In spite of the shock effect of the opening air strikes, and those still in progress, some anti-aircraft guns took on the six slow-flying Dakotas as they passed in extended line astern at 500 feet, disgorging heavily laden paratroopers. During their short descent to ground, the paratroopers were surprised to see many CTs running towards them with some already passing directly below. Their drop line had been planned to be far enough from the campsites to ensure that all ZANLA within the primary target area would be contained before the paratroopers landed. As it happened, many paratroopers landed amongst fleeing ZANLA who, though armed, seemed to have only one thing in mind; escape!
Brian Robinson had been right in assuming that CTs would not move out along obvious escape routes but simply run in the direction they happened to be facing. He was wrong in assuming that he had planned an adequate distance from primary targets to the paratrooper drop lines because he had failed to cater for the Olympic speeds stressed CTs could achieve.
Paratrooper commanders had no time to organise their callsigns in the opening minutes, because officers and soldiers were taking on large numbers of ZANLA running from the ongoing air activities. Soon enough the CTs realised their way was blocked, though a few made the deadly error of attempting to fight their way through the troops in hope of gaining safety in the bush beyond.
Hunter and Vampire strikes and re-strikes were still continuing as the SAS and RLI soldiers killed hundreds of panicking CTs. The jets cleared back to base to re-arm as K-Cars moved into action, their cannons adding to the confusion of noise from smallarms and anti-aircraft gunfire.
Those CTs who realised that they were running towards certain death around the perimeter went to ground, allowing the assault troops time to organise themselves for their advance through the camps. The exposed breast of one dead ZANLA, still clutching an AK-47 rifle, confirmed intelligence reports that there were a number of Tanzanian-trained CT females present at Chimoio.
Brian Robinson had only just begun to give his orders when the command helicopter was hit, forcing Norman to clear to the Admin Base. The hiatus caused by the loss of their airborne commander might have been disastrous except for the calibre of men on the ground and in the K-Cars. Nevertheless, the return of Norman Walsh and Brian in the borrowed helicopter, albeit with reduced communication facilities, allowed organised movement to recommence.
Along the entire assault line, soldiers moved forwards continuously killing every ZANLA in their path. With so much ground to cover and with so many CTs in hiding, the fighting went on all day. Independently, K-Cars took on allcomers within and beyond the primary target.
The incoming and outgoing flow of communications to and from the command helicopter was relentless but rewarding. Norman ordered many Hunter and Canberra strikes against tough points to ensure that the roll-up action kept momentum. The gridded photographs of Chimoio allowed him to pass each target point to the striking pilots with pinpoint accuracy. Once his orders were issued, he could get on with other matters without having to oversee the strikes. At times there were as many as four targets lined up for near-simultaneous attention.
Brian Robinson had over sixty callsigns to deal with, a mind-boggling situation that he managed with incredible skill. His numerous actions as the Army commander in Fireforce actions had certainly prepared him well for this high-pressure situation.
Back at the Admin Base, with so much going on around me all at once over such a large area, I experienced moments of helplessness, even panic, when I felt I was not managing to do all that was expected of me. Fortunately our pilots and technicians got on with their work in typically efficient fashion, offering help or simply taking action without my having to ask them to do so. The RLI ‘protection troops’ were outstanding, having developed and maintained a smooth and cheerful routine.
A little after midday one SAS soldier who had been killed in action, Frans Nel, and a couple of casualties were delivered to me. I had been expecting many casualties throughout the day but these were the only ones that came to the Admin Base. This was incredible considering the very high number of dead ZANLA the K-Car pilots reported seeing in their own target areas and in the ground through which the assault troops had passed.
One of the Vampires was crippled by ground fire. Air Lieutenant Phil Haigh was flying the FB9 that sustained damage as it crossed over Vanduzi crossroads on return to base. This caused his engine to fail some way short of the border. Rather than attempt the notoriously dangerous act of abandoning an FB 9, Phil chose to glide across the border and make a forced landing in Rhodesia. This might have worked had the aircraft not run into the deep donga that wrecked the aircraft and killed Phil.
Phil Haigh (left) with Francois du Toit.
When Norman Walsh called me forward to inspect air weapons’ effects, it was rapidly approaching the time for recovery to Rhodesia; in fact helicopters from Lake Alexander were already airborne en route to uplift troops. It was only in the air on the short leg to Chimoio that I realised just how late it was. With so much noisy activity and so much to do, eight hours appeared to have compressed into mere minutes.
There was too little time to inspect more that a portion of an Alpha bomb strike and one site struck by Golf bombs. Nevertheless this was more than enough to let me see what I needed to see. In fact I saw more than I bargained for and the experience shook me to the very core of my being.
The four-man SAS callsign assigned to protect and assist me were clearly amused by my discomfort at being on the ground. The real fighting was over and for these men Chimoio had become a quiet environment. Not so for one who felt safest in the air. I dropped to ground as bullets cracked overhead then raised myself sheepishly when I realised no one else had taken cover. The next time a flurry of cracks sounded around us, I remained standing when all four SAS had dropped to the ground. “Never mind, sir,” said the nearest soldier, “it’s the ones you don’t hear that you need to worry about.”
