It was late afternoon when we turned back for the tunnel where the taxi rank was sited. Soon enough we realised that we were lost but unable to communicate with those around us. Panicking somewhat in fast fading light, we eventually picked up our bearings quite close to the taxi rank. It was then that I spotted a man following a short distance behind wearing a thick belt in which was tucked a superb ghambia (curved Arabian fighting knife) with a magnificent jewel-studded black handle showing prominently above the belt-line.
When I drew Eric’s attention to the weapon, the man slowed to a crawl, his face twisting noticeably into a menacing expression. He continued to move towards us as Eric dived into an open-sided shop urging me, under his breath, to get off the street but I remained mesmerised. Next moment the shopkeeper was calling even more urgently saying I must not, under any circumstances, look at the weapon again. Feeling rather foolish I went in and pretended to be interested in a stack of rubber mats.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man walking slowly by. When he had gone, the shopkeeper who spoke good English told us that there were problems with that specific individual and his bejewelled ghambia. Firstly he was a renowned terrorist who was in town because it was ‘market day’ and secondly, it would have been incumbent upon the man, by custom, to give me his knife had I continued to admire it. In return however, I would be compelled to give him something of equal worth; but I was in no position to do this. Failure to produce a reciprocal gift simply meant forfeiture of one’s life. Having been given such sobering information, Eric and I were escorted by the shopkeeper to a taxi, but not before he pressurised us into buying unwanted items from his shop.
These experiences lead us to ask questions about what the shopkeeper had said concerning ‘market day’. We were told that, in the strange world of British and Arab relations, Thursday was a day when fighting stopped to allow friend and foe to go to market in safety. A recurring Ceasefire existed from midnight Wednesday to midnight Thursday. Whether this very strange arrangement was true, or not, I still cannot say. Nevertheless, my impression of Arabs, developed from stories I had heard before and during the visit to Aden, was not good at all. Any doubts I had then had been totally removed by the goings-on at the RAF’s crude air-weapons range which lay about ten kilometres to the north of RAF Kormaksar. This range was nothing like ours at Kutanga with its beautiful trees and wild game. It was just an area of desert sand set against the beach.
During weapons training Arabs ran about in the danger area where spent cartridge casings fell from the aircraft. The RAF Range Safety Officers were not too concerned because no amount of effort had succeeded in stopping those people from collecting spent cartridge cases that they sold over the border to Yemeni gun-makers.
The kinetic energy of a spent 20mm cartridge case reaching ground at speed was lethal. The Arab collectors knew this only too well, but it did not put them off. RAF officers said that when a collector was killed, others would rush to grab the dead man’s bag, dig out the spent cartridge from head or body, and continue collecting as if nothing had happened.
On any air weapons range there is need for clearly visible targets for pilots to aim at and to measure their accuracy. Old vehicles make good targets because non-explosive practice weapons pass through a vehicle leaving it intact and reusable. Hundreds of hits could be taken before a vehicle fell to bits. But in Aden such a target would be stolen the first night it appeared. Laying down white lime as a marker was a waste of time because the mark disappeared under sand thrown up by just a few strikes. In fact a single 60-pound rocket falling short could totally obliterate a freshly laid lime marker. So, the RAF armourers decided to overcome the problem by building a huge pyramid using old forty-four-gallon drums encased in concrete. This target took a week to build and was guarded day and night for another week to ensure that the concrete had set. However, it only took the first unguarded night for Arab thieves to destroy the entire arrangement and abscond with every single drum. The remaining concrete rubble, rejected as worthless by thieves, was then bulldozed into a heap and used for a while as a viable target.
In the last week of our detachment I managed to arrange a flight in an RAF photo-reconnaissance Meteor with Flight Lieutenant Munroe. He let me aerobat the twin-engined jet and showed me how to stall-turn the aircraft using power on the outside engine to make the manoeuvre very easy. Next I flew with Flight Lieutenant Morris in a Hunter T7 and experienced supersonic flight for the first time. Going supersonic at height was a bit of an anti-climax but low-flying the Hunter at high speed was really fantastic—though I found the servo-driven controls almost too light and sensitive. One had only to think about a manoeuvre and it seemed to occur instantly.
