‘Mayday, Mayday, Mission 262 ejecting.’
Former Royal Rhodesian Air Force pilot Charles ‘Vic’ Wightman had lost control of his English Electric Lightning supersonic interceptor over the Saudi Arabian desert. He was demonstrating an intercept on another Lightning, watched on radar by a senior Saudi government minister at the Khamis Mushayt Airbase. Wightman recalled:
After take-off, I noticed the ventral tank was not feeding, probably a fuel-no-air valve sticking. So I applied positive and negative G to unstick it, plus a few slow rolls. This didn’t sort the ventral feed, but seemed to induce, first, a hydraulic 1 failure, followed shortly by hydraulic 2, and on came the clangers and lights of the central warning system. The elevator accumulators exhausted almost immediately, but pitch control was possible using differential engine power, so I continued the climb to gain space and time to sort the problem. At about 26 000 feet, the aileron accumulators exhausted and the aircraft rolled over into an uncontrolled, rapidly accelerating dive.
With the airspeed indicator rising sharply, Wightman knew he risked very serious injury if he ejected at supersonic speed, so it was not a difficult decision: pull the ejection handle now.
It all happened so fast. There was a terrible rush of cold wind, then I was free of the aircraft, but the seat and I were in a rapid spin, making me feel awfully nauseous. I tried to stop the spin, and even opened my visor to overcome the overwhelming feeling of wanting to vomit. All of a sudden, the chute opened. Below was a wonderful view of the Saudi Arabian desert, and the long canopy ride down to terra firma gave me ample time to work out what I would say to the board of inquiry.
As Wightman was nearing the ground in his inaugural parachute ride, he was alarmed to see that the numerous darker patches in the desert sand were in fact jagged rocks.
There was a strong wind and I was swinging like a pendulum below the chute. I was so worried about the rocks that I forgot all my training and landed with my legs wide apart, slamming my face into the ground, causing a bloody nose. But I felt euphoric – I had survived.
As I stood up, I saw a Saudi woman, looking like a full bottle of Guinness in the middle of the desert. When she saw me, she got such a fright that she threw her hands in the air and ran off shrieking. I think she must have thought I was the second coming of someone or another.
I walked up to the top of the nearest mound to set up my search and rescue beacon. When I turned to go back down and collect my other survival toys, I realised I could not walk; my ankles were damaged. So I sat there like a dummy. I wasn’t even able to put a mosquito net over my head! Then a man in a truck arrived and offered me a lift, which I declined, telling him, ‘No problem, all my shamwaris will be here soon.’ But it was a quite a while before my shamwari Farouk arrived in his rescue helicopter. He couldn’t land next to me, so crew members had to pick me up and lug me to Farouk’s helicopter, where they unceremoniously dumped me inside.
Vic’s ankles, nose and pride healed and he continued flying the ‘frightening Lightning’ until, a few years later, his wife, Shirley, unexpectedly fell pregnant with their fourth child. Saudi was not a great place to be for childbirth, so Vic resigned from the Saudi Air Force and later that year, 1973, the Wightmans decided to head back home to Rhodesia.
Vic had joined the RRAF in 1958. He was posted to No. 11 Short Service Unit with the likes of Ian Harvey, Rich Brand and Tol Janeke. In many ways, Vic was not a typical air force pilot. He liked challenging the system, hated wearing shoes, disliked routine and got airsick. But he got his wings, and after the two-year contract was over, he left for England to join the RAF, where he spent time flying Canberras and Gnat trainer aircraft before volunteering to teach Saudi pilots to fly the Lightning.
Vic rejoined the RhAF and flew Hawker Hunters in No. 1 Squadron. Two years later, he spent time instructing ‘snotty-nosed students to fly the Impala and Vampire’. Just before Operation Dingo, Wightman returned to No. 1 Squadron as Rich Brand’s deputy. He would be the first pilot to deliver a new weapon on an external target – an antipersonnel bomb called flechettes.
Peter Petter-Bowyer had studied a French anti-personnel rocket system that delivered thousands of small darts (fléchettes in French) at high speed. This weapon was eventually banned by international treaty, mainly because the darts tended to tumble, making awful exit wounds. ‘What never made sense to me,’ recalls PB, ‘was that ordinary rifle bullets caused more damage and were just as lethal – yet they were not banned.’
PB experimented unofficially with a locally made version of the flechettes in 1964, launching a canister armed with the darts from a Provost, but the project was shelved. Twelve years later, having completed his work on the highly effective Golf bomb project, PB applied himself to completing the new weapon.
With his usual passion for simplifying things, PB had the darts made from headless six-inch nails, onto which were fitted moulded fins made from recycled plastic. They were packed into a single dispenser that held 4 500 darts. Being dropped at high speed – 450 knots was ideal – increased the weapon’s effectiveness. There was only one aircraft capable of achieving this speed: the Hawker Hunter.
PB had tests done from a Hunter in the typical gun or frantan profile, a 30-degree dive. ‘The tests proved that the new weapon was accurate and highly effective. Released in pairs at 450 knots resulted in an immensely dense cloud of flechettes flying a shallow trajectory, which made survival of those exposed within the 900 metres by 70 metres strike area impossible.’
The effect was equivalent to 340 Browning machine guns firing simultaneously. PB had developed yet another remarkable weapon.
