₦airaland Forum

M14A1:
The war just started

cool318:
This is Great High Tech Gadgets Sirus & Komekn has been advocating for a long time. Tell me why Morale will not be High. Kudos to NA.

bidexiii:
#AFSF NIGHT OP'S MODE...

bidexiii:

bidexiii:
BATTLE FIELD IMAGE......

M14A1:
OMG!!! Looks like a forking Pentecostal crusade out there

giles14:
kudos to GEJ

cool318:
Who Dash GEJ?
It was under him the NA recorded the highest level of incompetence & Ineptitude.

giles14:
and it was under pmb 9 months in power dat d military turned around. may someone else claim ur achievement d way u deny gej his.

sczeska:
Lol. Where you even see budget

bidexiii:
Continuation .....

According to the secret US document of 1 July 1967, Edith’s
parents, having lived in the North for 30 years, where she
too was born, had fled back to the East in October 1966
because of that year’s massacre of the Igbo. Not 30,000 but
around 7,000 were killed, according to the American
documents. Donald Patterson of the Political Section and
Tom Smith of the Economic Section travelled from the US
Embassy in Lagos to the North after the pogrom. “The
Sabon-Garis were ghost towns, deserted, with the detritus of
people, who had fled rapidly, left behind. Most Northerners
we talked to had no apologies for what had happened to the
Ibos, for the pogrom that had killed so many. There were
exceptions, but in general, there was no remorse and the
feeling was one of good riddance.
“One day, our Hausa gardener attacked and tried to beat up
our Ibo cook. We fired the gardener, but not long
afterwards, the cook left for the East,” said Patterson.
Earlier that week, Gowon called the West German
Ambassador in Lagos. The Germans were eager to be in the
good graces of the Gowon administration. A war loomed.
And in wars, buildings, roads, bridges, and other
infrastructure are destroyed. These would need rebuilding.
The contract for the 2nd Mainland Bridge (later called Eko
Bridge) was signed two years earlier by the Ambassador,
CEO of Julius Berger Tiefbau AG and Shehu Shagari, Federal
Commissioner for Works and Survey. That was Julius
Berger’s first contract in Nigeria. It was due for completion
in less than two years and they wanted more bilateral
cooperation. The ambassador assured Gowon over the
phone that he had taken care of all the details and
guaranteed the safety of Edith, the nation’s “First Girlfriend”.
On the evening of 30 June, just before her departure on a
commercial airline, Edith told the American Defense Attaché
Standish Brooks, and his wife, Gail, that she actually wanted
to go to the UK or USA, but Jack, as she affectionately called
Gowon, insisted that she could be exposed to danger in
either of the two countries. Germany, he reasoned, would
be safer.
To Major B.M. Usman and other northern officers around
Gowon, who had attributed his slow response to the
secession to the fact that his girlfriend was Igbo and that her
parents were resettled in the East, it was such a huge relief
that at the Supreme Military Council meeting of 3 July 1967,
Gowon authorized the long awaited military campaign.
Edith had safely landed in West Germany. Gowon told the
gathering: “Gentlemen, we are going to crush the rebellion,
but note that we are going after the rebels, not the Ibos.”
The military action, which was to become the Nigerian Civil
War or the Biafran War or Operation Unicord, as it was
coded in military circles, officially started on 6 July 1967 at 5
a.m. The North was minded to use the war as a tool to reassert its dominance of national affairs. Mallam Kagu, Damboa, Regional Editor of the Morning Post, told the American consul in Kaduna: “No one should kid himself that this is a fight between the East and the rest of Nigeria. It is a fight between the North and the Ibo.” He added that the rebels would be flushed out of Enugu within six weeks. Lt. Colonel Hassan Katsina went further to say with the level of
enthusiasm among the soldiers; it would be a matter of
“only hours before Ojukwu and his men were rounded up”.
The northern section of the Nigerian military was the best
equipped in the country. To ensure the region’s continued
dominance, the British assigned most of the army and air
force resources to the North. It was only the Navy’s they
could not transfer. All the elite military schools were there.
The headquarters of the infantry and artillery corps were
there. Kaduna alone was home to the headquarters of the
1st Division of the Nigerian Army, Defense Industries
Corporation of Nigeria (Army Depot), Air Force Training
School and, Nigerian Defence Academy.
Maitama Sule, Minister of Mines and Power in 1966, once
told the story of how Muhammadu Ribadu, his counterpart
in Defence Ministry, went to the Nigerian Military School,
Zaria, and the British Commandant of the school told him
many of the students could not continue because they failed
woefully. When Ribadu thumbed through the list, Sule said,
it was a Mohammed, an Ibrahim, a Yusuf or an Abdullahi.
“You don’t know what you are doing and because of this you
cannot continue to head the school,” an irate Ribadu was
said to have told the commandant.
Shehu Musa Yar’Adua was one of the students for whom the commandant was sacked. “You can see what Yar’Adua later became in life. He became the vice president. This is the power of forward planning,” Sule declared.
Unknown to the forward planners, according to the US
documents, Ojukwu had been meticulously preparing for
war as early as October 1966, after the second round of
massacre in the North. He had stopped the Eastern share of
revenues that were supposed to accrue to the Federation