The air strike effects were very troubling. Analysing weapons efficiency and counting holes in dummy targets out on a prepared site at Kutanga Range was one thing. To see the same weapons’ effects on human beings was quite another. I had seen many dead Rhodesians and CT killed in Fireforce actions and had witnessed the appalling carnage on civilians blown up by ZANLA landmines; but here I was seeing something more horrifying. Those who had been killed by the troops were greater in number, but somehow their wounds appeared to me to be so much more acceptable than those taken out by bombs.
The effect of an air strike.
The SAS men escorting me were used to seeing bodies mutilated by grenades, landmines and even heavy airstrikes. For me it was different. An airman’s war tends to be detached. Even seeing CTs running and going down under air fire seemed remote. Never again did I accept airstrike casualty numbers as the means by which to judge our air successes without remembering the horror of what I saw at Chimoio.
Helicopters in the Admin Base ready for lift-off to recover RLI and SAS troops back to Rhodesia. Note the extent of pathways and flattened vegetation created in eight hours.
It was a relief to lift off for the return flight to the Admin Base and thence back to Rhodesia.
The sun set as we crossed the border. In darkness we followed a long line of red rotating beacons as the largest-ever gathering of helicopters flew into Grand Reef. No cold beer ever tasted so good!
The Chimoio phase of Op Dingo was almost closed. In one day, ZANLA had lost in excess of 1,200 combatants dead with a much larger number missing or wounded. This had cost Rhodesia two servicemen killed, about six wounded (none seriously) and one Vampire.
The SAS stay-behind forces remained in ambush positions for the night and accounted for more CTs who thought all the Rhodesians had gone home. Early next morning, these men destroyed whatever buildings and equipment remained before helicopters recovered them along with selected equipment, and piles of captured documents.
Chimoio Base lay littered with bodies, burned-out structures and destro
yed equipment. Hundreds of wounded ZANLA were pouring into FRELIMO’s provincial town of Chimoio. The two ZANLA commanders we had hoped to take out, Josiah Tongogara and Rex Nhongo, were not in base and escaped as they had done before and would do time and time again.
We knew that, when they gathered courage to do so, ZANLA’s leadership would visit the battle-site to ensure that all evidence of ZANLA’s arms was removed. They must do this before calling international observers to witness the burial of ‘Zimbabwean refugees’ because ZANLA had registered Chimoio Base, along with all other military establishments, as a refugee camp.
We knew that particular attention would be given to showing the UN High Commission for Refugees the bodies of a number of teenagers killed at Chimoio. These were the school children that had been forced, or enticed, to leave schools in Rhodesia to undergo military training in Mozambique. No doubt the chalk boards and timetables the SAS soldiers had seen in two classrooms would have been cleared of their Marxist slogans and instructions on weapons-handling. They were sure to have been adorned with make-believe items ‘to prove their good works in teenager education’.
Phase One of Op Dingo was over. The countdown for Phase Two had already started as emergency repairs to the helicopters were hurried through with little time to spare.
Tembue attack
THE EASTERN SKY HAD ONLY just begun to light up on Friday, 25 November, as twenty-two helicopters lifted out of Mtoko and Mount Darwin on the first leg of the 320-kilometre journey to Tembue. The reserve force of ten helicopters was to follow one hour later with spares.
Reserve force.
Squadron Leader Rex Taylor, with a small team of Air Force VR and RLI troops, awaited the arrival of the helicopters at a ‘staging base’. This base was sited at the eastern end of a long, flat, high feature known as ‘the Train’ lying between the Rhodesian border and Lake Cabora Bassa in Tete Province. The mountain was so named because, when viewed from the south, it resembled a steam engine with a long line of carriages travelling in a westerly direction. Our landing point approximated to the position of the guard’s van.
Rex and his men had positioned the previous day to receive a large supply of fuel by para-drop. With plenty of time to spare, the fuel drums had been set out neatly throughout the open ground of the staging base and all parachutes were stacked out of harm’s way. Everything seemed unhurried as the helicopters refuelled in the crisp, early morning air.
The 176-kilometre leg from here to Tembue would normally be the maximum range for an Alouette carrying a full load of laden troops inside Rhodesia. However, being only 2,000 feet above sea level in cold conditions, it was possible for the trooper helicopters to carry an extra ten-minutes’ worth of fuel to cater for unexpected situations. Norman Walsh’s command helicopter and the K-Cars with full fuel-loads could fly to Tembue and remain over target for a little more than one hour.
I enjoyed flying low-level over territory that was so familiar to me from my recce days. The countryside was quite breathtaking and not a soul was to be seen with so much noise from so many helicopters—anyone around had disappeared into hiding. The Cabora Bassa dam was about ten meters below its maximum level and I was astonished to see how much the water had eroded the banks along hillsides with long stretches of vertical walls at water’s edge. Eight minutes from target, we heard the Hunter and Canberra radio transmissions as they made their airstrikes, dead on time. Earlier the six Dakotas had passed the helicopter force as they ran in to drop SAS and RLI paratroopers. My helicopter broke away from the others as they passed the Admin Base area. This site was populated by small trees and short grass but had plenty of openings for individual helicopters.