Norman Walsh was not keen for the new weapon to be used during the Chimoio raid, however, because the UN High Commission for Refugees was bound to visit the complex after the raid. Because Tembue was so far off the beaten track, however, such a visit was unlikely, so Walsh approved their use for the second raid, Zulu 2. Vic Wightman would deliver the first flechette canisters on a ZANLA target in Mozambique.
The ZANLA Tete Province HQ at Tembue comprised three complexes along the Luia River, at the base of the Angonia Plateau of northern Mozambique, near the picturesque hamlet of Catane. The hamlet sported its own 900-metre grass runway, registered as Tembue airstrip, not to be confused with Tembue Town, also known as Chifunde, which is 12 kilometres to the north.
The Rhodesians knew Catane well, having visited it many times to liaise with the Portuguese military in the pre-FRELIMO days. It was only 25 kilometres from Bene, another place often frequented by the Rhodesian military in the days of Portuguese rule. Bene was known for the stench of the open latrines; it was also where the Rhodesians had first set eyes on a K-car belonging to the Portuguese. The Tembue airstrip is easy to find by air, as it lies near Serra Techecunda, a nearperfect conical mountain known by some as the Tembue Tit.
The three ZANLA camps at Tembue were made up of 400 mudand-thatch buildings situated between the Bene–Tembue road and the Luia River. Camp A, a basic training camp for recruits, was isolated, lying six kilometres north of the other camps, not unlike the recruits’ camp at Chimoio. Camp B was where ZANLA taught specialist skills to already trained guerrillas. Camp C, just less than three kilometres to the south of Camp B, housed fully trained guerrillas ready to deploy into Rhodesia. Each camp had a series of anti-aircraft pits surrounded by thick timber walls; these were dotted around a vast number of defensive trenches and bomb shelters.
In the aftermath of the Chimoio raid, it was not inconceivable that FRELIMO would decide to react this time, although Tembue was much more remote and isolated than Chimoio. The nearest threat to the Rhodesians was a platoon at Bene, 20 minutes away by road, and a company of 150 soldiers at Tembue Town, 30 minutes away. Any other potential FRELIMO reaction would take longer. There was a battalion at Fingoe, three hours away, and a FRELIMO company at Farancungo. The biggest threat was a reaction from the FRELIMO brigade HQ at Tete, six hours away by road. As a precaution, the roads leading to the target would be mined, ambushed and a mortar site set up within range.
The problem posed by Tembue was its distance. At 200 kilometres from Chiswiti, the final staging post inside Rhodesia, it was well out of range for a fully laden Alouette. Besides the admin base near Tembue, another refuelling site was needed on the way, ideally about halfway between Chiswiti and the target. The halfway mark, however, was bang in the middle of the widest part of Lago de Cahora Bassa (Lake Cahora Bassa), a large hydroelectric reservoir and dam holding back the Zambezi River.
Norman Walsh pondered the options. The lake’s shoreline was very rugged and too close to habitation. Landing beyond the lake was out of the question because that would push the Alouettes beyond a safe fuel reserve, not a good idea over dry land and even less attractive over water. A secure open piece of ground south of Cahora Bassa was needed. Walsh knew the area well from his earlier days as boss of No. 7 Squadron, when he often flew into Mozambique for meetings with the Portuguese and to fight FRELIMO. He needed a secure area away from populated areas and roads, but within an hour’s flying time of the target at Tembue. Walsh pored over the aerial photographs and maps, and soon realised exactly where the best place was.
About 40 kilometres north of the Rhodesian border in Mozambique was an ancient plateau, rising 700 feet above its surrounds. This tabletop feature ran broadly west–east, and measured 26 kilometres from end to end. Over the ages, it had eroded into an irregular shape, resembling a long-necked cat when seen from directly above at high altitude. When viewed from the ground in Rhodesia, the feature resembled a giant train heading west. The two parts forming the cat’s tail were the engine and coal tender, followed by irregular carriages ending with the cat’s head, resembling the guard’s van. Rhodesian pilots flying in the north-east on a clear day would often use the ‘Train’ as a navigation aid.
Being flat-topped, the plateau should make a good helicopter refuelling point, thought Walsh. It was exactly one hour from Tembue for a loaded Alouette, and only 21 minutes from the home staging base at Chiswiti. Another important factor was that the Train was inaccessible by land vehicle, making it a safe haven in the heart of hostile territory.
‘That’s where my first admin base will be,’ said Walsh as he planted a mapping pin, giving the cat a left eye, or, when looking at it from ground level, forming the roof of the guard’s van.
Walsh chose Wing Commander Rex Taylor as his ‘train driver’, or, more accurately, as the ‘guard’. Taylor had joined the second SSU as a cadet pilot in March 1952 along with Frank Mussell and 10 others. After the two-year contract was over, Taylor, together with Vic Paxton and Barry Stephens, joined the Kenya Police Air Wing. Both Taylor’s colleagues would perish in air accidents in Kenya. Taylor rejoined the RRAF in 1957, later becoming a founder member and instructor of No. 7 (Alouette) Squadron in 1962.
Rex Taylor loved the outdoors, nature and fishing. He also liked a bit of comfort in the bush. ‘In the late 1970s, I was “retreaded” out of a cosy office back to the cockpit of an Alouette III and fed into the Fireforce operating out of Grand Reef.’
