Otto Spacek

Oct 23 2007 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

A CZECH fighter pilot who escape his occupied homeland to battle doggedly against the Nazis from abroad for the rest of the war has died, aged 89.

Otto Spacek escaped Czechoslovakia in 1939 to first join French forces against the German invasion of 1940, and later moved to Liverpool, where he boosted RAF defences with his vital combat-hardened skills.

Spacek was born in 1918 in Brzici, in Bohemia, where his parents were teachers and, after an apprenticeship as an electrician, went to flying school in the mid-1930s. Czech forces were ordered not to resist when German troops occupied what was left of their lands, following the Munich agreement a year before in 1938.

But Spacek and a few of his colleagues disguised them- selves as tramps and made their way to Poland, then France where he flew many hours in combat shooting down a Messeschmitt fighter and a Dornier bomber, which won him the Croix de Guerre.

After France capitulated, Spacek came to Britain and was stationed at Speke. There he narrowly survived when the engine in the Hur- ricane he was flying failed, and he had to glide it down, landing in the wood store of a match factory, which fortunately did not catch fire when his fuel tanks leaked.

Spacek later joined 313 Squadron, in which many of the best Czech and Slovak pilots were able to fly Spitfires. From 1943, the squadron began to take part in strikes over occupied Europe, targeting enemy trains and ships. He was also closely involved in close air support for the D-Day landings in 1944.

He returned to liberated Czechoslovakia in 1945, but within a few years faced enforced exile once more as the new Communist regime began to persecute those who had fought with Western armies. He managed to escape to Canada with his family where he ran a petrol station and enjoyed hunting and fishing.

He returned to his homeland in the 1990s, following the restoration of democracy there, to a hero’s welcome, and was promoted to brigadier-general. He also met the woman who had been his childhood sweetheart before the war, and married her.

In later years, Spacek continued to fight for what he believed was right, campaigning for better financial compensation for pensioners left impoverished by Communist persecution. His funeral was broadcast on Czech television.

Otto Spacek, fighter pilot; born March 7, 1918, died September 24 2007.