Account. By 30 April 1967, he had recalled all Igbos serving
in Nigeria embassies and foreign missions and those that
heeded his call were placed on the payroll of the
government of Eastern Region. The 77,000 square
kilometres of the Republic of Biafra–a mere 8 per cent of the size of Nigeria–was already divided into 20 provinces, with leaders selected for each. They had their own judiciary,
legislative councils, ministries and ambassadors. Alouette
helicopters and a B26 bomber were procured from the
French Air Force through a Luxemburg trading company.
Hank Warton, the German-American arms dealer, had been
flying in Czech and Israeli arms via Spain and Portugal since
October 1966. The military hardware, they could not get,
they seized. A DC3 and a Fokker F27 were seized from the
Nigerian Air Force in April. NNS Ibadan, a Nigerian Navy
Seaward Defence Boat (SDB) that docked in Calabar Port,
was quickly made Biafran.
Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who was supposed to be in
Enugu in prison for his role in 1966 coup, joined in training
recruits in Abakaliki. Foreign mercenaries were training
indoctrinated old people, young men and teenagers
recruited as NCOs [Non-commissioned Officers] in jungle
warfare, bomb making, mortar and other artillery firing.
Ojukwu, through speeches, town hall meetings, market
square performances and radio broadcasts, succeeded in
convincing his people that their destiny was death or a
separate state. All his performances in Ghana that
culminated in the Aburi Accord of January 1967, or
discussions with the Awolowo-led National Conciliation
Committee five months later, turned out to be ruse.
The underground war preparations, the secret arms
stockpiles openly manifested themselves as Ojukwu’s
stubborn refusal to accept offers or concessions during
these peace meetings.
But the Biafrans knew that their vulnerable line was along
Ogoja, Ikom, Calabar, Port Harcourt, and Yenogoa. Support
from the six million people making up the Eastern
minorities was very much unsure. The minorities viewed
their leaders in Biafra high command as traitors. And
without the minorities, Biafra would be landlocked and most likely, unviable as a state. More so, their vast oil and gas resources were the reason they contemplated secession in the first place. The Biafra high command believed that if
there was going to be any troop incursion from there, they
are going to be transported through ship. They already had
a B26 bomber to deal fire to Nigeria’s only transport ship,
NNS Lokoja, anytime it approached the Biafran coastline.
The Biafrans also knew that Gowon wanted to respect the
neutrality of Midwest and not invade through Niger Bridge,
which would have driven the people of the Midwest into
waiting Biafran hands. But if Gowon changed his mind and
there was a general mobilization of the two battalions of the
federal troops there, they had trustworthy men there that
would alert Enugu. And if that failed, according to the US
documents, the Niger Bridge had been mined using
“explosives with metal covering across the roadbed at
second pier out from the eastern side”.
The Biafrans also knew that the Yoruba, who were sworn
enemies of the Northern hegemony, would never join the
North militarily or politically against the Biafrans. When
Gowon vouched to “crush the rebellion,” progressive Yoruba
intellectuals deplored the language. Professor Hezekiah
Oluwasanmi, Vice Chancellor of University of Ife, described
the use of the word as unfortunate. Justice Kayode Eso of
the Western Court of Appeal said: “Crushing the East was not the way to make Nigeria one.”
Mr. Strong, the American consul in Ibadan, whom they had
been speaking to, confidentially wrote: “As intellectuals and
modernizers, they see the conflict in terms of continuing
determination of conservative North to dominate the more
advanced South and they expressed fear that once North
subdues East, it will seek to assert outright dominance over
the West. The centre of trouble might then swing back to the
West, where it all started.”
The Biafrans understood, therefore, that their strongest
defence perimeter would be along Nsukka, Obudu, Gakem
and Nyonya in Ogoja province, where they share border
with the North. That was where they concentrated. On 8 July
after three days of fighting, only four Biafran troops were
dead and nine wounded in Obudu, while up to 100 Nigerian
troops were dead, according to the Irish Embassy official,
Eamon O’tuathail, who visited the Catholic Mission Hospital
in Obudu. He said: “Forty five (45) of the dead had already
been buried and the villagers were seen carrying the heads
of the remaining around town.” In June before fighting
started, Ojukwu charged on Biafra Radio: “Each Biafran
soldier should bring back ten or twenty Hausa heads.”
At Nyanya, Nigerian troops attempted to seize the bridge
linking Obudu and Ogoja, but were beaten back by the
Biafran troops on 7 July at 1400hrs. According to the New
York Times’ Lloyd Garrison’s dispatch of 8 July: “The Biafran
Air Force–a lone B-26 fighter bomber–flew sorties from
Enugu today, bombing and strafing enemy columns. Asked
what damage it had inflicted, its European pilot replied:
“Frankly, I don’t know. But we made a lot of smoke.
Hundreds of Enugu pedestrians waved and cheered each
time the plane returned from a mission and swooped low
over the city buzzing Ogui Avenue.”
Tunde Akingbade of the Daily Times, who was returning
from the frontlines, said the first Nigerian battalion in Ogoja
area was “almost completely wiped out by a combination of
mines and electrical devices (Ogbunigwe)”.
In the first few weeks of the war, the Biafrans were clearly
