was retired, so was the maneuver, as the next generations of Swedish warplanes, the Saab 37 and the Saab 39, couldn't effectively perform it. Due to the secrecy of the Cold War era and other factors, the Swedish cobra was largely unknown to the world until some former Saab 35 and 37 pilots wrote about it years later in books and articles, long after the Soviets had been credited with its discovery. Finland and Austria As Sweden exported the Saab 35 Draken, so was the cobra maneuver. Fighter variants of the Saab 35 was exported to both the Finnish Air Force and the Austrian Air Force. In an interview, former Finnish Air Force pilot Ari Saarinen recalled performing the maneuver in a Draken while intercepting a Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Nimrod over the Baltic Sea; the Nimrod pilot reduced power in order to get the Finns to overshoot, but the Finnish Drakens performed the maneuver to slow down, which according to Saarinen drew praise over the radio from the British Nimrod crew. According to a video uploaded by the Scania Wing comrade association (Swedish: F10 Kamratförening), the Swedish cobra was taught to Austrian pilots training on the Saab 35 in Sweden. It is unknown whether the Austrians used this as a combat maneuver or just as training against super stall. Syria Beyond Sweden, Syria also discovered the maneuver prior to the Soviets. In 1961 when Syria left the United Arab Republic, they were left with a very weak air force. The Syrians had to order new combat aircraft, and procured the Mig-21F-13 in June 1962. Once the aircraft had arrived and been integrated into the fleet, a problem became apparent. All of the unit commanders had been selected based on their political associations and loyalty to superiors, instead of knowledge of air combat. The new commanders were over-reliant on advice from about 30 Soviet advisors assigned to the Syrian Air Force to help with training on the Migs, but were generally ineffective. In this era of power over knowledge, however, a handful of pilots with powerful connections were able to disregard their Soviet advisors and orders from their commanders. One of these pilots, Mohammad Mansour, then a novice MiG-21-pilot fresh from a conversion course in the USSR, had an older brother, Fayez Mansour, with deep connections high in the chain of command in Damascus. Those connections enabled him to