The Rhodesian Security
Forces prior to 1965
Internal security, and therefore the counter-insurgency effort, was at first the prime responsibility of the police in the three Federal territories with the assistance firstly of the Federal Army and the Royal Rhodesian Air Force. Once the Federation had gone, the new Rhodesian Army and the RRAF provided the assistance.
Despite the loss of experienced personnel through ‘golden handshakes’ termination of employment offers at the demise of the Federation, Rhodesia retained enough expertise to contain the small threat posed by ZAPU and ZANU. Good police work, based on intelligence from an informer network, had already stamped out any urban threat. The insurgency was therefore confined to the rural areas where both ZANU and ZAPU sought secure peasant support and recruits.
The British South Africa Police (BSAP) had its roots in the force recruited in 1890 to protect the Pioneer Column sent by Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company to exploit the charter it had received from Queen Victoria in the previous year. Responsible for the maintenance of law and order under the Police Act, the BSAP comprised, by the mid-1960s, 7,000 regular white and African policemen, including the small paramilitary Support Unit. A volunteer Police Reserve of 30,000 men and women of all races and the Police Reserve Air Wing reinforced it when necessary. Regulars and volunteers were to be found in the Police Anti-Terrorist Unit when it was formed in the late 1960s. The intelligence effort was co-ordinated by the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) which incorporated the Special Branch (SB). Winston Field founded the CIO in 1964 to replace the defunct Federal Intelligence and Security Bureau.
The history of the Rhodesian Air Force was intertwined with that of the Rhodesian Army. The birth of the air force, however, was unintentional. In the mid-1930s, when the re-emergence of a German threat to peace caused nations to re-examine their defences, the members of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly did likewise. In a gesture of loyalty, they offered Britain £10,000 for the Royal Navy to strengthen imperial defence. They were not expecting the British government to respond with the suggestion that Southern Rhodesia should use the money to establish an air-training unit. This illustrated the unique position of Southern Rhodesia in the British Empire because, despite Britain retaining sovereignty over her, not only was she self-governing but she had the right to defend herself. As external threats hardly existed, defence was left to the only regular force in the colony, the BSAP, reinforced by the part-time white territorials of the Rhodesia Regiment and district rifle platoons, trained by a small Permanent Staff Corps.
The air-training unit was placed under command of the Rhodesia Regiment and, in November 1935, enrolled its first six recruits in the local flying school run by the de Havilland Company at Belvedere Airport, Salisbury (now Harare). There they trained on Wednesday afternoons and weekends in Gipsy Moths and Tiger Moths. In 1937–1939 the Air Unit then acquired six Hawker Hart bombers, six Hawker Audaxes two-seat army cooperation aircraft and three Gloster Gauntlet single-seat fighters stationed at the new military airfield at Cranborne in the southern outskirts of Salisbury.
The imminence of war led to the mobilization of the Air Unit and, on 28 August 1939, Southern Rhodesia was the first country in the British Empire to send her servicemen abroad. Two flights of Harts and Audaxes took off for Kenya to replace No. 233 Squadron of the Royal Air Force which had departed for the Sudan. Again, Southern Rhodesia had demonstrated her loyalty to Britain and would remind Britain of this when relations soured 20 years later.
On 19 September 1939 the Air Unit was renamed the Southern Rhodesian Air Force with its three flights in Kenya becoming No. 1 Squadron. Southern Rhodesia also formed the Rhodesian Air Training Group to train British aircrew under the Empire Training Scheme, building training establishments outside Salisbury, Bulawayo and Gwelo (now Gweru), which graduated 2,000 pilots and 300 navigators for the Royal Air Force. In 1939, the 69,000 whites in Southern Rhodesia were able to spare 10,000 men and women for war. To avoid devastating casualties, major Rhodesian units, with the exception of the soon-to-be raised Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), were not sent abroad. Instead, Rhodesian servicemen and -women were seconded to the South African and British forces. On 22 April 1940, No. 1 Squadron of the Southern Rhodesian Air Force was absorbed by the Royal Air Force as No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron. Two other RAF squadrons, No. 266 and No. 44 had ‘Rhodesia’ added to their titles. The RAF had 977 Rhodesian officers and 1,432 airmen. Five hundred and seventy-nine were casualties and of those 498 died. Rhodesian airmen won 256 medals. One member of No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron was Ian Douglas Smith, later the prime minister.
