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Count Carl Gustav Von Rosen was born in Sweden in 1909 and rather notoriously was Herman Goering's nephew (his aunt was married to Goering). Obviously of privileged background he started his professional career as a Pilot (largely influenced by Goering who was Head of the Luftwaffe and a WW1 Flying Ace) as part of a Flying Circus, firstly as a Mechanic and then as a Pilot.

When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia (then ruled by Emperor Haile Sellassie a direct descendant -as Ethiopians will remind you- of the Queen of Sheba), Von Rosen promptly dropped everything and joined the Red Cross, flying Medical and food supplies. This was not without considerable risk in that the Italian Airforce did not discriminate between Humanitarian and Military planes, he indeed survived several attacks (though in all honesty the Italian Airforce was quite poor at the time, but dangerous all the same).

After this he moved to Holland and joined KLM (the world's first airline), where he met and married his wife, of course marital bliss was cut short by antecedents to WW2 and upon the Invasion of Finland by the Russians (The Winter War of 1938), he joined the Finnish Airforce, famously dropping bombs by hand on the Russians, from the cargo door of a Civilian aircraft. When the Germans invaded Holland, Von Rosen's wife joined the resistance and was killed. Von Rosen, then came over to England and tried to join the RAF, but was rejected on account of his relationship to Goering (and probably on account of his having fought with the Finns, who were for a time allies of the Nazis). He then went back to Holland flying for KLM on the extremely dangerous London-Lisbon route.

After the war he returned to Africa firstly as an Instructor for the Ethiopian Airforce and subsequently as Pilot for Dag Hammarskjold (UN Secretary General) who was involved in mediating in the crisis in the Congo. A cloud exists here in that Hammarskjold reputedly was killed in an aircrash on the one day Von Rosen took ill and couldn't fly him. In addition, documents were uncovered in South African Secret Service Records that show that there was definitely a plot to blow up Hammarskjold's plane on the said date- however that's another story.

Von Rosen, however gained International fame with his famed bombing raids during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), where he first started out flying Relief supplies into Biafran territory to beat the deliberate blockade by the Nigerian Government of food supplies into Biafra (a Nigerian

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