Carl Gustaf Von Rosen - Second World War

Second World War

After his return from the war in Ethiopia, he went to the Netherlands to join KLM, the first public airline in the world, and became one of their foremost pilots. He married a Dutch wife, but their happiness ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. When the Russians tried to invade Finland 1939 in the Winter War, von Rosen quit his job to fly bombing missions for the Finns. He purchased a KLM Douglas DC-2, had it converted to a bomber in Sweden, and made one operational mission in March 1940 against the Soviet Union with it. Later the same year, as the Germans attacked the Netherlands, von Rosen went to England and applied for service with the RAF but was turned down, on account of his family relation to Hermann Göring. Von Rosen's Dutch wife joined the resistance and was killed during the war, while he continued flying for KLM on the dangerous London−Lisbon route.

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