Word: bezak
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...former world stunt-flying champion, Ladislaw Bezak, 39, had two advantages possessed by few other defection-bound citizens of Czechoslovakia: he is a licensed pilot and he owns a small, single-engine monoplane called the Zlin-226, which he and a friend had built from do-it-yourself plans and spare parts. He also had a couple of formidable problems: how to fit his four young sons, his wife and himself into an aircraft designed for two, and how to reach the West German border 75 miles away without being shot down by the Czechoslovak air force...
...pilot sits in the rear) and found that his family could just fit in. Last week he packed them all into the aircraft for the first time and tried to take off from a meadow near Prague. The overloaded Zlin did not even get off the ground. Undaunted, Bezak brashly tried again from the airport, where the runway offered a longer takeoff stretch. The little plane finally wobbled into the air and Bezak circled the airfield a couple of times as if he were on a Sunday excursion. He flew first toward East Germany to allay suspicion, and then headed...
Within minutes, a 740 m.p.h. Czechoslovak air force MIG 17 was on his tail. When the pilot fired a poorly aimed cannon burst, Bezak turned and put the Zlin into a steep 4,000-ft. dive. As G forces slapped his sons against the cockpit canopy, his wife Marie, 27, shouted, "It's all up! We'd better go back." Instead, Bezak watched as the MIG frantically circled to make another firing run, and banked the plane as if he were obeying the air force pilot's unmistakable signal to return. Suddenly, Bezak turned again and slipped...
...sight of the MIG, Bezak hedgehopped across the countryside at an altitude of 400 ft. About 20 minutes later, he crossed the border safely near Nuremberg. On the ground, Bezak told reporters that he hoped to find work as a commercial pilot. Meantime, a West German magazine bought the first-person story of his escape for $2,100, giving his family a modest stake with which to begin their new life in the West...
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