ROMANIAN MILITARY IN AFRICA., Service in Angola

Hallo Gentlemen,

While away on holiday in Transylvania, I met an old gentleman, about 55-60 and via my Romanian wife we got talking about the military, he produced an identity card, naming him as a Veteran of War, however he was to young to be a WW2 veteran and when I asked about this, he mentioned the word Angola, and indicated his badly twisted arm, and again indicated this came about through his service in Angola.

Can anybody tell if Romanian Military served in the Angolan / African War back in the 1970s as military advisers to the communist forces?* or is the old boys mind clouded with age and the large amounts of plum schnapps he was drinking??

The veterans id card did have his picture.

Many thanks for any forth-coming help.

Kevin in Deva.

Units involved:
* Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) were a front representing the tribal powers and intelligentsia in the Kumbundu and Luanda. They had economic ties to several eastern Europe countries, including the Soviet Union, as well as Zambia, and had the support of the Portuguese Communist Party.

The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA),

The National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).


This post has been edited by New Connaught Ranger on August 21, 2006 06:12 pm

IIRC, Rumania sold about a dozen armed trainer airplanes to Angola (the only actual Rumanian military airplane export). Probably, there were 'advisors' sent along with these airplanes, who might have been involved in direct combat, too.

However, this obscure topic is well outside my field of interest, so I cannot provide you with any further details. Try to use Googe.ro (and let us know if you could find anything useful).

Gen. Dénes

Be sure. The chief of the romanian trainers can be found at the monthly meething of ARPIA. somewhere I had he's e-mail adress. If i foun it i'll post it here.

The Romanian Air Force Mission to Angola (Mission "Sirius") arrived there in February 1981 to train the newly created Angolan Air Force. They left in December 1982.

The commander of the mission was gen. Aurel Niculescu. Officially they did not engage in combat.

In the 90s there was also a Romanian infantry battalion deployed in Angola as part of the UN forces there. Maybe the guy was a veteran of that battalion.

A captain from my battalion (infantry) was in Angola, in the 90's.
His name is Fratila.

To generalize things a bit and go past Angola, I would be interested in learning how many Romanians who emigrated during WWII, and more specifically in 1944 and 1945, ended up as mercenaries in various corners of the world.

Although the number is surely not a large one, it is probably not as small as we think, either. Especially among those who left the country during that time for political reasons (ex: members of the Iron Guard, Third Reich sympathisers, etc), foreign military service away from Europe was a viable way to "disappear" and start a new life.

The Iron Guard-leaning Ilie Sturdza, son of Mihai Sturdza (the ex-Foreign Minister), defected from the Romanian Army in the fall of 1944. He went on to join the French "Legion Etrangere" and later ended up fighting in Indochina. He now lives in Madrid.

I wonder how many other similar examples there are, especially on the African continent, where civil wars and coup d'etats were often supported by white mercenaries with shady past lives.