Word: biafra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Unventuresome Swedes spend their vacations at the seashore with wives and children. Count Carl Gustaf von Rosen, on the other hand, has left the family home this year and with four other men has gone off to Biafra on a big-game hunt of sorts. The weapon they chose is an odd one: a Swedish single-engine aircraft known as the MFI-9B trainer, equipped to hold twelve rockets in pods under its wing. The bag claimed so far has been equally unusual: it includes four MIGs, one Ilyushin 28, two Canberras, a Heron and a control tower, all belonging...
...signed up as a lieutenant in the Finnish air force. In the Congo in 1960, Von Rosen flew supplies for Swedish troops on United Nations peace-keeping duty. Now a senior pilot for a charter flight service called Transair Sweden, Von Rosen last summer hauled relief supplies to Biafra...
...second anniversary, Von Rosen and his flyers attacked the Nigerian airport at Benin, reported damage to one MIG and several civilian planes sitting on the ground. That raid and two earlier forays, which damaged British- and Russian-made Nigerian planes at Enugu and Port Harcourt, eased the pressure on Biafra's landing strip at Uli. With no Nigerian bombers overhead for a change, transports were shuttling...
After he returned home from Biafra last year, Von Rosen continued to worry about the underdog. Resuming routine hauls for Transair Sweden, the count commenced secret military planning on the side. Since he will be 60 years old this summer and can no longer fly commercially as a captain, Von Rosen talked about opening a flight school; on this premise, he approached Malmö Flygindustri, builders of the MFI-9B, and received permission to take up one of the trainers for familiarization flights. He searched quietly for pilots and demanded, with reason, that they be experienced. Studying press photographs...
...Odumegwu Ojukwu appointed Von Rosen an air force colonel and approved an additional $140,000 for refitting the planes in friendly Gabon and for the pilots' salaries. Finally Von Rosen told his wife Gunvor of his plans-up to a point. "He told me he was going to Biafra," Countess von Rosen said last week, "but he didn't say he would be bombing MIGs...