Winds of Destruction

by Peter John Hornby Petter-Bowyer

  Another American who visited me must have done the Dale Carnegie course that teaches one to remember names by association. Knowing I was called PB, he obviously linked my name to fuel because, when he spotted me at the end of a long corridor a year later, he shouted at the top of his voice, “Hi there Shell.”

  Roofless protection pens.

  At about this time I met a very different type of American. Bob Cleaves came to my office with Ian Player, brother of the world-famous golfer Gary Player. Bob Cleaves’s purpose in regularly visiting South Africa and Rhodesia lay with his wildlife interests. However, Ian Player, a noted wildlife man from Natal, had brought Bob to Air HQ at Bob’s request. Bob was both very pro-Rhodesia and fiercely anti-communist so, with his good connections in the USA, he wondered if there was anything that he could do to help us. I asked him for samples of three things. Gyro-stabilised binoculars for visual recce, intensified-light night-vision binoculars for night recce and bulletproof vests for aircrew protection. All of these were delivered when Bob came back again six months later.

  A strange incident occurred on 17 December 1977 when CTs mounted an attack on FAF 8 and the Army base that was also sited on Grand Reef Airfield. A long time prior to this, a project proposal by armourers at Thornhill was brought to me. This was to arrest enemy mortar bombs in heavy diamond-mesh fencing stretched above the roofless protection pens in which our aircraft parked at forward airfields. I was very sceptical initially, but the armourers proved their theory by successfully arresting a number of captured 82mm mortar bombs, none of which detonated. In consequence all forward airfields had the appropriate heavy netting stretched out high above aircraft pens.

  When I heard that mortar bombs had been used against Grand Reef, I flew down immediately without waiting for details. On arrival I spoke to Flight Lieutenant Rob McGregor who was FAF Commander and was disappointed to learn from him that none of the bombs had come down over the aircraft pens. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see how the CT group, which had been specially trained and briefed for this job, had botched it.

  The group, consisting of about forty men armed with AK-47 assault rifles, RPD machine-guns, RPG rocket-launchers and another six men with a single 82mm mortar tube, approached Grand Reef under cover of darkness. All the CTs carried mortar bombs, which were dropped off with the mortar crew who set up about forty metres behind the left flank of the main line. In this line the men set up next to a cattle fence that ran parallel to the runway. Just 150 metres from their position, across the runway, lay the Army camp with the Air force camp adjoining its right side.

  All guns opened up together, sending a hail of bullets towards both bases. Rob McGregor told of the incredible noise and brilliant display of red and green tracer bullets, most of which went over the camp. The CTs may have been overexcited or blinded by their own tracers because, considering the weight of fire, amazingly few rounds hit their intended targets, though a few RPG 2 rockets detonated on sandbag protection walls.

  In the meanwhile the CT mortar crew, launching bombs as fast as they could, were oblivious to the incredible cock-up they were making, simply because they had been too lazy to bring along the heavy but all-important base-plate for their mortar tube. The first mortar bomb landed in the Army camp, killing an unfortunate soldier, Signaller Obert Zvechibwe, whose body was found lying under his bed. With the launching of this bomb the mortar tube, without a base-plate to distribute the heavy shock-load, bedded into the ground. With each successive firing, the tube bedded deeper and deeper causing the tube angle to progressively steepen. The consequence of this was that the second bomb fell short of the Army camp and every bomb thereafter moved further from target and ever closer to the line of CTs still firing their guns along the fence line. When the angle of the tube was close to vertical, bombs fell amongst the CT gunners, killing two and seriously wounding others. Panic set in because the men believed the mortar bombs were coming from the Army camp. The attack broke off and the CTs ran for their lives, leaving their wounded to crawl away unaided.

  Vic Cook

  ON 20 DECEMBER 1976, THERE WAS a lucky escape due to brave and aggressive actions by Flight Lieutenant Vic Cook. Vic was a quiet character who was often ribbed by his colleagues for appearing to be a bit dozy. An example of this occurred when he was in his second-floor bedroom at his parents’ home. He was awakened after midnight by the sound of someone creeping up the staircase. Arming himself with a baseball bat, Vic waited for the intruder to come through the door then laid a genuine thief low with a mighty blow to the throat. He then called the police. When asked how he knew this was not one of his parents coming to his room, Vic said he had not considered that possibility.