Having been away from my pregnant wife for four weeks, I was pleased when the time came to return home to a land of sanity. It was even more pleasing to learn that Varky and I were to fly in the RAF Shackelton that would provide search and rescue cover for No 1 Squadron’s formations between Aden and Nairobi in Kenya. The formations were to route via Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and then on to Nairobi. At Addis Ababa, the jet pilots experienced the horrors of having to let down through cloud that was lower than the mountains surrounding the national airport.
Apart from the joy of flying low-level in the four-engined bomber-cum-maritime-surveillance Shackelton, it meant that neither Varky nor I would be flying from Nairobi to Thornhill in the back of a Rhodesian Air Force Dakota. The old DC3 made most pilots flying as passengers airsick; a situation that never failed to amuse our strong-stomached technicians.
When we arrived back in dispersals at Thornhill, the whole station was gathered to welcome us home. I was one of the sweat-stained pilots who climbed down from his aircraft wearing Mae West with mask and helmet pressure lines under wet, dishevelled hair. But I was too busy seeking out Beryl to savour the glamour I had witnessed two years earlier when, as a student pilot, I watched pilots returning from the first Aden detachment.
At the end of December I took leave to be with Beryl for the arrival of our first-born child. Towards the middle of January it became obvious that the baby was in a breach position and the decision was taken by Doctor Deuchar to make a caesarean delivery on 14 January.
Deborah Anne was perfect in every way with not a single blemish on her nine pound, six ounce body. Beryl handled the operation like a star, her private ward full to bursting with many flowers and cards from family, friends and clients. It was a special time for both of us.
Chapter
4
No 2 Squadron
ON RETURN TO DUTY I was told that I had been posted, together with Dave Thorne and Keith Corrans, to a re-formed No 2 Squadron. This squadron was to handle all future student training on both piston and jet aircraft. Dave and I were to become instructors on Provosts, Keith on Vampires. The prospect of instructing so early in our careers was both disappointing and pleasing. The disappointment came from having to leave the easygoing lifestyle of an operational squadron; the pleasure was in being considered worthy to become instructors.
Sitting (left to right): Roy Morris, Keith Corrans, Dave Thorne, Basil Myburgh, Bob Woodward (OC), Chris Dams (Flt Cdr), Pat Meddows-Taylor, Mark Smithdorff and PB. Back Row: Technicians who are named in this book are, from left: Taffy Dowell (2nd) Jimmy Stewart (Sqn WO centre) and Don Annandale (7th) Note: the efficiency of Rhodesian technicians is again amply illustrated in this photograph. One tech for every pilot seems ridiculous. In any other air force this number would not have been less than 3 to 1.
Flight Lieutenant Bob Woodward being an ex-RAF Central Flying School instructor was a natural choice to command No 2 Squadron with Flight Lieutenant Chris Dams as his second-in-command.
For the first two months we did very little flying and instructor training was limited to groundwork. This left us with a fair amount of time on our hands, which we occupied in other interests. One of these was fashioning aerobatic model aircraft from balsa wood. Bob Woodward introduced this rather dangerous hobby that
involved high-speed launching of these gliders, fashioned to resemble well-known jet aircraft. A five-metre length of heavy elastic line propelled the small aircraft at initial speed somewhere in the region of 250 knots. One man held one end of the elastic with arm stretched high above his head whilst the launcher walked backwards holding the model aircraft. When the elastic was at full stretch some twenty-five metres from the launcher, he made sure wings were level and released the model. Usually the aircraft passed well above the launcher’s head as the aircraft pitched up into a high loop.
One of my gliders, fashioned to look like an RAF Lightning interceptor, failed to climb when Randy du Rand, visiting from No 1 Squadron, was holding the elastic for me to launch. The aircraft failed to climb immediately and its heavily leaded nose struck the peak of Randy’s Air Force cap, splitting it in two and leaving Randy with a nasty blue lump on his forehead.
