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/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.