Carl Gustaf von Rosen
Carl Gustaf Ericsson von Rosen (born August 19, 1909 in Helgesta , ( municipality of Flen ), † July 13, 1977 in Gode (Ethiopia) ) was a Swedish pilot, humanitarian activist and mercenary .
He attended the Swedish elite boarding school Lundsberg . After he was thrown out, he bought a Sopwith Camel at the age of 19 and began his life as an aviator and adventurer. During the Abyssinian War he flew humanitarian aid missions and was the first pilot of a Red Cross plane. After the end of the war, he kept the connection between the escaped Haile Selassie and Ethiopian partisans on the border with Sudan with his plane .
In 1939 he worked for the Dutch airline KLM . After the outbreak of the Soviet-Finnish winter war , von Rosen stole a Douglas DC-2 from KLM and flew it to Finland , where he converted it into a bomber and attacked the Soviet positions with it. It was the only bomber in Finland. Von Rosen planned an attack on the Kremlin , which the Finnish Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim personally forbade him.
During the Second World War , von Rosen was arrested by the Gestapo as a spy . Because he was related to Hermann Göring through his aunt Carin Göring , he was released on his intervention.
At the end of the war, Carl-Gustav von Rosen brought concentration camp survivors to Sweden for care. After that, von Rosen lived in Ethiopia for ten years , where he built up both the national air force and the national airline for Haile Selassie . As a reward, he was given a coffee plantation .
In the 1950s he was the personal pilot of the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld . In his fatal flight accident in 1961, von Rosen was not on board because of illness. Since there were numerous doubts about the result of the investigation committee, which stated that the cause was a pilot error, he flew the route and confirmed the commission report.
From 1960 to 1962 he flew aid missions for the UN in the Congo . During the Biafra War he worked as a pilot for a Swedish charter company in the summer of 1968 and brought relief supplies to the newly founded state on behalf of church welfare organizations from São Tomé and Príncipe . He broke through the blockade of the Nigerian Air Force in a low flight with a Douglas DC-7 . He later stated that he could not allow the residents of Biafra rescued thanks to his food to be later massacred by the Nigerian armed forces , so he smuggled weapons on his plane. He was then released and began to work on building the Biafras Air Force.
He formed the Biafra Babies season in 1969 . This unit of five light aircraft of the type MFI-9 armed with rockets flew spectacular combat missions against Nigerian airfields, troop concentrations and oil production facilities, for example on May 22, 1969 at an airfield near Port Harcourt . Von Rosen trained the pilots from Biafra in Gabon and personally led five of the missions before retiring to Sweden exhausted.
Then he returns to his plantation in Ethiopia. On July 12, 1977 he visited friends in Gode. That night the house was attacked by Somali guerrillas . Von Rosen was one of the eight residents they killed.
literature
- Michael I. Draper: Shadows. Airlift and Airwar in Biafra and Nigeria, 1967-1970. Hikoki Publications, 1999, ISBN 1-902109-63-5 , pp. 217-230
- Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 175, 182-189, 198-199
- Gösta von Uexküll : Pilot for Humanity , in: Die Zeit 34/1968, p. 2 here :, accessed on April 20, 2014
Web links
- The Air War between Nigeria and Biafra , accessed December 30, 2012
- Side elevation of the MFI-9 aircraft in the Biafra Air Force markings , accessed April 20, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9 , p. 157
- ^ Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , p. 175
- ↑ Christoph Gunkel, Robert Kluge: The Count and the rocket babies . Article from October 12, 2010, online at Einestages on spiegel.de, seen on May 30, 2014
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rosen, Carl Gustaf von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rosen, Carl Gustaf Ericsson from |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish pilot |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 19, 1909 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Helgesta , Flen (municipality) |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 13, 1977 |
| Place of death | Gode (Ethiopia) |