Another activity involved building a ladies’ bar in the grounds of the Officers’ Mess. The Officers’ Mess of RAF times was in the middle of the Married Quarters but the Ministry of Education had commandeered it as a school for retarded children. It was known as Glengary School. The RAF Sergeants’ Mess had been damaged by fire in RAF days and, when refurbished in mid-1958, it became the Officers’ Mess. Close by in the garden of this mess was a building that had become completely overgrown by scrub and bramble.
Bob and I cut our way through the vegetation to find out what this building was all about. We discovered that it had once been a billiard room that had also suffered fire damage though the walls and roof remained sound. With the blessings of Group Captain Jock Barber, who was Station CO at the time, we set about refurbishing the building.
In a remarkably short space of time the entire structure and its surrounds took on a new look. Because of my experience in carpentry, it fell to me to build a decent-size bar, construct requisite shelving and install comfortable wall seats. Upon its completion, Bob requested all officers on Station to make submissions from which to select a name for the ladies’ bar. Over a hundred names were offered and one of my submissions was chosen. From then on the ladies’ bar was known as ‘The Grog Spot’; a name that became well known to thousands of military and civilian visitors who enjoyed its special atmosphere and superb parties.
Death of Jack Roberts
JACK ROBERTS OF NO 11 SSU had only served on No 1 Squadron as a Staff pilot for six months when, on 1 July 1960, he was reported overdue from a low-level, cross-country flight. An air search was about to be mounted when a telephone call was received from a ranch south of Belingwe mountain. The rancher reported that the sight of a wheel bouncing past him at high speed had shaken him and his trailer-load of workers. When he located the wheel he realised it must have come from an aircraft. In fact it had travelled an incredible distance from Belingwe mountain peak where Jack Roberts had met his death.
The Board of Inquiry into this incident established that Jack, flying an FB9, had encountered low cloud on his first leg from Thornhill but had left the decision to climb above it a fraction too late. His aircraft impacted a vertical rock face a mere three feet from the summit of Mount Belingwe and disintegrated.
The four 20mm Hispano cannons remained deeply embedded in the rock face but most of the airframe debris, including the engine and undercarriage, passed over the summit. The Army kindly provided fifty territorial trainees from Llewellin Barracks to assist our technicians recover the scattered wreckage.
There were no helicopters available in those days so there was no way around the long climb up the mountain to recover every piece of wreckage which had to be manhandled or dragged down the difficult slope. Fortunately very heavy items, such as engine, main planes and undercarriage, were near the foot of the mountain and were accessible to four-wheel drive vehicles. The four cannons could not be extracted from the rock and were left in situ. They are probably still embedded there to this day!
Sabotage
IN OCTOBER 1960 THERE WAS a great deal of political manoeuvring by black organisations seeking the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Because this caused much industrial unrest in Southern Rhodesia the Federal Government decided to get a message to all the black folk by air-dropping leaflets, as most of the people in the remote areas did not have radios.
Nos 2, 3 and 4 Squadrons were tasked to fly Provosts, Dakotas and Pembrokes to do the drops. Each aircraft was allocated a specific area to ensure full coverage of the country without overlaps. I had to cover a sector to the north and east of Gwelo before returning to the industrial area of Gwelo at 5 p.m. when workers would be streaming into the streets from the factories.
Flight Lieutenant Charlie Tubbs, the Senior Air Traffic Controller at Thornhill, asked if he could accompany me on this four-and-a-half-hour sortie. With thousands of leaflets in bundles behind our seats and tucked in every accessible, safe location we set off with Charlie, an ex-RAF pilot, making the take-off. Once airborne he asked me if he could try his hand at landing on return to base. I agreed he could.
Charlie did most of the flying to allow me to map-read and record every village with the number of leaflets dropped as we moved from place to place in a pre-planned pattern. Our final drop was over the black townships of Gatooma. We then turned for Gwelo remaining at low level. The Provost was purring along when I turned to Charlie and said, “Isn’t it amazing how reliable engines are nowadays. Here we are flying along, never worrying that the fan might fail on us." Charlie was horrified. “Don’t say that, you might regret your words.”
