Centenary days
WHEN JOC HURRICANE WAS ESTABLISHED, I sent Rob Tasker with three pilots, four technicians, two Provosts and two Trojans to join four helicopters at Centenary Airfield. This airfield, initially with grass runway, became FAF 3 under command of Squadron Leader Peter Cooke who did such a fine job that he remained there for many months.
When operations in the northeast spread eastwards from Centenary, JOC Hurricane, the senior controlling body, moved to Bindura and the regional Sub-JOCs adopted the name of the place at which they were based. This gave rise to Sub-JOCs Centenary, Mount Darwin and Mtoko. The associated Air Force bases were FAFs 3, 4 and 5 respectively.
Back at Thornhill I had lost Gordon Wright on posting to Hunters. Rob Tasker became ‘A’ flight Commander and Bruce Collocott ‘B’ Flight Commander. Since Rob and I were the only instructors on 4 Squadron and Rob had done little time on ops, I decided that I should remain at base to complete Greg Todd’s conversion and handle general squadron matters. In particular, I needed to run Bruce Collocott through his new management responsibilities.
Peter Cooke (centre) with President Clifford Dupont and Air Marshal Mick McLaren. Loading a .303 ammunition belt to the starboard wing gun of a Provost are Sergeants ‘Flamo’ Flemming and Chris Nienham.
This photograph is of FAF 5 at Mtoko.
Flight Commanders Bruce Collocott, Rob Tasker and Gordon Wright.
For a while activities in the northeast were limited to follow-up operations on increasing numbers of farm attacks, sightings and reports, but physical contacts with elusive terrorists were limited. Having secured the support of the locals, ZANLA groups were operating so much more effectively than in previous times and for very little effort they were able to tie down hundreds of security force men. 7 Squadron’s helicopters were busy all the time whilst 4 Squadron provided some top cover, made a few airstrikes and conducted casualty evacuation to rear base hospitals.
Territorial Army and Police protection teams were allocated to farmsteads whilst private companies made a financial killing setting up an inter-farm and Police radio-communication network (Agri-Alert) and erecting security barriers with flood-lights around farmsteads. The farm workers’ compounds were not protected in the same way because it was realised that to do so would bring terrorist retribution on workers’ families living in the TTLs.
Because of the demand for trackers and follow-up forces, the SAS continued to be used as infantry, which was a terrible waste of their potential. Brian Robinson pressed for his squadron to return to the role for which it was intended and trained. This was to operate in depth inside Mozambique to counter ZANLA’s freedom of movement through Tete Province. He did not have long to wait, though the SAS return to Tete came in an unexpected way.
On 8 January 1973, three white surveyors and two black assistants were ambushed in their vehicle near the Mavuradona Pass on the road to Mukumbura. Robert Bland and Dennis Sanderson were killed. They were the first whites to die at the hands of terrorists since the Viljoens were murdered at Nevada Farm in May 1966. Gerald Hawksworth and two black assistants were abducted and marched off towards Mozambique.
Under pressure from the Rhodesian Government, Portuguese approval was given for the SAS to move back into Tete, ostensibly to free Hawksworth and his two black companions. Their operations were initially limited to areas south of the Zambezi River but, having got a foot in the door, the SAS were to continue operating in Mozambique for many months to come. They failed to find the abductees who had already crossed the Zambezi because the SAS were belatedly cleared for the search.
ZANLA’s direct entries from Zambia into Rhodesia had ceased long before Op Hurricane started, so it came as a shock when Ian Smith closed the border with Zambia on 9 January. He blamed Zambia for allowing ZANLA and ZIPRA free access across the Zambezi to attack white farmers and to abduct civilians. South Africa and Mozambique had received no warning of this unilateral action that threatened their lucrative trade with Zambia. Despite the ideological differences that existed between South Africa and Zambia, Prime Minister Vorster and President Kaunda favoured dialogue with free trade in southern Africa and a situation of détente developed between their two countries. South Africa was incensed by the situation, which if allowed to continue, would mean the loss of over 300 million rands in valued annual exports.
