Carl Gustav von Rosen, Biafran Air Hero
4 Comments Published by Joel May 23rd, 2007 in Fighting, Great Men. Share This
eXile’s War Nerd wrote a fascinating column about Count Carl Gustav von Rosen, a Swedish aristocrat that led a flight of hand-painted Cessnas into battle against MiG-17—okay, the jets were on the ground—and other military targets in the Biafra conflict in Nigeria.
Von Rosen specialized in noble lost causes. Way back in 1938, when he was just a kid, he volunteered to fly for the Finns in their ultra-cool, hopeless fight against the Red Army. The Finns had no bombers so von Rosen just grabbed a civilian airliner, loaded it up with bombs and dropped them on the Reds from the passenger doors. … The Fleas turned their weaknesses into advantages in true guerrilla style. They were so slow that they had to fly real low — which made them almost impossible to hit in the jungle, since you never saw them till they were on top of you. The low speed made for better aim: almost half the 400 68mm rockets they fired hit their targets, which is an amazing score for unguided AS munitions. (There used to be a joke in the USAF that if it wasn’t for the law of gravity, unguided AS rockets couldn”t even hit the ground.)
Biafra: Killer Cessnas and Crazy Swedes [Exile.ru via MeFi]
(Image via Surf City)
Gary Brechner (aka the War Nerd, aka the fictional alter ego of one of their other writers) is about the best thing that ever happened to military writing. Read his stuff on General Butt Naked (real guy) when you can. I think the article is titled “Don’t eat the pygmies.”
eXile is my favorite source of useless news. Other than Dethroner of course.
MY FATHER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS COUNT.HE MET HIM IN PERSON AS A LITILE BOY AND AS A BIAFRAN I HOLD HIS LEGEND IN HIGH RESPECT
Dear count, wish i was born then to hold u,and say thank u.i sigh as i rit dis,i m just readin a bk by fredrick forsyth on biafran,it amazed me wat my parents went tru.Count realy showed to d world dat justice nd trut are d only ingridient dat men must live by.count were ever u a i m sayin thank u.and my thanks goes to fredrick forsyth,he really had a forsight abt Biafra coming back,which s hapein 2day.
Carl didn’t use American Cessnas, he was true to form and got some ‘Made In Sweden’ Saab MFI-17 military trainers; mounted rockets on them, and kicked some Nigerian butt!. Of course they didn’t win the war but they showed the hi tech jet world what you could do with COIN/guerilla warfare tactics.