Until his late age Bezák harbored a deep hatred towards those

who in 1971 wanted to stop his escape. “I simply call a pilot

and all his military commanders the murderers,” he stated repeatedly. A documentary about him was filmed in late nineties

in Czech Republic in which he went with a camera crew to see

Mrs. Marta Fiedler to curse her out because of her husband. “Somebody rang the bell I answered the door and the camera pointed at me immediately and Bezák was screaming at me that

my husband was a murderer who wanted to kill his whole family.

I begged them to stop filming and to leave but they would not

listen,” recalls Marta Fiedler and by the tone of her voice one

can tell it was a very unpleasant experience for her. “He better

should have thanked my husband that he let him fly because he

would have never fired at civilians and children” she added confidently. Many people found the aforementioned documentary

rather disgusting and parted any contacts with him.

In 2018 Ladislav Bezak passed away in Bühne, Germany. And

as one of the long-time Trener pilots here said: “There was no

obituary anywhere, no one noticed it. Nobody talked to him for

many years in fact.”

Sources

magazine West issue 6/1983

Miroslav Irra, Vysoká modrá zeď – Ohlédnutí druhé

(Jakab 2021, ISBN: 978-80-7648-021-6)

Miroslav Lanči, Stanislav Brašna, Psohlavci letectva

(Svět křídel 2015, ISBN: 978-80-87567-79-1)

www.gonzoaviation.com

www.iDnes.cz

Privately owned Trener aircraft

in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

JHow did Bezák managed to acquire his own Trener then? According to some veterans in summer 1968 he towed a fuselage of

OK-JAF aircraft behind his car from Kroměříž. It was a Z 226 B

prototype, rebuilt from Z-126 serial number 830. After testing

the aircraft was allocated to Svazarm which in 1956 assigned

it to Kroměříž Aero Club. On July 19, 1968, it was erased from

the registry supposedly for the purpose of Bezák’s acquisition.

He obtained all other necessary parts and in his family house

in Hostouň rebuilt it to Z 226 T standard. The great mystery remains how he arrived at serial number 370. That one had already

been assigned, the aircraft officially manufactured with this serial was exported to Hungary and can be still found there today.

It is not clear why Bezák did not keep the number 830. At any

rate after many “duels” with authorities in the end of October

1968 the aircraft was entered into the registry under OK-MUA

matriculation (also non-standard for Treners).

The biggest problem turned out to be an operation permit for

a private radio transmitter which he of course needed in order to

operate the airplane. Supposedly he had to submit the request

even with the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

“At that Central Committee they treated me as if I had stolen

a missile with a nuclear head,” Bezák recalled fourteen years

later in an article published in emigrants’ magazine Západ (The

West).

Bezák became the very first private owner of Trener in Czechoslovakia. Not the only one though. The same trick pulled off Jiří

Stoklasa as well, another outstanding aerobatic pilot at that

time. The third private Trener belonged to a ČSA pilot František

Altner. Stoklasa acquired his Trener Z 526 F (OK-ZSA) in a similar

way as Bezák, i.e. sourcing the parts in a variety of places and

manners. Ultimately the aircraft was assembled directly at the

manufacturer. “He for example came home and I told him we

needed to repair a roof to which he responded it had to wait since he just purchased landing gear for Trener,” recalls his former

wife Jiřina Lockerová-Stoklasová. František Altner on the other

hand bought a discharged Z 126 (OK-DVG) from Liberec Aero

Club. After the overhaul it was registered as OK-EKA.

Both Altner and Stoklasa however lost their Treners aft Bezák’s

emigration. They were banned from flying hem and therefore

forced to sell them. Former Altner’s OK-EKA flies today in Příbram, after the necessary overhaul it was registered as OK-DVG

again and sports a military camouflage with the code UC-38. The

fate of Stoklasa´s flamboyantly painted OK-ZSA is rather sad. On

May 24, 1997, pilot Petr Štěpánek crashed it near Moravská Třebová and was killed.

Husband and wife

Stoklasa in front of

their private Z 526

F OK-ZSA (photo:

archive of Jiřina

Lockerová-Stoklasová).

INFO Eduard - December 2021

eduard

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