Ian Smith had been under pressure from South Africa for some days when he received assurance from a Zambian envoy that no terrorists would be allowed to cross the Zambian/ Rhodesian border. This gave him the excuse needed to reverse an obvious political error and the border was declared open on 3 February. Kaunda however refused to reopen it. The economic effects of this emotional decision on South Africa, Mozambique and Rhodesia were enormous; for Zambia they were disastrous. By throwing his toys out of his cot, Kaunda denied his country access to four major seaports in South Africa and Mozambique. He was therefore limited to Dar es Salaam and Luanda, the latter involving enormous distance via unreliable Zaire and war-torn Angola. Neither of these routes was efficient and the implications of Zambia’s self-imposed vulnerability introduced new factors into Rhodesian counter-terrorist thinking.
A week after Kaunda decided to keep the border closed, I was tasked to make a study of the Zambezi River from Kanyemba to Kariba, concentrating mainly on the Zambian bank. This three-day recce task was a welcome break from instruction but, apart from updating maps, nothing suspicious was located. By this time, most callsigns along the river were South African Police units who exhibited the same habits I had seen five years earlier when I was still flying helicopters. They swam naked in the Zambezi River and continued to ignore the crocodiles around them.
Deaths of Smart and Smithdorff
HAVING COMPLETED THE BORDER recce I reported to Air HQ. Whilst I was there on 21 February, Flight Lieutenant John Smart and his technician, Tinker Smithdorff, were reported overdue on a flight from Rushinga to a location to the northwest. Why Wing Commander Sandy Mutch was required to oversee a search for the missing helicopter I cannot say, but I was tasked to fly him to Rushinga and remain there to assist him.
I hardly knew John Smart who had recently joined us from the RAF. On the other hand, Tinker was well known to me. Brother to Mark Smithdorff, Tinker was quiet by nature and very popular with all who knew him. He was also an excellent technician and a good rugby player.
Tinker Smithdorff.
Whilst Sandy gathered in aircraft and tasked them for what was expected to be an easy search, I was finding out what had been happening in that area. From the Special Branch and Police I learned that a group of terrorists had been reported moving northward along the Ruya River two days previously. I asked if John Smart knew about this group, to which I received an affirmative reply; so I went to Sandy Mutch and suggested he should include the Ruya River in his search plan. He would have nothing to do with this because the Ruya did not fit in with his now finalised search plan.
I explained to Sandy that I felt certain that John had done what I would have done in his situation. I would have diverted from the direct track to run up the Ruya at low level in the hopes of catching the terrorist group in the open. There had been no urgency for John to reach his destination so a deviation of some forty kilometres would not have concerned him. Sandy still took no notice and two whole days of intensive but fruitless searching passed.
The wreckage of John’s helicopter was then located by accident. Hugh Chisnall of the Police Reserve Air Wing was on a routine flight along the border when he noticed strong sun reflections flashing off items in heavy bush in the Ruya riverbed. He knew an air search was being conducted for a missing helicopter and guessed that the flashes he had seen might have been from wreckage of that machine. His report was investigated by one of the search helicopters whose pilot immediately confirmed the reflections had been from the scattered wreckage of John’s helicopter.
Troops were flown in to secure the area before an Air Force team arrived to conduct a detailed investigation.
The findings were that the helicopter had struck a tall, dead tree that John had obviously not seen (a known hazard when low-flying). Whether the impact incapacitated John or the helicopter was not clear, but some 100 metres had been traversed before the helicopter reached high bush and broke up in a long crash path. John and Tinker had been killed instantly and there was no evidence to suggest any enemy involvement.
Offensive recces
ALTHOUGH I HAD BEEN IN and out of Centenary to change over crews and receive updates on what was happening in the Op Hurricane area, I did not deploy to Centenary until March. Back at base Rob Tasker was busy with Trojan conversions and operational orientation for a new crop of youngsters fresh off PTC. These were Peter Simmonds, Chris Dickinson, Ken Newman, Cocky Benecke, Mark Aitchison and Willie Wilson.
