Swedish Dusty flies into Nigeria

[u/Majestic_Repair9138]

If you read about Carl Gustaf von Rosen, you'd wonder why Sabaton hasn't released a banger about their fellow Swedish madlad yet.

[u/Majestic_Repair9138]

No, seriously, he's MacGyver but with airplanes and managed to make the MFI-9 Malmo take out contemporary Soviet-donated jet fighters and bombers, the equivalent of converting a Red Bull stunt plane as a ground attack plane to blow up Tupolev Backfires and Flankers on a Russian airfield. He'd probably love this group.

Edit: MacGyver, not MacGruber.

[u/Heiminator → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

That Wikipedia article is pure gold

He was nephew of Carin Göring, wife of Hermann Göring. Throughout his upbringing, Carl Gustaf appeared to have had serious differences in opinion with his family, with one author referring to him as the "black sheep of his family."

Imagine being the nephew of Hermann Görings wife and still getting called the black sheep of the family lol

[u/Kitten-Eater → u/Heiminator]

Carl Gustaf's dad and his paternal uncle were very influential men, they were also leading figures in Swedish Nazism. Carl Gustaf didn't want any part of that shit and ran away to joint a circus as a stunt pilot instead.

Carl Gustaf uncle Carl Clarence von Rosen was extremely active proponent of athletics and equestrian sports. He started a bunch of different athletics organizations and was chairman of the Swedish Olympic committee for decades. He was the reason for why equestrian sports were, and still are, included in the Olympic games. (weird historical tangent, he probably met George S Patton at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics) While the history is a bit unclear, Clarence was probably responsible for the founding of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports, the body which still governs classical equestrian sports to this day. Although the FEI seemed to have scrubbed any mention of his name form their official history, having it widely known that they guy who founded the organization was literally buddies with Hitler is probably bad for publicity.

[u/Majestic_Repair9138 → u/Heiminator]

Even better, his wife was apart of the Dutch Resistance and he at least tried joining the RAF but was turned down because of his relation to Onkel Goring.

"Serious differences" doesn't cover how much he wanted to dunk on his uncle in law.

[u/MsMercyMain → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

“Look, I want to find a way to piss off my family and shooting down my Step Uncle’s Air Force seems like a good way to do so. Haven’t you ever gone to such lengths to piss off your family before?”

[u/gr89n → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

Hey, William Patrick Hitler was allowed to serve in the US Navy - he could have tried there.

[u/Kilahti → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

His father donated the first aircraft for the Finnish air force in 1918 (and since von Rosen had swastikas painted onto those planes, Finnish air force would use a blue swastika as their symbol.) Carl himself would later fly combat missions for Finland in WW2.

Also, do not insult him by comparing him to MacGruber when he was literally MacGyver. All the way down to doing humanitarian missions because of his strong idealistic beliefs.

[u/Majestic_Repair9138 → u/Kilahti]

Sorry, the MacGruber bit was a typo.

[u/KJ_is_a_doomer → u/Kilahti]

the man actually used the swastika as his symbol way BEFORE becoming a nazi anyway. there's speculation that the von Rosen estate was supposedly the first place Goering encountered the symbol

[u/Blueberryburntpie → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

He had the planes painted in camouflage colours and fitted with license manufactured 68 mm SNEB type rockets, and proceeded with a crew of two Swedes and two Biafrans to form a squadron called 'Biafra Babies' to strike the air fields from which the federal Nigerian Air Force launched their attacks against the civilian population in Biafra.

Directly stopping warcrimes by removing said means for them.

That's what all humanitarian relief missions should strive for. /s

[u/Majestic_Repair9138 → u/Blueberryburntpie]

Virgin "Plz stop the warcrimes and crimes against humanity or we will likely send an angry note" UN versus Chad "I Will Blow You Up If You Touch Those Civilians I'm Giving Food" von Rosen.

[u/m00ph → u/Blueberryburntpie]

I think the idea of stop, and then did you think I was asking?

[u/Rei1099 → u/Majestic_Repair9138]

Very interesting 👌🏽

[u/Fultjack]

Also remember the swedish air force pilots who just happend to spend their summer vacation at von Rosens summer camp. When risking your life at tree top level 11 months of the year isn't enough, and you finaly get to smell a bruning collum trapped on a forest road.