  In the Op Repulse area, Vic was flying a G-Car with Corporal Finch Bellringer and an army medical orderly en route to casevac black civilians who had been injured by CTs near Malapati. He was some way short of the Army callsign to which he was going when he came under intensive smallarms fire that severed his tail-rotor drive shaft. This is a situation that every helicopter pilot dreads. During the short period of the forced-landing, the helicopter continued taking hits. Vic was struck in the foot, though he did not know this at the time, and his technician was rendered semi-conscious by two rounds that struck his ‘bulletproof’ vest.

  Vic did very well to retain some semblance of control as the aircraft drove sideways through trees. He spotted terrorists “as many as a rugby team” with five directly ahead; all were firing at him. He aimed for the group of five and came to an abrupt halt amongst them, but this was smack-bang in the centre of the other CTs. With the force of impact, Vic’s head was thrown forward onto the cyclic control column. Though stunned and hurt, he was able to pull out his MPK sub-machine-gun from under his seat only to discover it had been rendered useless by a bullet strike. Surprisingly, though the battered rotor blades were stationary, the engine was still running when Vic jumped out of the aircraft. He wrestled a terrorist, injured by the crashing helicopter, for his AK-47 and shot him dead.

  Still under fire, Vic opened up on the CTs forcing them to run for cover before assisting the shaken but uninjured medical orderly to pull the incapacitated technician out of the aircraft and into cover. Once he was certain that his tech and the medic were safe, he went back to the dead CT, firing as he went, to collect all the CT’s ammunition. He then attempted to move from cover to cover firing at CT movements, but he found that he kept tripping and falling. Only then did he notice the large bullet gash in his foot, so Vic assumed a good position on a small rise from which he succeeded in holding the CTs off until help arrived forty-five minutes later. Vic received the Silver Cross of Rhodesia for his determination to protect his tech and the medic in very adverse conditions when he himself was hurt and under near-continuous fire.

  After Vic left the force he worked for the South African Electricity Supply Commission. In the mid-1990s he was involved in a fatal accident when laying new power-line cables. Vic’s task was to pull lead lines over the high electric pylons which heavy ground winches then used to draw the heavy cables into position. Precisely what went wrong I do not know other than the ground anchor point of one lead line broke loose and recoiled towards the helicopter where it became entangled in the tail-rotor causing the crash that killed Vic Cook.

  SAS externals

  FOR SOME TIME DURING THE second half of 1976, the Special Air Service squadron was employed in the Repulse area and participated in a number of Fireforce actions. Although there was urgent need for experienced soldiers in the south at the time, use of the SAS inside the country was an incredible waste of their specialist skills.

  Nevertheless, on 22 September, the first use of a Dakota in support of Fireforce was made possible because all the SAS were para-trained. The ground action was controlled from a K-Car by Major Brian Robinson who, because of his eighteen paratroopers, had more than double the number of troops that would normally have been available to a four-G-Car Fireforce.

  In another SAS Fireforce action
on 10 October, Brian Robinson was flying with Flight Lieutenant Ken Law in a KCar. They were fortunate to have Cocky Benecke supporting in a Lynx. Cocky found a group of CTs hiding under bush 1,500 metres away from where troops had been deployed. This initiated actions with other CT groups scattered about in the same vicinity. The Dakota flying in support of Fireforce was called upon to drop its load of twenty SAS paratroopers, which was a task made easy because the KCar was able to mark the drop-line with the first of our newly developed smoke markers. Happily Cocky Benecke was the first pilot to be armed with boosted 37mm rockets that gave spectacular returns. Between himself in his Lynx and Sergeant Merber firing the K-Car’s cannon, they accounted for fourteen CTs.

