Carl Gustav von Rosen, Biafran Air Hero

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)