After deploying a stick of troops during Fireforce operations, the G-cars would land nearby and await developments. But there was no tea served in the middle of the bush, so Taylor came up with a plan:
Legend has it that the army marches on its tea, but I was sure that I could make a brew which could be drunk, not marched upon. I acquired a gas stove and a cardboard box. From our caravan camping kit I borrowed the aluminium teapot and four plastic cups. The ration packs yielded tea, sugar and milk powder. The box shielded the gas stove and teapot from the wind, and the cups were painless to drink from, unlike the metal ones in issue.
It was no surprise that the Fireforce pilots and reserve sticks of infantrymen would gather around Taylor’s helicopter for tea. ‘Our tea tin shared the rigours and dangers of a gentleman’s war, camaraderie, banter and real bullets too.’
One of the first things Rex Taylor loaded into the Alouette about to ferry him from Mount Darwin to the Train was the Tea Tin Mark II and some fresh milk. Five Alouettes took off in the late afternoon, on the eve of the raid, bound for the Train, carrying Taylor and stopping at Chiswiti to pick up the RLI protection troops. Their role was to prepare the base for helicopter landings and a fuel drop early the next morning. There would, unfortunately, be no time for tea that evening.
‘The photographs had shown the landing zone to be a flat area covered in grass,’ recalled Taylor. ‘My first jolt came as we approached to land. In the fading light, the LZ seemed too good to be true, but as we got closer, what had seemed like grass suddenly became a grove of thick saplings. None of the choppers were able to land, and the whole company, plus a trembling, grey-haired airman, deplaned by jumping the last six feet into and among the stiff trees.’
Fortunately, no one was hurt, and Taylor and the RLI troops got down to clearing three hectares of bush as the full moon was rising. ‘I paced out the smallest individual landing circles that I dared, while my army colleague split his men into small groups to cut the clearings with pangas.’
The bush was thick, making the going tough. It took the men, including Taylor, until three in the morning to cut sufficient clearings for the helicopter fleet. Taylor’s ‘army colleague’ was none other than Major Simon Haarhoff, who had successfully formed the north side of the box with his 2 Commando heli-borne troops at Chimoio two days earlier.
Haarhoff saw the bush-clearing effort in a slightly different light than Taylor: ‘As soon as the troops started to clear the LZ, it became apparent that our equipment was woefully inadequate for the task. Army-issue pangas with blunt edges were just not able to cut the branches of the bushes, let alone the trees.’
Eventually, Haarhoff ordered his men to use a well-known panga substitute, the FN infantry rifle. He explains: ‘The 7.62-mm FN “chainsaw” was brought into action, and a number of the larger trees and bushes were cleared using this cunning device.’ Then it was time to sleep:
Each man found a hollow where he could crawl into his sleeping bag. I found what seemed like a game trail and spread my tense body into it, making a little scrape for my hip, as I had been taught in my scouting days. The advice was not sound – my hip seemed to find only jagged stones on the edge of the hollow! We were all probably too tired to sleep, but maybe those battle-hard toughies were made of sterner stuff and slept like the babes they really were. Ominous clouds had been threatening our little detachment and it wasn’t long before the heavens opened. Luckily, the storm just missed us, but my game trail revealed itself as a natural drain. I shifted out of the trickling water and fell asleep again.
After barely an hour’s sleep, the exhausted ‘train gang’ were up and about at the first hint of dawn, ready to receive the fuel drop. At Mount Darwin, Brian Robinson and Norman Walsh were anxiously waiting to hear the code word ‘Knock-Down’, confirming the base on the Train was operational. Taylor duly obliged: ‘My first act of war was a one-word transmission confirming that the weather was clear and we were ready for the fuel drop.’
Taylor barely had time to boil the water for tea before the sound of radial engines broke the early-morning silence. The fuel drop was very accurate. As Taylor observed:
We didn’t have time to admire the accuracy of the drop because, by my watch, the choppers were now starting engines and engaging their rotors. The eager RLI beavers rolled and wiggled two drums to each LZ and stood them up just off centre and forward of each clearing’s midpoint. The distance was such that if each Alouette landed with its starboard wheel alongside the drum, its vulnerable tail rotor would be within the safety of the clearing. More than that, the tech would simply have to open a drum, slip in the refuelling hose, and before the rotors had come to a halt, the chopper would be nearly full.
The defining tactic was that one soldier in each section donned a shiny, starched white dustcoat and stood in the middle of each clearing. In the gloom, the chopper pilots were able to pick up an LZ and land after homing onto our white-coated ‘pointsmen’.
Taylor’s eye for detail would make a big difference on the Train.
The nine cricket code words marking the major milestones on Zulu 1 were substituted by 10 boxing terms for Zulu 2, the extra milestone being the Train. The Zulu 2 milestones were First Round, Knock-Down, Square Ring, Last Leg, Punch Leg, Tight Rope, Corner Seat, Seconds In, Fat Lip and Broken Nose.
For Zulu 2, the Hunters would operate from Salisbury, which was 112 kilometres, or 16 minutes, closer to the target than Thornhill. The reconnaissance Lynxes and all helicopters would leave from FAF 4, the air force base at Mount Darwin. After the paradrop, the Dakotas would land at Mount Darwin to be on standby to drop reinforcements, should the need arise.