There were limited calls on 4 Squadron in this period, so I decided to get back into Tete to see what was happening in the same area 4 Squadron had used for recce training eight months earlier. Mike Litson flew with me and we were both astounded by the changes.
SAS teams had been operating in this same region since January and had scored small successes against ZANLA. However, the area was simply too large for the limited number of foot-bound SAS callsigns to fully reconnoitre, monitor and ambush an expanding network of routes to Rhodesia.
Although in three days I could provide the basic intelligence the SAS would take more than a month of hard work to glean, Brian Robinson was dead against my continued presence over any area in which his men were operating. Since I held the SAS in high regard, I honoured Brian’s wishes, but I have to say that I never did agree with his thinking.
We knew ZANLA was making inroads into the populated areas. When a question arose as to how far their influence extended, I offered a simple way of finding out. I got most of my squadron crews and aircraft, from Thornhill and elsewhere, to meet at New Sarum. After my briefing we flew ten aircraft low-level along parallel lines set five miles apart heading due north from a start line that ran eastwards from Salisbury. We flew due north to another line running due east from Centenary to where the Mazoe River exited Rhodesia. Along this line, all aircraft headed east for fifty miles and repeated the parallel pattern heading south.
Each aircraft had a crew of two whose task it was to study the local peoples’ reaction to the presence of their aircraft. My observation over years had been that all the black folk, men, women and children, living normal lives instinctively waved at low-flying aircraft, even when they were caught stark naked. However, whenever there had been any political tension, such as occurred during the banning of ZAPU in the 1960s, nobody would look up at an aircraft, let alone wave at it.
The crews were asked to plot the point at which peoples’ responses to the aircraft changed from open friendliness to indifference. In this way we found that the terrorists were active in northern Chiweshe TTL south of Centenary, throughout that part of the Kandeya TTL lying north of the Ruya River, the northern half of Chimanda TTL and the whole of Masoso TTL. The Ngarwe and Mkota TTLs in the east appeared to be free of ZANLA influence.
In the manner we had come to expect, Internal Affairs paid no attention to our information but Special Branch men like Peter Stanton and Winston Hart took it seriously. These two men had already learned what pilots could pick up from the air using God-given Mk1 eyeballs.
Blonde-haired, softly spoken Winston Hart, like Peter Stanton, was a top-rate intelligence officer. Both of these men became key figures in future SAS and Air Force planning. As early as 1970 they were already well known but were seldom seen because they were forever on the move, and always in a hurry. Winston was particularly lucky to have been blessed with the lives of a proverbial cat but unlucky in another sense to be involved in two landmine explosions in the space of a few days at the beginning of Op Hurricane. In these incidents he was fortunate to get away with temporary deafness and severe bruising because proper mine-proofed vehicles did not exist then.
Non-offensive casualties
AN UNFORTUNATE FACT OF LIFE is that lives are lost or seriously affected by accidents. In the normal run of things they seldom draw public attention because accidents are simply regarded as risks of living. This changes the moment they involve men in uniform. In Rhodesia routine accidents continued but new situations introduced new hazards. The greatest of these came from killing devices such as rifles and explosives as well as increased vehicular movement of men.
So far as I remember, we lost more uniformed men to accidental gunshot wounds than to offensive actions. These incidents were recorded as ‘accidental discharges’, abbreviated to ‘AD’ in the daily Sitreps (Situation Reports) sent to OCC from the JOCs. Reports of deaths and injuries by ADs became so commonplace in Sitreps that the horror of these was usually lost to those who read them. But one thing was clear, ADs hardly ever occurred amongst highly trained and disciplined units. Road accidents also made too high a claim on our uniformed men and one such incident involved my cousin, Brian Ade.
Brian was the son of my Uncle Eric Smith who had died in Italy when his Spitfire struck high-tension cables. Eric’s wife, Eileen, remarried some years later and changed the surname of Eric’s son Brian and daughter June to that of her husband, Cliff Ade. Nevertheless, Brian and June Ade were still my first cousins and were special to me.
