Ing. Emil Přádný

"We didn't use to go to school, so from the morning after breakfast - that group of those boys - we were running around Dubce and Štěpánka. At that time, on the ninth, we were on the hillside above Šafranice. That hillside is opposite the Boleslav castle above the school. We were playing there and during the morning we noticed - first by noise and then visually - the first arrival of the bombers." - "What did the bombers look like, what did you see?" - "We saw that they were... We were surprised that they were flying practically at ground level. A hundred, two hundred meters. They were twin-engine, green top side and blue bottom side. They had no markings. On the first pass, we noticed they had a glass nose. We were watching to see what it might be. But the next moment, when they were in the area above Čejetice, there was a sharp shooting. I remember that to this day, the high firing rate and the power of the fire. We noticed the roof of the school, roof tiles starting to scatter. We knew it was bad. So, as they say, everybody showed a clean pair of heels and ran home. I live about 300 metres from that place, and I experienced even the second raid. But we were already in the basement. They were throwing bombs."

"As I learned later, Mladá was occupied by a fighter regiment of MIGs 21, which took off from Lednice, Poland. The particular day was carefully concealed... I was assigned to the first squadron at that time. We were doing normal jobs, I was at home. The third squadron had night shift, night flights were made from 10 o'clock in the evening until 4 o'clock in the morning. That flying was cancelled in the night squadron. In the morning, when I woke up... I lived in Lysá nad Labem, and to keep fit, I used to go to the airport by bicycle, that's ten kilometres. I went down to the basement, took the bike out, got on. When I was leaving the housing estate, I saw truck convoys with armed infantrymen heading for Prague. I realized something was going on. I took the road to Milovice and from there to the airport. There was already a guard at the airport, an armoured personnel carrier. The lieutenant asked me where I was going. I said I was a pilot. He let me go. I rode in, there were tanks on the emergency lane at the airport. A line of Soviet tanks. I arrived at the regimental area, we met there and learned what had happened. During the morning, a MIG 15, a 'sparka' flew in. It landed, rolled up to the tower, and there was a ground unit of the Russians who had already occupied the tower. The commander, the pilot of the 'sparka' MIG, came to the tower. He took over the radio equipment from the air-controllers. A little later, at about nine or ten in the morning, MIGs 21 started coming in, lining up on the east stand and shutting down their engines. That was the whole occupation of Mladá airfield."

"[People thought it was the Germans] because it was inconceivable to the ordinary mind, I don't want to say the mind of civilians, because that is such an unprofessional term... In short, it is inconceivable to the ordinary person that on 9 May the victor would bomb an allied territory. It was known that the Germans were fleeing, especially those Schörner SS men, after what they had committed in Velichovky and then showed off in Prague, what murderers they were. When they committed such crimes, it was understandable that they could commit them in the air. It was logical that everybody thought it was Schörner's SS men running away. And that the Luftwaffe, when they were fleeing west, loaded the planes with bombs and stopped to get a bit more revenge. That was the logic. If someone had come in at that time and claimed that they were the victors, the Russians, in friendly territory, that would have been unimaginable."