “He flew above
me – and that was a mistake because I was able to keep him in
sight. As he was above me, I was pushing it down. My weight was
slightly negative, but my airspeed was four times lower than
his. But he, at his speed, had no chance to shoot as long as he
tried to follow my trajectory. I realized he was not an instructor
and that he was not even a very good pilot. I made a sharp turn
he could not follow. He should have followed me from a longer
distance and shoot at me as at a static target. He fired several
bursts, but all missed by a large margin…”
After Fiedler reported that the target did not change the
course, he was ordered to fire warning shots. “At that moment
captain Fiedler was under an extreme pressure. As an alert interceptor he had to be airborne within two minutes since the
alarm was announced and he was obliged to complete the
mission. Any hesitation could result in serious consequences,
including the court martial,” wrote Miroslav Lanči and Stanislav
Ladislav Bezák in the cockpit of the aerobatic Z 226 T during
the World Championship in Aerobatics in Bratislava 1960.
(photo: Milan Jančář).
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INFO Eduard - December 2021