The first of three helicopter refuelling stops, the equivalent of Lake Alexander for the Chimoio raid, would be set up at the Chiswiti army base airstrip, 18 kilometres from the Mozambican border. The base lay below the edge of the Mavuradonha Mountains, the eastern end of the great rain-creating Zambezi Escarpment, beyond which the ground falls away gradually into north-western Mozambique. The single 700-metre dirt runway would allow the helicopters to land on either edge of the airstrip to refuel, although the arrivals would be staggered to avoid congestion.
A load of 240 drums of Jet A-1 helicopter fuel would be trucked to Chiswiti the afternoon before the raid. No. 7 Squadron technicians and spares for the helicopters would arrive by road in the afternoon, accompanied by RLI protection troops, who would secure the base and surrounding area from potential attack by local ZANLA forces.
The first milestone was reached at sunset on P minus 1, the day before the raid. The RLI officer in charge of Chiswiti sent a radio signal to Brian Robinson, now in Mount Darwin: ‘First Round’ was complete. With satisfaction, Robinson ticked off the first of the 10 milestones.
Mount Darwin is a small town 156 kilometres north of Salisbury. The actual mountain, named after Charles Darwin, lies 10 kilometres south-east of the town. It was widely believed that this was where the Portuguese Jesuit priest Gonçalo da Silveira converted the Monomotapa king to Christianity in 1561, and was subsequently garrotted when Muslim traders persuaded the monarch that the priest was a witch.
In the twentieth century, Mount Darwin grew into an agricultural and mining centre. The town took on a military function after the outbreak of war in 1972. It was from the airbase there, known as FAF 4, that the Fireforce, working closely with the Selous Scouts, dealt a massive blow to ZANLA as Operation Hurricane got into full swing in the area.
FAF 4 would now be the launch pad for an armada of helicopters mounting the largest ever attack on the source of the Hurricane guerrillas, ZANLA’s HQ in Tete Province.
On the afternoon of Thursday 24 November, or P minus 1, New Sarum was again a hive of frenetic activity as the helicopters that had positioned in Salisbury prepared to fly to Mount Darwin, while the remainder came from FAF 5 at Mtoko. The first section of four K-cars, led by Squadron Leader Harold Griffiths, left Salisbury at 17:50, followed five minutes later by the remaining four, led by Flight Lieutenant Ian Harvey, with Norman Walsh tagging along in his command heli. The remaining helicopters followed at five-minute intervals in groups of five or six, each flying a slightly different route.
A news blackout meant that people in and around Salisbury were blissfully unaware that the Chimoio attack had even taken place. But anyone near Salisbury Airport would know something big was happening: it was impossible to hide so many departing helicopters. Where were they going? Zambia perhaps? Nobody knew.
As the last gaggle of G-cars, led by Geoff Oborne, lifted off and headed north, Rich Brand’s Hunters were approaching Runway 06 at Salisbury from the south, completing their 16-minute positioning flight from Thornhill. The seven Hawker Hunter jets nosed their way through the perimeter gate and parked on the apron. The camouflaged aircraft added a menacing look to New Sarum. The Hunters would operate from here until Zulu 2 was over.
FAF 4 was a big forward airfield equipped with a 1 200-metre bitumen runway and lots of hard standing space for aircraft parking, as well as accommodation for the crews. However, the base had never hosted more than eight helicopters at one time, and 32 machines coming through would strain the system. In typical RhAF fashion, a plan was made to ensure there was enough fuel, food and, importantly, a good supply of ice-cold beers.
Just before 18:00, the first helicopters began to arrive, and they kept landing until all were parked according to the marshals’ directions. Five helicopters of Yellow Section refuelled immediately and took off to drop Wing Commander Rex Taylor and the 16-man RLI protection force on the Train.
It was originally planned that this deployment would be done at first light on P-day, but after the experience of Chimoio, Norman Walsh decided that the advantage of extra time to prepare the LZ outweighed the risks of deploying men in Mozambique on the eve of the raid.
It was a wonderful late-November evening in Mount Darwin. The deep-red sun was setting spectacularly in the west as the full moon just started showing itself in the east. Many crewmen, having finished their preparations, were relaxing outside, sipping beers in the brightening moonlight. Soon, slightly to the right of a large, bald, mineral-rich hill, a landmark north of Mount Darwin known as Chitse, appeared the dancing, red flashing lights of the returning Yellow Section helicopters. Gradually, the whine of the jet turbines could be heard, resonated by the chopping of the main rotors and the buzz of the tail rotors.
In the very far distance, lightning illuminated massive cumulonimbus clouds as a storm broke somewhere over northern Mozambique. It all looked and felt surreal, but there was serious work to be done early the next morning. By 21:00, the bar was closed and the base had gone quiet; everyone was trying to get as much sleep as possible.
Squadron Leader Harold Griffiths – and his helicopter – started early on P-day at Mount Darwin. At precisely 05:55, two hours and five minutes ahead of H-hour, Griffiths led the eight K-cars and the command heli to the assembly point at Chiswiti, the first refuelling stop. The G-cars of Pink Section followed them.