The end of the war and demobilization left Southern Rhodesia with only two regular defence units, the RAR and the Permanent Staff Corps instructing the territorials of the Rhodesia Regiment. All fit white males between the ages of 18–23 were compelled to attend weekend parades and a short annual camp. Within the Staff Corps there were airmen fresh from war, and their enthusiasm led to the revival in 1947 of the Southern Rhodesian Air Force (SRAF) with a strength of 69 officers and men, flying North American Harvard advanced trainers acquired from the South African Air Force and the Royal Air Force. In 1948, Field Marshal Smuts, the Prime Minister of South Africa, donated a Douglas C-47 Dakota. In 1951, 22 Supermarine Spitfire Mk XXIIs were acquired and flown by short-service regular officers and part-time pilots. The wooden propellers of the Spitfire soon proved a problem, drying and shrinking in the long dry season.
Again, the money for their replacement came from a loyal gesture. The Imperial defence authorities had informed the Southern Rhodesian government that, without jet aircraft, the SRAF was useless for defence of the Empire and should be disbanded. Southern Rhodesia, however, was short of money. The long-serving Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, therefore turned for help to his future partner in the coming Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Roy Welensky, the leader of the unofficial members in the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council. Not wanting to lose the SRAF and knowing that re-equipment was inevitable once the Federation was in being, Welensky persuaded the Northern Rhodesian government to meet the bill of £200,000 which allowed SRAF to enter the jet age. In 1952–1953, it re-equipped with 16 Percival Provost T52 piston-engined basic trainers, 16 de Havilland Vampire FB9 fighter-bombers and 16 Vampire T11 jet-trainers.2
The British sanction of the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland—an unlikely marriage of a self-governing colony with two protectorates—was the product of a sustained campaign by Roy Welensky and Godfrey Huggins, both of whom hoped to create a great British dominion north of the Limpopo River. Although the Federation did not gain sovereign status, it inherited Southern Rhodesia’s right of defence and took over the SRAF and the army units of the three territories. The Queen granted the title ‘Royal Rhodesian Air Force’ (RRAF) and the RRAF promptly exchanged its khaki uniforms and rank structures for British-style air force blues and ranks.
The new Federal army had four white-officered African battalions, namely the first and second battalions of the King’s African Rifles from Nyasaland, the Northern Rhodesia Regiment and the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) backed by the Royal Rhodesia Regiment which would expand into ten active territorial and reserve battalions. The RRR was served by its Depot at Llewellin Barracks, Heany, where young non-African males underwent compulsory four and a half months’ basic training before serving three years of compulsory territorial service before being transferred to the reserve. For reasons of expense, however, the Southern Rhodesian Armoured Car Regiment, the Southern Rhodesian corps of Engineers and Signals and the Southern Rhodesian Field Artillery Regiment, all territorial units, were disbanded. The support companies of the three active RRR battalions, 1, 2 and 3, received the Staghound Mk II armoured cars and in 1956 the 25-pounder field guns found a home in the new Governor-General’s Saluting Troop.
Before Federation Rhodesian forces had seen service in defence of the British Empire. In 1950–1953 a 100-man Rhodesian SAS squadron commanded by Major, later Lieutenant-General, Peter Walls fought the Communist insurgency in Malaya. In 1952 the RAR reinforced the British Army in the Suez Canal Zone. Thereafter the Federal Army’s regular African battalions in rotation assisted the British counter-insurgency effort in Malaya.