on top. “Enugu is very calm,” the confidential cable of 13 July 1967 noted. “Ojukwu is dining with Field Commanders in State House tonight.”
On the federal side, confusion reigned. They had grossly
underestimated Biafran capabilities. “Gowon and his
immediate military advisers believe they can carry out a
successful operation putting their trust in the superiority of
the Hausa soldier,” the British High Commissioner, Sir David
Hunt, told his American counterpart on 31 May 1967. He
said further: “A northern incursion would be hastily
mounted, ill-conceived and more in the nature of a foray.”
Even the Nigerian infantry, which advanced as far as Obolo
on Oturkpo-Nsukka Road, was easily repelled. It ran out of
ammunition. At the Supreme Headquarters in Lagos, they
were accusing Shuwa, the commander, of not sending
enough information about what was going on. Shuwa
counter-accused that he was not getting enough and timely
orders. Requests for ammunition and hardware
procurement were chaotically coming to the Federal
Armament Board from different units, not collectively from
the central command.
Major S.A. Alao, acting commander of Nigerian Air Force
(after George Kurubo defected to Biafran High Command)
together with the German adviser, Lieutenant Colonel Karl
Shipp, had travelled to many European cities to buy jets.
They were unsuccessful. Gowon had written to the American
president for arms. The State Department declined military
assistance to either side. Gowon replied that he was not
requesting for assistance, but a right to buy arms from the
American market. That too was rejected.
The CIA had predicted a victory for Ojukwu, but American
diplomatic and consular corps in Nigeria predicted victory
for the Federal side and concluded that a united Nigeria
served American interests better than the one without the
Eastern Region. Two conflicting conclusions from an
important department and a useful agency. The American
government chose to be neutral. Dean Rusk, America’s
Secretary of State said: “America is not in a position to take
action as Nigeria is an area under British influence.”
The British on the other hand were foot-dragging. At the
insistence of Awolowo, “the acting prime minister” as he was
called in diplomatic circles, Gowon approached the Soviet
Union.
According to a secret cable (dated 24/08/67) sent by Dr.
Martin Hillenbrand, American Ambassador in East Germany,
to his counterpart in Lagos, MCK Ajuluchukwu, Ojukwu’s
special envoy, met Soviet Ambassador to Nigeria, Alexandr
Romanov, in Moscow in June 1967. Romanov said that for
USSR to recognize Biafra and supply it arms, the latter had
to nationalize the oil industry. Ojukwu refused, saying that
he had no money to reimburse the oil companies and that
Biafrans did not have the expertise to run the oil
installations.
A month later, Anthony Enahoro, the Federal Commissioner for Information and Labour, went to Moscow, signed a cultural agreement with Moscow and promised to nationalize the oil industry, including its allied industries once they got arms to recapture them from the Biafrans. Within days, 15 MiGs arrived in sections in Ikeja and Kano airports, awaiting assemblage. There was no nationalization. Meanwhile, buoyed by the confidence from early success, the Biafrans went on the offensive. Their B26 (one of the six originally intended for use against the Nigerian Navy) was fitted with multiple canon and 50mm calibre machine gun mounts. It conducted bombing raids on Makurdi airfield, Kano and Kaduna. Luckily for Nigeria, the two transport DC3s had gone to Lagos to get more reserve mortar and 106-artillery ammo. In Kano, there were no fatalities, only a slight damage to the wing of a commercial plane.
Kaduna, however, was not that lucky. On 10 August 1967, the B26 dropped bombs on Kaduna airbase, damaging many buildings and the main hangar. The German consulate in Kaduna confirmed that a German citizen, a Dornier technician tasked with maintaining Nigerian military planes, was killed and two others injured.
A week later, the senior traffic control officer, A.O. Amaku,
was arrested for sabotage. He was accused of failing to shut
off the airport’s homing device, thus giving the Biafran plane
navigational assistance. His British assistant, Mr. Palfrey,
was similarly suspected. He resigned and immediately
returned to the UK. However, Major Obada, the airbase
commanding officer and an Urhobo from the Midwest,
strongly defended the accused.
The daring bomb raid provoked many more Northern
civilians to run to the nearest army base and enlist to fight.
According to a report by US Ambassador Elbert Matthews,
cabled to Washington on 3 July 1967, unidentified men tried
to bomb the police headquarters in Lagos on the night of 2
July. They attempted to drive an automobile into the
compound, but the guards did not open the gate. They
packed the car across the street near a small house opposite a petrol station. Leaving the car, the men fled and within seconds, an explosion took place. The house was
demolished and all its occupants killed, but the petrol
station was unaffected. Eleven people, including some of the guards at the police headquarters, were injured.
Two hours later, a second explosion, from explosives in a
car parked by a petrol station, rocked Yaba. This time, the
station caught fire. The ambassador remarked: “It is possible this is a start of campaign of terrorism…public reactions could further jeopardize safety of Ibos in Lagos.” And sure it
did. A Lagos resident, who visited the police headquarters after the attack, told the Australian ambassador “Ibos must be killed.”