There was low cloud on the uplands north of Mount Darwin, but this time, Griffiths skirted it easily. The flight took 20 minutes. The helicopters landed in two long lines on either side of the runway, each next to neat stacks of upright fuel drums. Chiswiti was soon a maelstrom of dust as the Alouettes landed and taxied to their allocated points under the guidance of marshals. The sound of dozens of putput fuel pumps filled the sound vacuum left after the engines were shut down. Half an hour later, Griffiths signalled the start of the next leg for the K-cars and command ship – to the Train.
After the helicopter armada had skirted the eastern edge of the Mavuradonha Mountains, the ground fell away and the bush became khaki and sparse – this was the dry side of the escarpment. The sky was clear, and in the distance the Train dominated the horizon. To the left was the pronounced engine and coal tender of the plateau, and to the right was the guard’s van, where Rex Taylor and his men were eagerly waiting to receive the helicopters.
Meanwhile, back at New Sarum, paratroopers were boarding the Dakotas. Neill Jackson remembers:
There were 48 men from Support Commando, divided into two stop groups. Major Nigel Henson commanded Stop 1, and I was in command of the 24-man Stop 2. I distinctly recall General Walls helping me with one of my parachute straps and murmuring a quiet word of encouragement before he moved off among the rest of the men, stopping to lend a hand here and have a short chat there. It was encouraging to know that the supreme military commander cared enough to be mingling with his men as they kitted up for an external parachute drop.
Soon Bob d’Hotman was again leading the six Paradaks of Silver Section down the runway at Salisbury. It was 06:30; the flight time to the target was one and a half hours, a long ride for the paratroops. Once again, the command Dak followed Silver Section.
The sequence of events would be similar to Zulu 1, except there would be no DC-8 jetliner as a decoy, and the Hunters would be the last aircraft to leave Salisbury, at 07:25. Rich Brand would again open the attack at H-hour, but this time there was no HQ building housing VIPs, so Red 1 and Red 2 would attack anti-aircraft sites at Camp B, while Vic Wightman and Spook Geraty hit the parade square at Camp C with Petter-Bowyer’s new weapon, the flechettes.
Blue Section would pounce on Camp A, the recruits’ camp six kilometres north of the main targets, while Red 3 remained overhead as top cover. The Canberras would attack 30 seconds later from the west, across the Luia River. Steve Kesby’s Vampires would join the Hunters in silencing anti-aircraft guns, attacking buildings and providing firepower support for the paratroops.
Everything went to plan – except for the Vampires. Steve Kesby could not start his FB9 Vampire, despite the huge efforts of the ground crew. He recalled the tense moment: ‘I passed the lead to Varky and said that I would catch up by using the standby aircraft. The strike formation taxied out and I hurriedly strapped in and started the new aircraft. As I was taxiing out, I saw the other aircraft taking off. This whole episode caused a time delay.’
The ancient jets were four minutes behind schedule. This worrying news was relayed to the command heli via the command Dak. Norman Walsh and Brian Robinson decided not to flex H-hour. The attack would go in as planned, with Blythe-Wood’s Blues restriking Camp A with their 30-mm cannon and rockets until the Vampires arrived, or when their Hunters ran out of ammo.
Varkevisser pushed hard and managed to reduce the delay to just less than two minutes, and the Vampires got stuck in as soon as they arrived at Tembue. But it wasn’t Kesby’s day.
‘Venom Lead, Alpha 2, do you read?’ This was Kesby, still chasing the Vampire pack, trying to establish communications with Varky, the stand-in leader. Kesby could hear other pilots talking, but no one would talk to him. He wiggled the radio jack plug behind his shoulder, recycled the radio and called a few more times. He then knew what he didn’t want to know: the standby machine had a total radio transmission failure. A highly frustrated Kesby was forced to abandon his attack and return to base. Losing one of his pilots two days earlier and now this mishap made for a very unhappy squadron leader.
But Kesby wasn’t the only one to have difficulties: one of the K-cars had a problem starting at Chiswiti, which delayed the departure by just over 10 minutes. However, Rex Taylor’s preparation of the Train would enable the helicopters to refuel quickly, which more than made up for the lost time. The armada left the Train on time for the long haul to Tembue.
Peter Petter-Bowyer paid tribute to Taylor’s efforts: ‘Rex and his men had positioned the previous day to receive a large supply of fuel by paradrop. 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.’
PB, however, would not have the luxury of time. Once again, he had to set up an admin base close to the target as the DC-7 was arriving with fuel and protection troops.
At 07:05, the eight K-cars, Norman Walsh’s command helicopter and PB’s admin base helicopter left the Train for the target. They reached it after nearly an hour, just as the jet strikes and restrikes were complete. The G-cars of Pink Section would leave a few moments later and fly straight to the admin base. There were no troops to carry to target, so Pink’s role was primarily ferrying additional supplies to and extracting men and equipment from Tembue. The South African Polo helicopters of Yellow Section would ply the Chiswiti–Train route, carrying additional supplies to the Train and bringing men and equipment back to Rhodesia.
Keith Samler and Ken Milne, again with their boss, Mike Edden, boarded a G-car at Chiswiti and flew to the Train as part of a loose formation of 12 helicopters. Samler, armed with his Super 8 movie camera, recorded some great footage, especially of Alouettes arriving at Chiswiti in swirling dust in the early-morning light, and some dramatic shots from his starboard side of eight Alouettes in line abreast, rising and falling in the gentle early-morning turbulence.