By 1956 the RRAF comprised No. 1 and No. 2 Vampire squadrons, No. 3 transport squadron, with eight C-47 Dakotas and two Percival Pembroke light transports, and No. 4 training squadron, with Provosts. The air station at Thornhill, Gwelo, had been acquired from the departing Royal Air Force Empire Training Scheme and was modernized. To meet a Federal commitment to Commonwealth defence by reinforcing British Middle East Command with an infantry brigade and aircraft, in 1959 the RRAF acquired four Canadair C-4 transports3 and 15 English Electric Canberra B2 light bombers. In 1958 the Vampire squadrons assisted the Royal Air Force effort against dissidents in the Aden Protectorate. In 1961 Rhodesian transport aircraft supported British forces in the Kuwait crisis and dropped food in a flood-relief operation in Kenya. In 1959–1963 the Canberra squadrons regularly reinforced the Royal Air Force in Cyprus. In 1963 the front-line strength was enhanced when No. 1 Squadron re-equipped with twelve Hawker Hunter FGA9 ground-attack fighters. The RRAF remained small but justly proud of its efficiency. While the Royal Air Force needed a ratio of 300 men per jet aircraft, the Rhodesians could achieve a better rate of serviceability with only 30 men per aircraft.4
The role of the RRAF by then was not an entirely external one. From 1956 onwards the Federal forces began to concentrate on internal security operations. In response to awakening African rejection of white rule and the British and French retreat from empire, the RRAF formed No. 6 Squadron, equipped with Provosts, for an internal security role.
The growing African nationalist unrest led to the call-out of Federal troops to assist the three territorial police forces in combating it. In February 1959 No. 3 Squadron, RRAF, transported Federal troops from Southern Rhodesia to quell the unrest in Nyasaland inspired by Dr Hastings Banda. RRAF Provosts supported the police and troops, dispersing crowds with air-delivered tear-gas canisters, dropping leaflets and undertaking reconnaissance. Vampires and the new Canberra bombers ‘showed the flag’. Belgium’s sudden decision in 1960 to withdraw from the Congo, creating Zaire, brought mutinies, insurrection and the Katanga crisis. The Federal Army was deployed to the northern border of Northern Rhodesia while the RRAF protected Federal airspace and flew out of the Congo over 2,000 whites fleeing the violence.
Experience in Nyasaland highlighted the need for a means to reinforce troops rapidly. The feasibility of the use of paratroops was examined in March 1960 when the RRAF adapted Dakota aircraft for tests.5 The acquisition of helicopters was considered but the contemporary helicopters were useless in the Federation’s ‘hot and high’ conditions. The Alouette III helicopter was not yet available.
Then, on 9 May 1960, in a review of Imperial defence, the Chief of Imperial General Staff, Lord Louis Mountbatten, suggested to Welensky (then the Federal Prime Minister) that the Federal contribution to Commonwealth defence should be reduced from an infantry brigade to a re-formed SAS squadron which would provide the Federal Army with paratroops. The mutinies of black soldiers in the Congo in the next month encouraged the Federal government to establish, as insurance, white professional army units, namely: the C Squadron of the SAS, the First Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry (1RLI) and an armoured car squadron.6 The Territorial Army was expanded and the BSAP recruited a police reserve of 30,000 whites and Africans. The RRAF formed a parachute school to train the SAS and created the RRAF Volunteer Reserve to tap the skills of the civilian population. The SAS squadron promptly served in Aden.
The RRAF also changed the role of No. 2 Squadron to cover instruction using Provosts for basic and Vampires for advanced flying in preparation for the acquisition of the twelve Hunter Mk9 ground-attack fighters to re-equip No. 1 Squadron. This allowed No. 4 Squadron to concentrate on its counterinsurgency role. No. 5 and No. 6 Squadrons flew the Canberras.
