"What was the target?" - "What was determined tactically. The atomic bomb is being dropped on very large and important targets. It's not like there are ten tanks buried there and you're supposed to destroy it. Those are big areas. Cities or industrial sites. In short, what needs to be destroyed. Sometimes the pilot doesn't even know what he's destroying. He knows that in that space, at that distance. A radial like that. He flies there. He drops it there and rushes back." - "Have you thought about the fact that if there was a conflict like that, that you would actually have to do that?" - "There was a little discussion about that, too. We generally believed that such a situation would not occur." - "And what do you think, if such a situation did occur, would you be ordered to drop an atomic bomb on a city? Would you do that?" - "We were military pilots. And in the military, you have to follow orders. So if I was ordered to do that, whether I liked it or not... I could have refused. I'd have to take the consequences myself."
"Under that regime, it was necessary to know who to watch out for and where to keep your mouth shut. Otherwise, you were in pridon in no time." - "You call that freedom?" - "Freedom. What our officials... Where they dragged us, we, the common people, could not help it. We should have elected other officials. They sold us out to Russia? You can judge that today... It's like crying over spilt milk."
"Rockets have a lifetime. And when those missiles were past their lifetime period, there were shootings over the Baltic. We flew 500 kilometers to the Baltic. There was a parachute target that I was firing a rocket at. So it was used. It didn't get scrapped and the pilots got trained in the maneuver and the method of launch." - "What did the parachute target look like?" - "There was an incendiary bomb on the parachute. A powerful source of radiation. That's what the rocket the shuttle is carrying is sensitive to. The signal told me it had picked up the approach. The target is displayed. When he was within the range of the authorized launch range, I fired the missile. Maneuver away from the target and home. Nothing complicated."
"You have to put your elbows together. So he doesn't hurt himself on the edge of the cockpit. Lean back firmly in the seat. Head on the back of the seat. Tighten your muscles and squeeze the handles on the seat to activate the pyropatron. This will blast the explosive charge out of the seat and the seat will be swept out of the cockpit. Before that, you have to use the lever to drop the cockpit. So it's automatic. The two levers are close together. I flip the first one off and that's how I got rid of the cockpit. And the second squeeze is the ejection." - "What happened at that point?" - "You stop seeing for about a tenth of a second. It's like losing consciousness. You are aware of movement. But at the moment of ejection, the G-force is 18 to 20 G, so the brain is without bloood and therefore you can't see. It's like you've fainted a little bit. But as soon as you're ejected, as soon as you're out of the seat, you're immediately fit. There's a device that disconnects the seat. I kicked it off and manually opened the parachute."
"Debris fell directly into the building and killed two people. It was a pretty big aircraft. And the director said, 'Guys, don't take it so tragically that two people died. In our ironworks, where they also make wires and so on, so many people die in a year! He said that there was a death rate... that if we as pilots had that rate, we would have nothing to fly on. It really was a very dangerous job out there. So two people died in that plane crash."
"In my first year of aviation school, we didn't even have much politics. It wasn't until the second year that there was political economy. In short, politics. As students, we took it as a necessary evil. It was clear that the world was divided into two camps - capitalist and socialist. But that there would be a conflict, that we would fight, we didn't admit that to ourselves." - "You were a military pilot and didn't admit that you would fight? That's why you were a military pilot." - "Well, sure, I'd be used for something... But to go shooting? We were young. We were just training... Or that kind of chauvinism... I can hardly judge these things when the time... As fanatical as the world is now, it was then. Revanchists. Foreign countries. Capitalist countries. I never cared much for politics. We were the generation that was into flying. And was interested in flying."
Vítězslav Nohel was born on 2 April 1940 in Brno. Until the age of 15 he grew up in Rousínov, learned to build model airplanes and started sailing gliders in nearby Vyškov. After moving to Brno, he obtained a pilot‘s license from the then Union for Cooperation with the Army called Svazarm. He graduated from grammar school, passed the entrance exams at the Technical University, but eventually joined the Prostějov Aviation School, from which he graduated in 1959 as a fighter pilot with the rank of lieutenant. He flew at the base in Piešt‘any and later in Mošnov. In July 1969, his aircraft broke down over Ostrava and Vítězslav Nohel ejected himself. Two people died under the wreckage of the plane. After his transfer to Prague in 1976 he was an instructor of fighter pilots. At the beginning of the 1980s, he learned how to drop an atomic bomb during a training exercise in the USSR. For the second time in his career, he was forced to save his life by ejecting when the engine of his plane caught fire near Prague in 1991. In 2022, he was living in Prague.
Trip to the steppe, on the left the commander of the České Budějovice squadron František Skalický, on the right Vítězslav Nohel. Retraining of pilots for MIG 23 aircraft, USSR training centre Kazakhstan, second half of the 1970s
Trip to the steppe, on the left the commander of the České Budějovice squadron František Skalický, on the right Vítězslav Nohel. Retraining of pilots for MIG 23 aircraft, USSR training centre Kazakhstan, second half of the 1970s
From left: technician Ladislav Zasadil and commander of the České Budějovice squadron František Skalický with Soviet officers, USSR training centre Kazakhstan, second half of the 1970s
From left: technician Ladislav Zasadil and commander of the České Budějovice squadron František Skalický with Soviet officers, USSR training centre Kazakhstan, second half of the 1970s
