Word: airlifts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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COMBAT reporting is never a safe or simple job. But even for case-hardened veterans, the Nigerian civil war presents one of the meanest assignments yet. Merely getting in and out of Biafra is a dangerous and doubtful proposition. The irregular airlift from Lisbon flies through Nigerian antiaircraft fire to reach a makeshift airstrip that is only open at night. When correspondents finally manage to get in, they are shuttled off to quarters in the Progress Hotel in Aba, the country's provisional capital. When they are not in the field, they face the hazards of the Progress menu...
...Constellations parked in a guarded portion of the airport there. "I knew what they were," he laughs, "In our business word gets around." Word had also reached him of the $1500 per trip salary for pilots ($1000 for flight engineers) and after a few inquiries, he joined the Biafran airlift as a flight engineer...
...airlift runs a delicate course between the thunderstorms always encountered at night, and the radar-directed anti-aircraft fire which grows heavier as the storms fade. When he began flying for the outfit, it had six Constellations and one DC-7. of the Constellations, one was hijacked and flown to Madrid; a second was impounded when it made a forced landing on Malta (when its flight plan said it was going to New York). A third crashed in the jungle killing all aboard, and a fourth was blown up in Bisau, reportedly by a South African...
...plight of the Biafran people is a topic on which McGuire spends relatively little time, because he feels the subject has been adequately covered by American reporters, and also because the airlift crews seldom stay in Biafra longer than four hours--the time it takes to unload 30 tons of baby food, or Mausers, or whatever from the Constellations. He does, however, venture to add a few vignettes to the picture of the people. Pilots on flights into Biafra carry canned hams and salt to give to the unloaders as an incentive for faster work. On one of his flights...
...carried a gun, even for personal protection in Biafra. ("I figured we had enough guns and ammo on the plane already.") He left Biafra at the end of July, after his mother died in the United States and his close call made him suspicious of the safety of the airlift's flying procedures but he wants to return there, this time for expenses only...