The RRAF then ordered the French-made Aérospatiale SA316B Alouette III helicopter and formed No. 7 Squadron to fly it. It had acquired the essential tool of the later Fireforce. It chose the Alouette not only because it could fly in Rhodesia’s ‘hot and high’ conditions, but also because its price suited the Federal Treasury. The Alouette III was also chosen by the South African and Portuguese air forces which meant that training facilities and expertise could be shared. The Portuguese would later be the first to arm the Alouette with the French-made MG151 20mm cannons. The Alouette III allowed the Federal forces to insert personnel into situations quickly and precisely and to rescue the stranded and the injured. Three Alouettes arrived in April 1962, two in July and three in August 1963. As soon as the first two pilots, trained in France and South Africa, were on strength, they were sent to fly over the African townships, dropping leaflets and tear-gas grenades on rioting crowds, ‘sky shouting’, acting as airborne and command posts, and generally assisting the police. Given that pilots only have time to listen to snappy transmissions, the BSAP and army were forced to revise their ponderous radio voice procedures.
In the division of assets at the break-up of the Federation in December 1963, the RRAF was returned to Southern Rhodesia with all its aircraft except for three transport aircraft given to Zambia. By then, the RRAF had 1,200 regulars including a General Service Unit of African soldiers for guard and transport duties. Some adjustments were made. The loss of the Rhodesian commitment to Commonwealth defence due to newly independent African countries refusing overflying rights prompted the new commander, Air Vice-Marshal A. M. Bentley, to dispose of some aircraft. He sold the four C4 Canadair Argonaut transport aircraft, six Canberras, three de Havilland Vampire FB9s fighter-bombers and seven Vampire T11 trainers. In addition, he disbanded No. 6 Squadron (then a Canberra squadron) and stored its aircraft. These aircraft would be sorely missed within the decade.7
An attempt at the same time to replace the ageing Provost basic trainer received a brusque rebuff. The RRAF approached the United States Consul-General in Salisbury with a purchase order for a number of North American T-28 ‘Trojan’ single-engine training aircraft. The T-28 was the first post-Second World War primary trainer for the US Army and Navy. It also made an ideal, slow, support aircraft capable of carrying a heavy load of ordnance in the form of rockets, machine guns and bombs. It had played this role in the recent anarchy in the Congo and was beginning to be used in South Vietnam. What the RRAF did not know was that the US State Department was applying an unofficial arms embargo, matching a British one, designed to coax the Rhodesian government towards accepting majority rule in the near future. Clifford Dupont, then the Minister of Defence and later the first president of the Republic of Rhodesia, promptly issued a stiff aide mémoire of protest claiming this unilateral action was an unwarranted interference in Rhodesia’s internal affairs. The US government, in the person of ‘Soapy’ Mennen-Williams, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, took deep offence at this. Mennon-Wiliams was offended because technically Britain was responsible for Rhodesia’s external relations and therefore Dupont was not entitled to protest. Unable, in practice, to rein in self-governing Rhodesia, there was little the British government could do. Rhodesia, however, did not receive the T-28 but the discovery of the Anglo-American arms bans was just one more pressure which led to Smith declaring Rhodesia independent a few months later.8
The RRAF was concentrated at two bases—New Sarum near Salisbury and Thornhill near Gwelo. New Sarum housed the administration, the photographic and the air movements sections, the aircrew selection centre, the apprentice training school and the parachute training section. Its air units were: No. 3 Squadron (transports), No. 5 Squadron (Canberras) and No. 7 Squadron (Alouettes). Thornhill had No. 1 Squadron (Hawker Hunter Mk IX fighters), No. 2 Squadron (Vampire FB9s) and No. 4 Squadron (Provosts and Vampire T11s) responsible for flying tuition. The trainees first flew Provosts and then Vampire T11s before flying the Vampire FB9s on armament training. Thereafter all pilots rotated through the squadrons, learning to fly a variety of the aircraft on strength. This gave the RRAF pilots considerable versatility. They would serve tours on helicopters, ground-attack aircraft, fighters, or transports before becoming instructors.9 The types they flew depended on the pilot’s nature. The more sedate pilots would fly transports and Canberra bombers while the more aggressive would be posted to the fighters. Pilots would serve two tours with the squadrons before they were posted on their instructor’s courses, flying Provosts on basic flying training for a year or two before going on to jet instruction or taking up instructors’ posts with the squadrons.10