Barely eight minutes after leaving the Train, the helicopters reached the shores of Lake Cahora Bassa. Although much smaller than its upstream cousin, Lake Kariba, in terms of surface area, Cahora Bassa’s hydroelectric capacity is greater. Commissioned in 1975, two years before the operation, the lake was still filling. After the long, dry winter, the level had receded by about 10 metres, exposing huge eroded banks and stark islands leached of all their topsoil and flora, which appeared almost white in the morning sun. The most striking feature of the new lake was the vast quantity of partially submerged forests, which would petrify over time and stand as a stark memorial of a bygone era when the Zambezi was just a river here.
This was the first time quite a few men on the Tembue raid had seen Cahora Bassa. It reminded the older ones of when Lake Kariba was first filled in 1960. As the Zambezi River swelled to form Lake Kariba, animals from rhino to lion, antelope to warthog, jackals to tortoises became marooned on shrinking islands, provoking a massive wild-animal rescue programme called Operation Noah, led by Rupert Fothergill. Over 5 000 animals were saved and relocated. Here in Mozambique, the last thing on the new FRELIMO government’s mind in 1977 was saving animals.
The armada of helicopters, their Matra cannons poking out of open port-side doors, looked menacing and spectacular, reflected in the millpond that was once a raging river. As they crossed the lake’s northern bank back over land, the calming effect of the water vanished and the serious mood returned. The helicopters had 30 minutes to run to target. High up it was overcast, and there were a few low-level cumulus clouds scudding about, a sure sign that the air was saturated, which virtually guaranteed afternoon thunderstorms.
At the same time, the six Dakotas were just crossing the southern shore of the lake, gaining rapidly on the helicopters. Flight Sergeant Kevin Milligan, this time the parachute jump instructor in charge of the lead Dakota number 7053, flown by Bob d’Hotman, saw Cahora Bassa close up for the first time: ‘I moved up to the cockpit and stood behind the pilots, watching as we flew in formation, extremely low over Cahora Bassa. It was a wonderful sight.’
Soon D’Hotman pointed to the helicopters ahead, but Milligan wasn’t looking; he was already making his way back to the door area to prepare the paratroops for action. Five minutes later, and looking out of the open Dak door, Milligan saw the Canberras of Green Section whizz by.
Keith Samler, flying with the helicopters of Pink Section, filmed the brown camouflaged Dakotas passing them in a valley. He could clearly see the dispatchers standing in the open doors.
Squadron Leader Rich Brand chose a route for the Hunters that would skirt the Serra Macuacua granite range, which was sufficiently west of the target for them to avoid detection. Brand smiled as he saw the small settlement of Vila Vasco da Gama pass by on his left. Someone in the squadron had given the great navigator’s name to Brand as a nickname, a tribute to the squadron leader’s navigational skills. A few minutes later, the Hunters headed east, crossing the Rio Capoche as they approached the initial point, a small feature 38 kilometres, or three minutes, north of the target.
At 07:57, Brand broke radio silence as he turned tightly onto a southerly heading: ‘Red 1 at IP.’ The new track took him straight towards the well-known Tembue Tit landmark, the prominent conical feature that stood 53 seconds north of the target.
As White Section passed the IP, three seconds behind Red Section, Vic Wightman made a terse call: ‘White, seven-eight rpm’ – a signal to his wingman, Spook Geraty, that he was about to push the throttle forward to 7 800 rpm, almost full power, to accelerate to a higher speed so that they could drop the flechettes at 450 knots, the ideal speed for dart dispersal. Wightman adjusted his course five degrees to the right, checking one final time that the gun sight was set to ‘bombs’. By the time they passed the ‘Tit’, White Section had almost caught up with the Hunters of Red Section, which was now 200 metres to their left. Wightman heard Brand call ‘Red 1 target visual’ 24 seconds later. Operation Dingo Zulu 2, the attack on ZANLA’s Tete headquarters, was about to commence.
White Section’s target was Camp C, housing the fully trained guerrillas, which lay three kilometres south of Red Section’s target. The expectation was that the insurgents would be lined up on the parade square, an ideal target for the flechettes, provided they were dropped accurately. Wightman scanned his stopwatch. Eleven more seconds, ten, nine, eight … pull.
‘My two great fears,’ said Wightman, ‘just before pulling up to the perch were, what sort of reception awaits us here and will I see anything I recognise from the photos, the intelligence or the maps? We felt quite invincible in our chariots, so I do admit the latter was the greatest fear – the shame of getting to the target area and then not finding the target, and cocking it all up for the others, was too terrible.’
The fear of ‘cocking it up’ added adrenalin, sharpening Vic Wightman’s focus. As the Hunter rose into the sky, he recognised the target immediately, adjacent to a distinct kink in the Luia River. ‘The secret to a good attack is to have the height, speed, power setting and distance from the target all correct at the perch,’ says Wightman.
The parameters were all good as he rolled his Hunter left, with Geraty mirroring his leader’s move. Soon both Hunters were in an attacking 30-degree dive, heading straight towards the neatly swept parade square set out among the clusters of buildings.
Taking note of the size of the fixed cross in the sights relative to the target, and drawing on his experience, Wightman judged the right moment to stab the bomb-release button on the stick, releasing both canisters of flechettes. He immediately pulled up, back to the perch, quickly switching the sight to ‘guns’ and checking that two of the four guns were selected. Geraty followed suit, dropping his flechettes on the southern half of the parade square.
