Jesus Christ Airlines

[Steepclimb]

No not a religious topic, but the unofficial title of an airline and the title of a documentary and telling the story of the Biafra airlift during the Biafra conflict.

I saw the documentary on Irish Television, RTE, before Christmas and I believe it's shortly to be shown on Channel 4 (UK) shortly. I would definitely recommend it.

It's full of fascinating snippets from the pilots involved, a motley crew if there ever was one.

It features Frederick Forsyth among others. Many of the pilots were ex RAF wartime crews and there was a healthy mix of Scandinavians and others.
My two favourite stories were of a Connie on finals just as the runway was being bombed by a Nigerian night intruder. A bomb landed smack bang on the centre of the runway, (a road). But the Captain was as cool as you like and simply held off the nosewheel until he passed the damaged bit.
The intruder was driven off on at least one occasion when someone juryrigged a strobe in a cardboard tube with some kind of switch mechanism wired into the cockpit. (They didn't make clear the type of aircraft). With this gadget the intruder was intercepted. The rapidly flashing strobe convinced him he was under attack by a fighter, so he fled.

I've no idea when it's on, a look in one of the guides should tell. It was definitely fascinating.

[poetpilot]

I must keep a lookout for that. As I noted in a previous thread, as an air cadet I saw some Anson C24s converted and VERY roughly painted up at Bovingdon, for use in Biafra. The one Annie I was lucky enough to hitch a ride in (TX227), ended up crashed there (Biafra not Bovingdon).

Can't really imagine the Anson carrying enough to warrant its use, but as said previously it seemed a ragbag organisation and I suppose they were glad of any and all aircraft that could assist.

[pigboat]

There were a couple of IL28's, one flown by somebody named Intruder, and the other flown by a guy nicknamed Genocide. May have been a South African. He used to monitor the aia/air freqs used by the relief flights, and call "Hello, hello, this is Genocide calling," or "Come on down baby, it's Genocide."
The Swede was Count Carl von Rosen, who organized a half a**ed airforce for the Biafrans. He had a few little single seat aircraft that was manufactured in Malmo, outfitted with a half dozen rockets under each wing. This thing could only do about a hundred knots on a good day, but one day they attacked Port Harcourt and shot the place up.
There was another story that four guys got tanked up one night, stole an F-27 and set out to bomb Lagos, using homemade bombs. They were blown apart in the air by AA fire, and one of the commandos was supposed to have fallen through the roof of the Czech embassy.
I hear there are still a couple of direlict Connies still in the weeds in Sao Tome.

[Fris B. Fairing]

Does anyone have any recent information on the Sao Tome Connies mentioned by pigboat?

Cheers