We arrived at Gwelo’s industrial area on time. The canopy was rolled back and we had just commenced dropping leaflets when the sight and stench of smoke preceded severe vibration from a faltering engine. The canopy was rolled forward then immediately re-opened because of blinding, foul-smelling smoke in the cockpit. When the engine quit I was already aiming for the zigzag roof of the Bata Shoe Factory just ahead of us because there were too many power lines about and the roadways were crowded.
I put out a hurried ‘Mayday’ call to Thornhill Approach just as we were about to touch down on the factory roof. But happily the engine powered up again just long enough to allow us to wallow past the factory to the edge of the disused wartime RAF base, Moffat Airfield. The engine then quit completely and I was able to put down quite smoothly in very high grass. As the aircraft sliced through the grass, I prayed we would not strike any hidden antheaps or antbear holes that were common to this area. Blindly we rolled over rough ground for some distance before emerging smack bang on a grass runway that had recently been trimmed by the Gwelo Gliding Club.
When we climbed down from the aircraft Charlie’s hands were shaking as he groped for his cigarettes. After a couple of hard drags Charlie said in a stern voice, “You promised to let me try my hand at landing”, whereupon we both burst into near-hysterical, relieved laughter.
This was the first of a number of incidents involving sabotage of Royal Rhodesian Air Force aircraft. A 30mm steel ball bearing had been introduced into the engine casing and had settled at the rear of the number six-cylinder piston. There it had banged away with every revolution of the engine until eventually it broke through the piston head. Once the piston was holed, the whole engine casing became highly pressurised, forcing all the engine’s oil to dump to atmosphere through the crankcase breather pipe.
Two days later another Provost suffered engine failure for the self-same reason. I think it was Flight Lieutenant Ken Edwards who put down safely with no damage to the airframe in Seke Reserve near New Sarum. An inspection of all the Leonides engines revealed that another four engines contained loose 30mm ball bearings.
The next incident involved a Canberra. Flight Lieutenant Ozzie Penton, a man of small build, was conducting his pre-flight inspection when he came to the port engine where, with fingers around the shroud, he could pull up as he jumped just high enough to check the lower turbines of the jet engine. He noticed something unusual and called a tall technician over to take a close look. Ther
e, between the line of static vanes and the first impeller blades, lay a socking great bolt that had obviously been placed there to damage the engine on start-up.
Initially it was believed that the sabotage was by black hangar Staff acting for the Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union who continued to create unrest throughout the land. But then an incident occurred which made it obvious that ZAPU agents were not involved.
One of the black hanger workers at New Sarum called the Warrant Officer in charge of No 3 Squadron to come and inspect the undercarriage of a Dakota. He told the WO that when he was cleaning the aircraft’s oleos the wheel axle retainer nuts did not feel right, even though they looked normal. The WO soon established that the nuts were indeed visually normal but felt wrong. They had perfect shape, threads and all, but had been fashioned from compressed paper and glue, sanded smooth and painted silver.
Though never proven, it was concluded that one or more of a number of RAF technicians on secondment to our Air Force were acting against our interests, possibly for MI6 in London. The seconded men returned to Britain shortly after these incidents and others that involved two Canadairs of No 3 Squadron. These incidents are covered later.
With ongoing unrest in the Shona areas, there was concern for the safety of the tribal chiefs who had become targets of youths stirred to action by ZAPU. Ground-to-ground communication with soldiers protecting the chiefs and their families were so poor that it became necessary for the Air Force to overfly all chiefs’ kraals twice daily. To assist the pilots, each army protection unit laid out a white sheet on the ground. If nothing was overlaid on the sheet all was well. If, however, the unit had a problem, three orange strips could be laid on the white sheets in any one of a number of patterns set out in a booklet to convey their situation to the pilots who passed these on to local Army commanders. The flights were long and generally enjoyable, though I couldn’t help worrying that my aircraft engine might have been sabotaged again.
Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot Page 14