The four flechettes were bang on target, sending 18 000 lethal darts, covering an area of 900 metres by 70 metres, across the parade ground – equivalent to the firepower of over 700 Browning machine guns firing simultaneously.
As Wightman rolled his Hunter over to arrest the climb at the perch, he glanced quickly at the target: ‘I could see anti-aircraft tracer directed at someone, but the parade ground looked quite deserted.’ It was.
Squadron Leader Chris Dixon and his Green Section Canberras already had their bomb doors open, and were closing in fast on Camp C, attacking west to east across the Luia River. Alpha bombs soon bounced over a wide area, and many went beyond the target, which was unavoidable owing to its narrow profile. The after-battle debriefing would conclude that it would have been more effective had the Canberras run south to north. The Hunters dived back and attacked the anti-aircraft positions with cannon or rockets as the Canberras passed through.
John Blythe-Wood and Martin Lowrie pounded the daylights out of Camp A, the recruits’ section, which was not a Canberra target. They attacked first with cannon and then switched to rockets, attacked, rose and attacked again, until Justin Varkevisser’s Vampires arrived to take over. Herds of trainees were seen running into the thick cover of the Rio Chamacheto, a tributary of the Luia.
Four minutes into the battle, Harold Griffiths called, ‘Red Section from K 1, break off, K-cars approaching overhead.’ This was the signal for the next phase of the battle; the K-cars would engage their targets as the Paradaks positioned for the drop.
Kevin Milligan recalls: ‘The Daks split into three pairs, each pair covering one of three sides. The bombers and strike aircraft were in there doing their deadly work. The green light came on and we began the dispatch. The camp was already in flames from the vicious strikes that had gone in on target. Directly across from us, I could see another Dak with parachutes blossoming below it parallel to our drop.’
The target was long and thin, so the paratroops would have to envelop both Camps B and C. Therefore, 48 men were dropped to form each of the three sides of the box. The base of the box ran north to south along the banks of the Luia River, now just a series of streams waiting for the imminent summer rains. The other two sides of the box would bracket Camps B and C.
One hapless paratrooper, SAS Sergeant Dale O’Mulligan, had a shock when he came to the ‘check canopy’ drill after jumping from the Dakota. His parachute was badly malformed, and looked like it had deployed through some lines, known as a lineover. O’Mulligan knew the ground was close, and he reacted instinctively and fast. He looked down, found the reserve parachute ripcord handle on his chest and pulled it with all his strength, using up his second – and last – chance. The reserve chute is a small auxiliary chute designed to open quickly and save your life – not much more than that. A hard landing under the small chute can be expected. O’Mulligan, now barely 200 feet from the ground, was horrified to see that the reserve chute, instead of billowing out above his head, was lazily flopping out of his chest pack.
He was in an awful position, falling too fast, yet too slowly. He was descending way too fast for a safe landing with the malfunctioned main chute, but too slowly to deploy the reserve. A total malfunction of the main chute would have been preferable in the circumstances, but he had no options left. The ground was rising up frighteningly fast and O’Mulligan braced himself for impact.
It was Dale O’Mulligan’s lucky day. The malfunctioned chute crashed into one of the very few big trees in the area, arresting his fall and leaving him dangling a few feet off the ground completely unharmed. Derek de Kock’s preference for landing zones with trees had again proved its worth.
Second Lieutenant Neill Jackson, jumping in the middle of his 24-man stick to have better control of his men, vividly recalled the parachute ride down:
The first thing I recall once my parachute (and my eyes) had opened was the awesome sights and sounds of the Hunters attacking the camp about two kilometres away to our west, diving in steeply from their perch height and firing three- to four-second bursts from their 30-mm front guns into an already burning and smoking camp area.
I saw the large thatched barrack blocks simply disintegrating under the weight of these long single bursts of cannon fire. I could hear the ripple of the explosions and observe the twinkling flashes as the cannon shells found their targets, followed half a second later by the matching sound of the discharge from the guns. Then the unmistakable warbling scream of that famous blue note as the attacking Hunter pulled up and away from the target at full power and incredible speed. They caused an immense cacophony, and it gave me a huge confidence boost to know that these deadly aircraft were on our side.
The Tembue admin base was a lot closer to the target than was the case at Chimoio. It was barely eight kilometres from the southern edge of Camp C, the main target, across the Luia River, and only 16 kilometres from Bene.
‘My helicopter broke away from the others as they passed the admin base area. This site had short grass and some small trees, but there were plenty of openings for individual helicopters,’ recalled Petter-Bowyer.
As his helicopter approached the admin base, there were clouds of white smoke rising from across the Luia River. Everything looked like it was going to plan. Even the DC-7 was not misbehaving with premature drops, although after the frank debriefing following what had happened at Chimoio, PB expected no further problems. As soon as the rotors stopped, PB clambered onto the roof of the helicopter to spot the DC-7 over the trees early enough to give the crew directions. He talked the DC-7 in: ‘Red light on … five degrees right … steady … green light.’
‘George [Alexander, the co-pilot] was listening this time. Troops and then pallets descended right where I wanted them. But there was a tense moment when one pallet appeared to be dropping directly onto me. Happily, it drifted away and crashed through a tree next to the helicopter.’
