1968 - Mark Kurlansky [152]
The Nigerians would not allow in relief flights, including Red Cross, to help Biafra’s ten million people, one-tenth of whom were living in refugee camps. They said that such flights inhibited the ability of the Nigerian air force to carry out its mission. The only food getting through arrived on a few night flights by daredevil pilots sponsored by international relief organizations.
Most of the world, preoccupied with the year’s busy agenda, regarded this war with a fair amount of indifference, not supporting the Biafran claim to nationhood but urging the Nigerians to let relief planes get through. But on July 31 the French government, despite predictions that de Gaulle’s days of foreign policy initiatives were over, departed from its allies and its own foreign policy by stating that it supported Biafra’s claim to self-determination. Aside from France, only Zambia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Gabon officially recognized Biafra. On August 2 the war became a U.S. political issue when Senator Eugene McCarthy criticized President Johnson for doing little to help and demanded that he go to the United Nations and insist on an airlift of food and medicine to Biafra.
Americans responded by creating numerous aid groups. The Committee for Nigeria/Biafra Relief, which included former Peace Corps volunteers, was looking for a way to get relief into Biafra. Twenty-one leading Jewish organizations, Catholic Relief Services, and the American Committee to Keep Biafra Alive were all looking for ways to help. The Red Cross hired a DC-6 from a Swiss charter company to fly in at night, but on August 10, after ten flights, the flights were suspended because of Nigerian antiaircraft fire.
Then, on August 13, Carl Gustav von Rosen, a Swedish count and legendary aviator, landed a four-engine DC-7 on a little dirt runway in Biafra. The plane, carrying ten tons of food and medicine, had come in on a new route free from Nigerian radar-guided antiaircraft guns.
Von Rosen had first become famous in a similar role in 1935 when he defied the Italian air force and managed to fly the first Red Cross air ambulance into besieged Ethiopia. In 1939, as a volunteer for the Finnish air force in the Finnish-Soviet war, he flew many bombing missions over Russia. And during World War II he flew a weekly courier plane between Stockholm and Berlin.
After successfully landing in Biafra, von Rosen then went to São Tomé, the small Portuguese island off the coast of Nigeria, where warehouses of food, medicine, and ammunition were stacked up ready for Biafra. There he briefed the pilots on the air corridor he had discovered. He had flown this corridor into Biafra twice to make sure it was safe. The first time he did it in daylight, even though daylight runs were unheard of because of the risk of interception by the Nigerian air force. But von Rosen said he had to be able to examine the terrain before attempting a night run. He said that he didn’t care whether the pilots used the corridor for food or guns. “The Biafrans need both if they are to survive.” The tall Scandinavian with blue eyes and gray hair called what was happening there “a crime against humanity. . . . If the Nigerians go on shooting at relief planes, then the airlift should be shielded with an umbrella of fighter planes. Meanwhile we are going to continue flying and other airlines will join in.”
Correspondents who managed to get into Biafra reported extremely high morale from the Biafrans,