Brian was in charge of a number of TF (Territorial Force) soldiers being transported to Mukumbura on the Mozambican border in one of a convoy of Bedford trucks. The road to Mukumbura descended from the highveld into the Zambezi Valley floor via a steep, winding pass down the Mavuradona mountain range. During its descent, the vehicle on which Brian was travelling suffered total brake failure. Brian immediately realised that the steep gradient and sharp corners spelt disaster, so he ordered everyone to jump off the moving vehicle. Whereas most did so, a few men froze. Brian manhandled some over the side of the truck and was so engaged when the vehicle rolled on a sharp corner. Brian was flipped out and flew through the air in a near-vertical descent onto rocks. Unfortunately he landed on a wedge shaped rock that broke his back, confining him for life to a wheelchair.
Not content to be just another paraplegic number, Brian coached hockey and learned to drive a car with tailor-made accelerator and brake hand-controls. He often used to go off into the bush to photograph wildlife. Using his photographs, Brian eked out a living as a painter of wildlife. On one occasion he had left the road and was taking photographs of a baobab tree when he found himself surrounded by armed terrorists. Not wishing to let the CTs know he was incapable of normal movement, Brian quietly countered threats by launching into a lecture on the finer points of the giant baobab. Quite why they enjoyed Brian’s talk I do not know, but they moved on and let him be.
The Peter Simmonds incident
ALTHOUGH THERE HAD BEEN MANY occasions in which enemy fire had been directed at aircraft, there had been no serious damage or injuries. On 4 July 1973 this changed for Air Lieutenant Peter Simmonds. He was piloting a Provost on a sortie giving support to an RAR tracker-combat team inside Mozambique. Along for the ride was his technician Mike Guy.
Army Lieutenant Mike Wilson had followed a group of terrorists across the border into Mozambique but the depth of his penetration was such that he had moved beyond the coverage given by his maps. Although there was need to know Mike’s location, his major back at base in Mukumbura had been reluctant to use air, as this would arouse the terrorists to the follow-up operation. After four days however, Peter Simmonds was asked to find the RAR callsign and drop a supply of maps and radio batteries to him. Neither Mike Wilson nor Pete Simmonds were to know that the callsign was within 100 metres of the terrorists as Peter descended for a slow low pass over the ground force. As he and Mike Guy threw out the stores, there were two loud bangs that Pete thought had come from his engine. He immediately applied full power and was relieved that the engine responded normally.
It was only as Pete gained height and closed the canopy that Mike Guy pointed to Peter’s legs. Considering a bu
llet had shattered his left femur and gouged a hole in his right leg, it is surprising that Peter had not felt the strike and that there was no pain whatsoever. Realising he was bleeding heavily and might lose consciousness, Pete asked Mike Guy to handle the aircraft whilst he stuck his fingers into the holes in his left leg to stem the blood flow for the twenty-minute flight to Mukumbura.
Unlike most aircraft, the Provost’s rudders pedals had leather toe straps that, together with hand-operated wheel brakes, were a godsend to Peter in this predicament. His left leg was quite useless to him but his right leg could still push to apply right rudder and pull on the toe strap to apply left rudder. Having thought things through before landing, Peter was able to put the aircraft down safely before executing a deliberate ground loop with full braking when the aircraft had slowed to a safe speed.
The agony he was to endure over the next six months first came to him as he was extracted from the Provost cockpit. The pain that comes with a shattered femur and a useless dangling leg moving in uncontrolled directions is impossible to describe and one never to be forgotten by Pete Simmonds. It was a pitch-black night with no horizon but Peter Woolcock flew Pete Simmons to Centenary in an Alouette. Alf Wild then took him on to New Sarum in a Trojan and the Station Sick Quarters ambulance completed this ‘impossibly painful’ casevac to Andrew Fleming Hospital.
Winds of Destruction Page 45