  Whilst they were still in the Repulse area, the SAS were used for a pre-planned attack on a ZANLA staging camp known as Mavue Base, which was just over the border inside Mozambique and a little south of the wide slow-flowing Sabi River. Again Brian Robinson was in K-Car, this time with Mike Borlace who was leading another K-Car, and five helicopter troopers.

  The OC SAS seemed to be present in a number of Air Force ‘firsts’. This time it was the first live Alpha bomb attack by three Canberras. The operation did not go too well for many reasons, the greater of which was that the Canberras missed their assigned targets because the Hunters responsible for marking for the bombers had misidentified the base centres. Mike Borlace in his ASR said that, this had been a great pity because, having seen an Alpha bomb attack for the first time, the CTs, who were in both bases in great numbers, would have suffered high casualties had the strikes been on target.

  Three Dakotas dropping SAS troops west, south and east of the target from 500 feet were all observed to have airburst explosions around them. In their descent to ground, the paratroopers experienced plenty of ground fire and airbursts. Because there were ground explosions preceding the airbursts, it was assumed that ZANLA had employed their TNT and stick grenade ‘air ambush’ system.

  Brave and accurate boosted rocket and Frantan attacks by Air Lieutenants Clive Ward and Mike Delport flying Lynx took care of troublesome anti-aircraft fire. The SAS conducted a sweep through the target but apart from capturing large quantities of equipment that had not been destroyed during Hunter re-strikes; they found only thirty-two CTs dead. From an SAS point of view, this was less than they were used to achieving in Tete with a handful of four-man callsigns.

  Shortly after this action, increased infiltrations down the old Tete routes into the Hurricane area forced the SAS back to the style of operations that suited them best. They returned to the Tete Province of Mozambique south of the Zambezi to take on both FRELIMO and ZANLA. Air involvement in support of SAS operations remained low-key until 1977.

  SAS hit-and-run tactics had been developed to such a degree that the small four-man offensive units had, themselves, become the elusive terrorists within Mozambique. They had learned how to keep out of trouble whilst meting out hell and destruction in no small measure. Apart from the odd casevac, helicopters only flew in to recover four-man patrols to Rhodesia. Dakotas were used in HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) deployment of two or more sticks from high altitude necessitating the use of oxygen until the free-fallers actually left the aircraft. HALO deployments were usually made just after sunset, and on the whole seemed to go unnoticed. Dakotas were also used occasionally at night to resupply the ground units.

  The SAS were so successful that ZANLA and FRELIMO were forced to abandon forward bases and move right back to the FRELIMO main base town, Tete. Undeterred by the fact that the enemy had moved so far from the Rhodesian border, the SAS worked on the fact that ZANLA would have to cover the increased distances to the Rhodesian border by vehicle, and this offered new possibilities.

  To circumvent the problem of working too far to the north of the border and too close to Tete town, the SAS decided to turn things around by using the newly formed Lake Cabora Bassa as a safe haven. Canoes were to become their means of transport, thereby turning the direction of attack southwards. Villages that used to be on the banks of the Zambezi River had disappeared under water and most of the population had moved miles away. No one was living in the ground beyond the lake’s southern shoreline but ZANLA and FRELIMO were committed to using the few roadways that ran through remote countryside some distance farther south.

  Only three four-man callsigns were used and they played merry havoc against an enemy that could not understand where their problems were coming from. Whereas the men in the canoes, nicknamed ‘Cockleshell Heroes’, gained most of their ammunition resupply from captured equipment and had plenty of water when not too far from the lake during their offensive forays. On the lake they needed regular resupply, which came in by Dakota at night.

  I managed to tag along on one of these midnight flights. Together with spares, some canoe components and ration packs to be para-dropped were hampers of fresh hot food and other perishable delicacies prepared at SAS’s Kabrit Barracks just before we climbed aboard the Dakota. For me, this was a great change from project work and I had not been airborne at night since the Lynx ferry twelve months earlier.

