"When they took us over, the day they flew in and arrived at night, I listened to Free Europe all the time during the day, and also to the pro-Moscow radio station Vltava. And the German didn't know how to say Vltava and he said Fltava. The next day or so, I put together a broadcast, recorded on a tape recorder the roar of a truck engine and added the words, 'Don't listen on this frequency, listen to free radio!' Because we still had somebody broadcasting. The Czechoslovak radio had fled to Strašnice and we ourselves lent some of the connecting material to our signalmen."
"I, since I spoke decent Russian, at least wrote a protest. And with one other colleague we went to their site, because when they arrived with the Migs, they set up their tents. It had an interesting twist. At the airport we bounced it off three people in particular. Me for the jammer, then the 'petrol guy' who was in charge of fuel. He stopped their fuel for the Migs and they couldn't leave. And the helicopters flew in and brought it in barrels and then it was transferred by buckets to the individual Migs, and so always within a day two or three Migs from that regiment could fly to their base in the GDR. And the third one was the most successful of us, and he was in charge of the drinking water at the airport, and so he stopped it for them. They were camped on the northwest edge of the airfield, and there was a blind arm of the Elbe close by. And when they didn't have water, they drank water out of it and almost everybody got some kind of tread from that. So the three of us bounced back. And I wrote a protest in Russian and took it with another colleague to their camp. They accepted us, but only the regimental commander and his political deputy, not even the officers, let alone the soldiers, were allowed to come in contact with us. I talked about the occupation, he strictly refused, and when I handed him a written protest he let it fall on the ground and told us to take it. He didn't accept my protest. I argued with him long enough to write it down. That's how it all went down. And yet that spring was so promising!"
"One day we were taking pictures of Bavaria, when suddenly a jet came in, it looked like a Mig, and the pilot up front said that some jerk [from the fighters] was bothering us again. But the guy in the back taking the picture said it had a star on the fuselage and it was white. It was a Siebel, the best American fighter at the time. So Siebel on the wing, and off to the interior. And I should point out, the American flew in and tried to get the group to fly side by side. He threw out the small flaps, threw out the big flaps, and he was still faster, so he threw out the landing gear, and when he was almost on the stall, he held the groups. He lined up very close, waved at them, the guys said you could see he was laughing. Then he undercut them so he could see they were taking pictures with the side cameras, he looked underneath so he could see they were taking pictures vertically as well. Then he shut everything down, waved and disappeared into Bavaria. Otherwise very friendly, you could see he was smiling at them."
"About a month after the occupation, when things calmed down a bit, we took General Kukel to Bratislava again, where there was another fighter regiment under us. And a Soviet fighter regiment landed there too. The Soviets were very keen to re-establish fraternal relations. Until their commander came to the plane and talked about the renewed fraternal relations and shook hands with our commander and then went to shake hands with us. We, a crew of five, kept our hands down, nobody shook his hand. Our commander was very uncomfortable, but he didn't say a word to us. And then they also removed him, retired him. And us, sinful souls who acted like that, three of us were prosecuted. I don't know what the truth is in that, but at that time it was said that there were reports in the West that political trials were being resumed in our country, so that's why Husák, who himself had been imprisoned for nine years under the Communists, cancelled the prosecution. It was in the military courts. And so we were just disciplined. My transport squadron commander was of the same rank, we were friends, and he said, 'Zdeněk, I'm disciplining you!' And that was it. I was relieved. Because I had a family, and above me was a paragraph of misuse of military material under increased danger to the state. And for that there were years in prison."
Zdeněk Nechanický was born on 10 August 1928 in Prague Vršovice after his parents had separated. He spent his childhood and early youth in Prague, and the war years in the illegal 12th Scout Troop. At the age of sixteen he joined the Resistance together with other scouts and in May 1945 he joined the Prague Uprising. After the war, he graduated from high school and entered the aviation school in Chrudim, where he completed communication, telegraph and navigation training. In 1950, he joined the photographic air service, in which he photographed the territory beyond the western border of the former Czechoslovakia. In 1951 he married and he and his wife brought up their son Štěpán. After ten years in the army, he joined the military transport air force in 1960. As an air navigator, he became part of crews that flew abroad, most often to the Soviet Union. For example, they regularly flew to the Soviet city of Astrakhan, where they took Czechoslovak fighter pilots for special training. In August 1968, he was actively involved in protests against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. From his plane, he jammed the broadcasts of the collaborationist foreign channel Vltava, calling on people to listen to the free broadcasts of Czechoslovak Radio. On the second day of the invasion, he wrote a protest note and tried to hand it over to the Soviet regimental commander, who settled with the planes at the Hradec Králové airport. Both actions played a decisive role in the vetting process of the 1970s, when he refused to reconsider his position during the invasion. He was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and dismissed from the army in the spring of 1971. He went to work in a chemical factory in Rybitví and later found a job as a public transport driver in Hradec Králové. From there he retired. After November 1989 he was fully rehabilitated, but due to his age he could not return to the air force. In 1997 he was promoted to the rank of colonel for building a jammer during the invasion. In 2024 he was living in his apartment in Hradec Kralové.
My colleague from a team of four during the competition: after the main parachute did not open, the reserve parachute was thrown out, then the main parachute opened and the landing with a double, 1960
My colleague from a team of four during the competition: after the main parachute did not open, the reserve parachute was thrown out, then the main parachute opened and the landing with a double, 1960
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
