General Emil Bocek Dies at 100

General Emil Bocek, the last living Czech pilot who fought Hitler’s Third Reich during the Second World War while serving with Britain's Royal Air Force has—after a long and distinguished life—gone to his eternal reward at age one-hundred.

A community center for war veterans in the Czech city of Brno, General  Bocek’s hometown, reported the storied aviator had passed away on Saturday, 25 March 2023. The Czech Defense Ministry confirmed General Bocek’s death. Out of deference to the great man and his family, no further details were disclosed.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala stated: "General Bocek was fighting for our country to be democratic, free, and independent.”

Born 25 February 1923, Bocek fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 at age 16, following the country's occupation by the armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Bocek fought the Nazis in France before moving to Britain, where he served as a technician in the Royal Air Force’s No. 312 Squadron. In 1944, Bocek joined the RAF's No. 310 Squadron as a pilot. Both fighter squadrons were manned in part by Czechoslovak pilots.

Speaking on Czech public radio in 2016, General Bocek remarked of the iconic British combat aircraft: "A Spitfire … it was a carriage … an unbelievable plane, a perfect plane."

General Bocek made 26 combat flights, receiving numerous decorations in both his homeland and Great Britain from the Czech and British governments alike.

Britain's King Charles III was among those who congratulated General Bocek on the occasion of his one-hundredth birthday in February 2023.

FMI: https://web.archive.org/web/20111125231946/http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm