The Meteor Purchase

by Matthew Dennis

Set in the spring of 1969, the Biafran Government is losing the battle with the Nigerian Federal Forces in the civil war that erupted in 1967. Biafra had been the South East part of Nigeria, forced into a declaration of independence by the massacre of its people by the northern tribes who had achieved supremacy under the constitution on independence from Britain in 1964. The Biafran lands lay over most of the oil-bearing strata. The Federal Government could not afford to let the independence happen.The Biafran Air Force had been trying to purchase night jet fighters to be able to compete with the MiG 17s the Soviet Government were supplying to the Federal Forces. Protection of its nightly aid flights into ‘Airstrip Annabelle’ was a priority. The plot revolves around ‘Alf’ Rhodes, a British born, Australian pilot with Korean War experience. Coerced into the operation, Alf, and his partner, have been charged with bringing two old British Meteor jets, obtained on the ‘black market’, into Biafra, flying across hostile several West African countries avoiding hostile MiGs.

237 pages, Paperback

Published April 26, 2021