Word: lisbon
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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...
...beginning, it was apparently a straight business proposition. McGuire, who began flying for the Army Air Forces during World War II and had shipped supplies to isolated French units during the Indochina War, was working for a small European airline. He stopped over at Lisbon in May, and saw some Lockheed 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...
...under contract to the Biafran government (cash in advance), is called North American airlines, and is run by an American named Hank Wharton: nicknamed "Hanky-Panky, cause that's the only kind of business he'd want," McGuire says. Unoffical headquarters of the outfit is the Hotel Tivoli in Lisbon, where "Hanky-Panky" lives in Room 228--a room registered in the name of 'a little mini-skirt with red hair"--and his chief assistant resides...
...complete round trip from Lisbon to Biafra takes 30 hours, so two pilots and two flight engineers sleeping in shifts are on every flight, he says. The planes generally fly straight from Lisbon to Biafra, unload and then fly to Bisau, Portuguese Guinea, or St. Isabel or St. Tome, Fernando Po (also Portuguese). Once there, they sometimes fly a short triangle, carrying only food, between Biafra, Bisau, and Fernando Po before returning to Lisbon...
...McGuire takes out his crumpled, purplish U.S. passport, which has $10 bills folded between the pages. He flips past an April 22 exit stamp from Rwanda, and points out a page filled with exit and entry stamps from Lisbon, with no intervening destination stamps--the souvenirs of his clandestine flights. Then, with a little chuckle, he stuffs it back into his flight suit pocket. It won't stay there long, you might guess...