  Flight Lieutenant Bob d’Hotmann was the skipper with Flight Lieutenant Bruce Collocott as his second ‘dicky. I was standing between and behind the pilots watching proceedings with interest whilst squeezed against an SAS officer who I think might have been Scotty McCormack. Initially Bob could not raise the callsign whose position was on a tiny island fairly close to the southern shoreline almost due north of Nova Mague. The night was clear and very black. Even though the lake was vaguely illuminated by starlight it was insufficient to pick out any island, even from our height of only 500 feet.

  Then we spotted a flashing strobe light that stood out so clearly from the air it seemed impossible that the SAS position would not be compromised. Scotty said it was OK because the strobe would be so positioned that nobody on the shoreline would see it. We had turned towards the strobe when the callsign came up loud and clear. Because the aircraft was heading directly for the strobe, all that needed to be said from the ground controller was “Red light on…. Green light on”. The pannier was launched into the night; and that was that! The callsign confirmed that he had received resupply, thanked Bob and bid him farewell.

  The descent to the lake had been a long one at low power. Bob had been at pains to ease on the power very gently as he approached his run-in height so that nobody on the ground would detect any change in engine note that might give away the SAS position. Having completed the drop, Bob held heading and height for at least ten kilometres and even then he powered up very slowly, allowing the Dak to drift gently upwards, again to avoid drawing attention. We were miles past the Cockleshell Heroes before turning for Salisbury.

  Canberras join Fireforce

  SEVEN DAYS AFTER FIRST USE of Alpha bombs in Mozambique, Randy du Rand and his navigator, Flight Lieutenant Terry Bennett, got airborne from Buffalo Range in support of the Repulse Fireforce. This came about because Randy was keen to gain operational experience with the new weapon system and I needed plenty of feedback on bomblets’ performance. The idea of deploying a Canberra to Repulse was greeted with enthusiasm by Tol Janeke because it had become abundantly clear that, as expected, ZANLA’s main thrust was coming through the Gaza Province of Mozambique.

  Under guidance from a K-Car, a cluster of fifty Alpha bombs was delivered and all landed in the base from which eight CTs had moved immediately upon hearing the approaching KCar. Squadron Leader Graham Cronshaw in the K-Car and the Army callsign who had called for Fireforce reported being thoroughly shaken by the sight and sound of the Alpha strike, even though it was only one sixth of a full load.

  The Army callsign swept through the CT base and confirmed shrapnel had saturated it. Although the bombs had killed no CTs, who were a short distance away, the effect of the strike so unnerved the eight members of this group that they surrendered without a shot being fired. Randy remained the heavy arm of Fireforce for a while and was able to prove the Canberra’s abilit
y to bring quick and accurate strikes to bear wherever they were needed, because K-Cars could place down reference markers with their new smoke grenades. Having satisfied himself, Randy rotated each of his squadron crews to Op Repulse to gain experience.

  During November a ZANLA base in Mozambique close to the border was positively identified by Canberra photo-recce. An operation similar the one at Mavue was planned but, due to good features around the target, three Canberras led the strike for maximum surprise. They made the attack from 500 feet at a release speed of 300 knots. The strike went in just before the arrival of the heli-borne and para force and all the bombs landed on target as planned. Instead of arriving over a subdued enemy however, the helicopters faced a hornet’s nest of alert and angry ZANLA firing many small arms and heavy AA guns.

  Following some brave action to silence the AA guns, particularly by Mike Borlace, troops eventually overran the base and found the reason for the Canberra’s failure to provide any subduing effect. All but two of the Alpha bombs had broken through a crust of sand and buried in thick wet clay before exploding harmlessly below the surface. The whole target area was covered with black bomblet craters. Two bomblets that struck trees caused the airbursts that accounted for only the three ZANLA killed in the airstrike.

  There was deep consternation at Air HQ and within my project team. We had not foreseen this problem, which was entirely my own fault. I knew how similar ground conditions in the Zambezi Valley had presented the Army with serious vehicle movement difficulties. Following heavy rains, such as had occurred in the area of this target, the softened sand crust above damp clay yielded without warning. When this occurred, vehicles sank to their axles and other vehicles attempting to pull out a stricken one usually ended up in the same mess.