They had the right to take their revenge and shoot me
Miroslav Vaňáček was born on the 6th of January 1931 in Brno. He grew up in the nearby village of Bedřichovice, where his parents had a small farm. He started attending the first grade of school at the start of the Second World War, to which many of his memories are tied. He remembers the German defense of the city, the repeated massive bombardments and even the situation during the intensive fighting. He became witness to the arrival of the soldiers of the Red and Romanian Armies, which liberated Brno on the 26th of April 1945. As an adolescent boy he also became witness to the inhuman treatment of the Germans in the tense atmosphere after the end of the war. Since his very young childhood he longed to become a pilot and that’s why he attended the very difficult preparatory pilot course in the year 1949. Following this he was admitted to study at the elementary pilot school in Olomouc, and he finished his education at the pilot school in Prostějov. After successfully finishing his studies he remained at the school as an instructor of fighter pilots and in the year 1953 he was ordered to the newly-built military airport in Plzeň-Líně. The army was planning a restructuring of the air forces at that time and was reequipping to a brand new type of jet aircraft. Miroslav was selected as one of the first adepts to be trained on the MIG-15 jets and very quickly became one of its elite pilots. He was the commander of the so-called ambush wing, which guarded the airspace above the western border during the Cold War. He has many memories of this period, including memories of dramatic stand-offs with American fighters on the other side of the border. He was very disillusioned by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact armies in August of 1968, where not only the pilots, but the entire staff of the airport in Líně stood up to the Soviet occupiers. During his long career as a fighter pilot he executed many successful lift-offs and ended his career at the rank of lieutenant colonel. Miroslav Vaňáček passed away on December, the 28th, 2022.