Netherlands
- On March 7, 1964, a young aircraft engineer, Theo van Eijck, of the Dutch Naval Air Arm MLD stole a two-engined Grumman S-2 Tracker maritime patrol aircraft at RAF Hal Far in Malta and flew to Libya. He was trying to defect to Egypt, but did not have enough fuel to reach his destination in Alexandria. He made a perfect landing on a short airstrip near Benghazi, after flying over Benina Airport. The pilot was then granted political asylum by the Libyan authorities, but a year later he agreed to return to the Netherlands and spent a year in jail. The aircraft was returned to the Dutch after that.
Read more about this topic: List Of Cold War Pilot Defections
Famous quotes containing the word netherlands:
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)