The Rhodesian Army had 5,000 regulars, the bulk of them in the RAR and the RLI, and the remainder in C Squadron, SAS, and the re-formed Engineer, Signals and Service corps. The loss of its Northern Rhodesian battalions, the 3rd and 7th, had reduced the Royal Rhodesia Regiment to the training of national servicemen at its depot at Llewellin Barracks at Heany Junction outside Bulawayo and eight battalions of territorials and reservists based in the major cities and towns. There was a territorial field artillery regiment and territorials were to be found in the corps of Engineers, Signals and Service. The ranks of the army included veterans of the Malayan and Aden campaigns. In the former, the Rhodesian SAS troopers had pioneered ‘treejumping’ (parachuting into unprepared landing zones). They and the RAR had been blooded in the fleeting contacts in the undergrowth and had learned the techniques of jungle warfare including small-unit tactics, cross-graining, tracking, ambushing and inter-service co-operation. The officer corps had participated in the Malayan civil–military counter-insurgency structure.11
In 1964, in preparation for combating the insurgency, Ian Smith took the chair of the new Security Council on which sat the service commanders and heads of relevant ministries. The council was advised by the Counter-Insurgency Committee, also chaired by Smith, and served by the commanders, the Director, CIO, and appropriate officials. It had two subcommittees: the Operations Co-ordinating Committee (OCC) and the Counter-Insurgency Civil Committee. The latter, manned by the heads of appropriate ministries, planned and co-ordinated the civil aspects of the campaign such as the construction of roads, airfields and protected villages. It also advised on the psychological aspects. The service commanders and the Director, CIO, who constituted the OCC, directed operations and, with the assistance of the Joint Planning Staff, evolved a common doctrine and modus operandi. After 1966 when the first incursions were made, they set up Joint Operations Centres (JOCs), served by army, air force, BSAP and SB senior officers, to command the all-arms effort in the field. The JOC would meet daily to review and plan operations and to issue a situation report or sitrep. When operational needs dictated it, the JOC would establish sub-JOCs to deal with specific areas.
Even though the services remained answerable to their individual headquarters, this command-by-consensus worked. The implementation of a JOC’s plans by its disparate subordinates was not, however, always satisfactory and the different approaches to problems produced some indecision. A major disadvantage was the dominance of immediate tactical requirements over the need to devise a national strategy. The discontent would lead to the creation of a Combined Operations Headquarters (ComOps) in March 1977 but it could never be quite the Malayan model because Malaya had an executive governor while Rhodesia had an elected prime minister and cabinet government. It meant that the Commander, Combined Operations, Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, remained answerable to the Prime Minister and his Cabinet and never had the free hand which Field Marshal Templer, as executive Governor and Commander-in-Chief, had enjoyed in Malaya.
2 J. R. T. Wood, The Welensky Papers: A History of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Graham Publishing, Durban, 1983, p. 357.
3 The C-4 was a general-purpose aircraft, which embodied features of the Douglas DC-4 and DC-6 aircraft and was called the ‘Argonaut’ by its civilian operators.
4 Dudley Cowderoy & Roy Nesbit, War in the Air: Rhodesian Air Force 1935–1980, Galago, Alberton, 1987, pp. 26–27.
5 Cowderoy & Nesbit, p. 29.
6 Wood, Welensky Papers, p. 801.
7 J. R. T. Wood, So Far and No Further! Rhodesia’s bid for independence during the retreat from Empire: 1959–1965, 30° South Publishers, Johannesburg, 2005, p. 177.
8 Wood, So Far, pp. 298, 303 & 313.
9 David Arnold, draft typescript for Bruce Hoffman, Jennifer M. Taw, David Arnold, Lessons for Contemporary Counterinsurgencies: The Rhodesian Experience, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 1991, p. 229.
10 Written comments on the author’s script by Wing Commander Harold Griffiths, 8–9 April 1992.
11 Telephone conversations with brigadiers Peter Hosking and Tom Davidson and lieutenant-colonels Mick McKenna, Brian Robinson and Ron Reid-Daly, February 2007.