[u/KJ_is_a_doomer]

I'll raise you the fact that after the eastern bloc-aligned pilots that flew the soviet planes for Nigeria proved to be pretty shit, Nigerians went on to hire mercenaries from the wider world to fly the MiGs, which ended up in western pilots waging war in soviet fighters at the height of the Cold War. There are even notes in english about how to operate the planes.

"There were approximately 16 mercenary pilots hired by the Nigerian Air Force over the duration of the war – comprised mainly of British, South African, French, Australian, Polish and possibly one or two more nationalities as the war progressed. At any period, there were perhaps five to eight active pilots on contract."

- Ares Klootwyk (South African mercenary pilot) quoted by A.J. Venter in "Biafra's War 1967-1970".

Superb read, i had a cold war in Africa phase a while ago, even wrote a whole ass script about von Rosen and the Biafra Babies but alas, my voice can't narrate for shit so i never got past recording the 1st paragraph.

Also i remember finding one of the Portuguese pilots, that would later take over from the Swedes on the MFI-9s and T-6 Texans, on facebook. The man went on to become an airline pilot at TAP and seemed like a normal fellow that always had a lot of Nigerians thanking him under every post of his. Unfortunately he passed away during the pandemic.

[u/BigFreakingZombie → u/KJ_is_a_doomer]

This reminds me of a similar incident during the War of Attrition. The Egyptians and Syrians flying MiGs only slightly newer than those were getting their butts kicked by the Israeli Air Force and they were complaining to the Soviets that the planes were inferior to their Israeli counterparts( they were) with the Soviets claiming that the planes were perfectly fine and the whole thing was a skill issue( it was to a very significant degree) . In order to prove their point the Soviets decided to send some of their own pilots to take on the Israelis.... So when 16 Israeli fighters on a mission to attack Egyptian ground targets were detected around 20 MiG-21s flown by Soviet pilots were scrambled to intercept. The final result ? five shot down MiGs vs a lightly damaged Mirage III.

[u/KJ_is_a_doomer → u/BigFreakingZombie]

Supposedly the mercs did better than the Egyptians. The latter still handled the Ilyushin bombers and were apparently utterly useless at bombing anything that wasn't civilian.

[u/BigFreakingZombie → u/KJ_is_a_doomer]

Their Soviet training showed really damn well then.

[u/othermike → u/BigFreakingZombie]

Operation Rimon 20 for anyone wondering.

[u/BigFreakingZombie → u/othermike]

Thanks.

[u/IdiosyncraticSarcasm]

This is what happens when the progenitor of your noble family line were a Crusader Knight in Livonia (the Baltics) 1202.

[u/Seidmadr → u/IdiosyncraticSarcasm]

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? There's 700 years between that crusade and his birth. that's some 20-30 generations. Even if there were some mystic quality to the blood, it'd be diluted to the point of homeopathy now.

[u/IdiosyncraticSarcasm → u/Seidmadr]

Sally, what the fuck does eugenics have to do with anything? It's all about the stories and legends being told to the newer generations of a family. Imagine being told you come from a line of warriors where the first of your name were chosen by God to be a warrior of Christ. Still a story, but the outcome would be that every generation would find themself in the top echelons of society regardless of the societal system.

For this class nothing was impossible due to the social networks of power players their titles gave them access to. This created people with an unwavering self-persuasion of their own righteousness.

So the mix of Noblesse Oblige and the sense of aristocratic exceptionalism most likely lead to von Rosens self-persuasion that his actions and views were correct simply because they were the actions and views of fooking COUNT Carl Gustaf Ericsson von Rosen.

Now on the flipside, imagine if Carls ancestors would all have been farmers. Would the stories and lore of that family inspired farmer Carl to embark on a Nigerian adventure? Would he even have had access to a network of people that could have made it happen?

[u/totallyordinaryyy]

I had sex with a 'von Rosen' once, jest felt like mentioning it.

[u/ofnuts]

A video on the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq_yBd7v1AQ

[u/MsMercyMain → u/[deleted]]

Chad move tbh

[u/caribbean_caramel]

I love air technicals.