We landed in the centre of the selected location in the largest open space in the entire area. My immediate problem was to get the protection party down where I was and have fuel evenly distributed in the Admin Base area. George Alexander in the DC7, again flown by Captain Jack Malloch, responded perfectly to all instructions.
I had to climb onto the roof of the helicopter to see the DC7 early enough to give direction. “Red light on … five degrees right … steady … Green light.” George was listening this time. Troops and pallets descended right where I wanted them on runs left, right, short and over my position. There was a tense moment when one pallet appeared to be descending directly onto me but, happily, it drifted enough to crash through a tree next to the helicopter.
The Admin Base was only six kilometres from the nearest edge of the target so we could hear the K-Cars firing quite clearly; otherwise the bush absorbed all sounds of smallarms fire. The Tembue Admin Base task was a cakewalk compared to Chimoio. All the trooper helicopters arrived and landed well clear of the cargo parachutes. The aircrews quickly disconnected them from the pallets, bundled them neatly and moved them centrally for easy recovery. Rolling the drums and standing them up in small clumps at each helicopter landing point was hot, sweaty work for the crews who completed the job before the first K-Cars arrived in the Admin Base.
The protection troops deployed in all-round defence and were not seen again. There was only one drama in the Admin Base. Very few hits were sustained by K-Cars whose pilots reported fewer targets than they had seen in any part of Chimoio and a great deal less anti-aircraft fire. Nevertheless, one K-Car engine had taken a strike that necessitated its replacement. The technicians, using fuel drums as a working platform, made the engine change, and the helicopter that had flown it in completed the round trip from and to ‘the Train’ in less than six hours.
Awaiting para-drop of troops and pallets.
This Admin Base scene was repeated 360 degrees around.
It was late in the day when I went forward to be escorted by an SAS callsign through sections of the airstrike areas. The Alpha and Golf bomb effects were less gory than I had seen at Chimoio. However, my main interest at Tembue was to inspect the area of a flechette strike. During the planning phase of Op Dingo, I had asked Norman Walsh to consider using flechettes if he felt there was a target that suited them. Although he liked the idea, he decided against using flechettes at Chimoio because there would certainly be an international outcry following the inevitable inspection by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. He chose rather to use one Hunter to drop a pair of flechette dispensers on the parade ground at Tembue. This was duly done.
PB’s one-man Ops Centre at Tembue. All one needed was a parachute sunshade, radio in hand, a parachute bag to sit on and a planning board.
Regrettably the daily parade had been postponed on this particular day; Sod’s law—the base commander was suffering from a hangover so the parade square was vacant at the time of strike. A lone tree just short of the parade ground, on the right side of the attack line, was tightly embedded with flechettes from its uppermost branches all the way down to the base of its trunk. The entire parade site itself was crowded with partially embedded pink tail fins that had separated from steel shafts now buried below surface. Nobody, but nobody, would have survived the daily parade had it been held at the routine time.
FRELIMO, in their own base no more than three kilometres away from the ZANLA base, had no desire to come to the assistance of their comrades. This was pleasing because there was no external interference of troops who systematically winkled out ZANLA. Close-range firefights left many ZANLA dead with no casualties to the SAS and RLI. Out on the flanks, RLI stop groups accounted for CTs trying to escape past their positions.
Late in the afternoon, Canberras returned to attack ground surrounding an abandoned Portuguese store, thirty-five kilometres to the north of Tembue. This location had only come to notice when a captured terrorist revealed that there was a concentration of trained ZANLA residing there. The Canberra crews reported that their Alpha strike had been on target and later it was learned that ZANLA at that site had suffered many casualties, most having been seriously wounded.
Departure from Tembue occurred later than intended. On the way home one helicopter pilot reported being so low on fuel t
hat he would not be able to reach ‘the Train’. Norman Walsh instructed him to put down on a small uninhabited island in the middle of Cabora Bassa Lake and arranged for fuel drop by a Dakota that had been on standby for such an eventuality.
Even before reaching Cabora Bassa, we could see a huge storm building up way to the south along the Rhodesian escarpment. Being so late, there was concern about having to pass through this after sunset, so helicopters arriving at ‘the Train’ refuelled and departed for Mount Darwin independently. The earliest ones, including mine, managed to bypass the heavy rain centres under heavy cloud. Tail-end Charlies were not so fortunate and I became really concerned when a fair number of the helicopters, including the command helicopter, were well overdue. As the night progressed, we received calls from various widely dispersed places reporting the arrival of helicopters that were remaining in situ for the night. All had been accounted for by 8 o’clock. Norman Walsh, who held back to ensure that the crew from the little island on Cabora Bassa reached ‘the Train’ safely, was forced to land at Chiswiti near the base of the escarpment.
He and Brian Robinson were thoroughly exhausted but very relieved that Operation Dingo was now behind them. Both phases had been totally successful and they had no intention of allowing their unplanned stop to deny them from celebrating their joint success. They found the local Army base pub and proceeded to drink it dry; or so we heard.
Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot Page 77
