There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
21. A Time magazine reporter wrote an article published in 1969, during the war, describing the encounter:
Last week, as the Biafran rebellion against Nigeria neared its second anniversary, Von Rosen and his flyers attacked the Nigerian airport at Benin, reported damage to one MIG and several civilian planes sitting on the groun
d. That raid and two earlier forays, which damaged British- and Russian-made Nigerian planes at Enugu and Port Harcourt, eased the pressure on Biafra’s landing strip at Uli. With no Nigerian bombers overhead for a change, transports were shuttling in.
Source: “Biafra: How to Build an Instant Air Force,” Time, June 6, 1969.
22. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, p. 100.
23.
After he returned home from Biafra last year, Von Rosen continued to worry about the underdog. . . . The plight of the Biafrans rekindled his sympathies for the outgunned and inspired an improbable, wildly romantic scheme: to marshal pilots and planes and create an instant air force for the planeless Biafrans. . . . [Von Rosen] approached Malmö Flygindustri, builders of the MFI-9B, and received permission to take up one of the trainers for familiarization flights. He searched quietly for pilots and demanded, with reason, that they be experienced. . . .
The Biafran government put up $60,000 for the purchase of five secondhand MFl-9Bs in a third-party transaction handled through a Zurich bank. Biafran Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu appointed Von Rosen an air force colonel and approved an additional $140,000 for refitting the planes in friendly Gabon and for the pilots’ salaries. Finally Von Rosen told his wife, Gunvor, of his plans—up to a point. “He told me he was going to Biafra,” Countess von Rosen said, . . . “but he didn’t say he would be bombing MIGs.”
Source: “Biafra: How to Build an Instant Air Force,” Time, June 6, 1969, the pogram-war-starvation.blogspot.com/2007/12/biafra-how-to-build-an-instant-air-force.html.
24. Pfister, Apartheid, South Africa, and African States, pp. 52–53.
25. McCullum, “Biafra Was the Beginning,” AfricaFiles.
26. We have the following amazing description of what landing at Uli was like from a 1969 story in Time:
As they near ground level, crews must maneuver in darkness for all but the final 30 seconds before touchdown. The runway is really only a section of the road between Uli and Mgbidi that has been widened to 75 feet. “That’s a nice wide road,” comments one flyer, “but a damned narrow runway.” Airplanes’ wheels have no more than a 20-ft. margin on either side. Wingtips brush treetops, and to avoid running out of runway, pilots reverse their propellers and “stand” on their brakes. Not infrequently, an incoming pilot discovers that the control tower has blithely sent a plane out above or below him.
Source: “Biafra: Come on Down and Get Killed,” Time, March 21, 1969.
27. Interview with anonymous American relief pilot.
OGBUNIGWE
28. During his last wartime speech Biafran head of state Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu summarized many of the technological feats of the Biafran state:
In three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years, . . . [w]e built bombs, rockets, and we designed and built our own refinery and our own delivery systems and guided them far. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles.
The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. . . . We spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity.
In three years, we had broken the technological barrier, became the most advanced Black people on earth.
Source: Excerpt from last wartime speech of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, head of Biafran state; Emma Okocha, “Odumegwu Ojukwu—The Last Campaign of the Biafran General,” Vanguard, February 15, 2010.
29. E. O. Arene, The “Biafran” Scientists: The Development of an African Indigenous Technology (Lagos, Nigeria: Arnet Ventures, 1997); Bayo Onanuga, People in the News, 1900–1999: A Survey of Nigerians of the 20th Century (Lagos, Nigeria: Independent Communications Ltd., 2000); pay special attention to entry on Ezekwe; Michael Robson, “Douglas A/B-26 Invader/Biafran Invaders”; www/vectaris.net/id307.html.
30. Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 2006).
BIAFRAN TANKS
31. Morrow, “Chinua Achebe, An Interview,” Conjunctions.
32. I hope I am not misunderstood: No nation is truly independent; clearly not. You can manage certain things, but you do rely on others, and it’s a good thing the whole world should be linked in interdependence. As human beings you can be independent, but as members of society you are related to your fellows. In the same way, nations can manage certain affairs on their own and yet be linked to others.
33. After the war many of the scientists who developed the aforementioned devices were absorbed by the federal government into the Projects Development Institute (PRODA) and the Scientific Equipment Development Institute (SEDI-E), both in Enugu. The institutes were initially fairly successful under the expert leadership of talented scientists such as Gordian Ezekwe, but they suffered from poor federal investment and support, and have, like so many other institutions in Nigeria, fallen into disrepair. See: www.proda-ng.org/index.html.
A TIGER JOINS THE ARMY
34. Theresa Emenike, “Welcome to Amaigbo”; www.amaigbo.plus.com/files/amaigbo2.html.
35. Adeyinka Makinde, Dick Tiger: The Life & Times of a Boxing Immortal (Tarentum, PA: Word Association Publishers, 2005); www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Dick_Tiger.