bidexiii:
OFF TOPIC
Sorry guys for deviating but I just came across these picture, what can of bullet she'll can reck havoc to a composite armor of abrahms MBT......
his RPG rounds or its equivalent....

nemesis2u:
multiple RPG hits.
got hit by every kind of RPG available
2 kinds of RPG warhead impacted 1. high explosive anti-tank HEAT and 2.tandem-charge high explosive anti-tank (something like RPG-29)

penetration of the turret composite armor ( partially it seems ) was due to RPG-29 which can penetrate composite armor under best case scenarios like zero degree impact etc.

chkil:
Russia to Supply President-S Defense System to Algeria, India, Belarus

Russia will deliver its advanced President-S onboard defense systems (ODS) to Algeria, India and Belarus, the general director of Concern Radio-Electronic Technologies (KRET) said Wednesday.

KAZAN (Sputnik) — In mid-March, the Russian company said that the deliveries of the ODS to Egypt under the 2015 contract would begin in "coming days."

"We are supplying the President-S not only to[b] Egypt[/b]. We have contracts with India, Algeria, Belarus. These are long-term agreements, part of the systems will be delivered later this year, partially they will be delivered in 2017 and 2018," Nikolai Kolesov told reporters without specifying details of the deals.

The ODS is designed to protect planes and helicopters from being hit by missiles, air defense and anti-aircraft artillery. The defense system is currently installed on the Ka-52, Mi-28 and Mi-26 helicopters..........

source : sputniknews .com

chkil:
Fly in an Algerian Sukhoi 30 MKA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNM5jmCP07U

bidexiii:
1st pic is a NAF pilot on a Northrop T-38 Talon

NAF pilots alongside other young USAF pilots

bidexiii:
WHAT DO YOU INTERPRETE THE JUST RELEASED B.H VIDEO FOR........
-abubakar Shekau surrenders in new video-




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWzhr7dOyrk


The whole video is in Arabic, anybody who can summarize the whole content...?

sczeska:
Bidexii oh, the third picture is crazy. Epic!!!!!!!!!

chkil:
from 00:00 to 04:50 it's in arabic and only some religious islamic thing , nothing interesting and he finish by saying this is my message to you , and start to talk with another language after 4: 50 to the end !

bidexiii:
Most part was.in Arabic and I think the rest kanuri; but it was all a propaganda video claiming al BH militants should surrender where ever they are by the purported leader in the video.
But according the analyst the flag and name tag @ the background was the old BH symbol and name not the Islamic State of West Africa which shows that the video was prerecorded........... BH busted!!!!!

What a fraudulent video...