One of the parachutes ‘candled’, meaning it streamed, but failed to billow open, resembling a Roman candle, and the drums burst on landing. Otherwise the operation went like clockwork and it wasn’t long before PB was able to transmit ‘Square Ring complete’ to Norman Walsh in the command heli, which signified that the base was ready for business.
The only dramatic event at the admin base that day was when a K-car took a bullet in the engine. The machine flew back safely, but would not start. The technicians of No. 7 Squadron again showed their incredible skill. By standing on empty fuel drums, they managed to remove the damaged engine by sheer physical effort and replace it with a new one flown in from Chiswiti via the Train.
The Tembue raid was a lot quieter than the Chimoio operation. Far less fire was directed at the aircraft and paratroops. Within just 15 minutes of H-hour, Brian Robinson asked the stop groups to throw smoke in preparation for the sweep. Codenamed ‘Last Leg’, the sweep started at 08:25. As the stop groups began tightening the noose, Robinson warned, ‘Watch out for trenches, plenty of CTs in trenches.’
There was indeed an enormous labyrinth of trenches, particularly in Camps A and B, many of which had not been picked up on the aerial photographs, probably because there was heavy tree cover in the camps.
Despite the vast network of trenches, however, many of the ZANLA guerrillas chose to run to find cover in thick bush along the banks of the Luia River. In her book The Elite, Barbara Cole tells a story of three soldiers, A-Troop Commander Bob McKenna, Sergeant Les Clark and Trooper Gerry McGahan. They were confronted by a large group of ZANLA guerrillas fleeing into a gully: ‘Standing back-to-back, the three soldiers blazed away while the enemy fled into the bush and dived for cover. Fortunately for the Rhodesians, Bob and Les carried automatic rifles, and Gerry an RPD light machine gun. In the whole of the war, the three men had never fired so rapidly or changed magazines so quickly.’ Within three minutes, scores of ZANLA lay dead in the gully.
Only 48 minutes after the attack had begun, General Peter Walls, sitting at his desk in the command Dak, could no longer contain his curiosity: ‘Niner, this is Zero. Can you estimate CT casualties yet?’ Brian Robinson replied rather curtly to the supreme commander, ‘Not yet.’ He and Norman Walsh were extremely busy controlling the battle. Walsh was relieved that, so far, only one aircraft had taken a superficial hit – a Vampire, now with a neat hole through its fuel drop tank, which it incurred while attacking Camp A.
Brian Robinson ordered Neill Jackson’s Stop 2 to sweep westwards, where they came across a 75-mm recoilless rifle, fortunately abandoned, which Robinson told them to destroy. Jackson explained: ‘Under instructions from the airborne commander, we continued with our advance, and soon began making contact with the camp defenders. We fought our way westwards through the outskirts of the camp, killing about 40 to 50 terrs as we went, most of them in trenches or hidden under bushes.’
It didn’t take long for the Rhodesians to suppress the initial ZANLA fire. Then the battle moved into its most dangerous phase, codenamed ‘Tight Rope’, which entailed searching and clearing the camps. Barely two hours after the attack had started, Norman Walsh radioed PB at the admin base, asking for a helicopter to bring in the Special Branch men to interrogate prisoners and search for documents. Pink 4, one of the G-cars at the admin base, carried the SB men into Camp C.
Shortly after landing, Keith Samler and Ken Milne entered a hut complex, looking for intelligence. Samler tells the story:
It was a typical African pole-and-dagga hut, with a low door, and a thatch roof almost to the ground. While I was inside, I heard this noise of people scrabbling around outside the back of the hut, which gave me a fright – I thought some gooks were there. I went out of the hut quickly, weapon cocked, and advanced around the curved building – and, lo and behold, doing the same thing was Frank Hales. Behind Frank were Bob MacKenzie and Jock Hutton. Frank said to me, ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ I replied by asking what the fuck he was doing there, as he should be in an old-age home. Anyway, I had found a crate of Cerveja Manica in the hut, so we cracked open a few bottles of the warm beer and then went our separate ways.
Samler continued searching the huts. As he entered a particular one, he saw movement in the corner of his eye. It was an armed guerrilla hiding under the bed. Fortunately for Samler, his reaction was quick, and he killed the man with a burst from his Uzi sub-machine gun, adding his contribution to the bigger picture, as Samler put it.
The firing died down in the battle and things became quiet. Mark McLean remembered two pilots nearly getting into a fight at the admin base. A K-car was orbiting some huts, and a man in a white shirt was sitting outside. ‘It was odd,’ said McLean. ‘Among all the air strikes and with all the noise, there was this man just sitting there. To establish whether he was hostile, they put a few shells into one of the huts to set it alight. The man didn’t move, so they put a few into the next hut. He then went inside the burning hut and dragged out his belongings, so they took pity on him and let him be, thinking he was some poor individual caught up in the war.’
When the K-car needed refuelling, another replaced it. Later, the original crew asked the second crew if they had seen the man in the white shirt. ‘“Yes, we shot him” was the reply. The merciful pilot of the first K-car was shocked. “You bastard,” he screamed, and tried to punch the other pilot. This is the sort of thing that happens in warfare.’
Another ZANLA man was more fortunate. He had been captured by Stop 2, and was indicating the anti-aircraft sites. Neill Jackson was so engrossed in helping dismantle three 12.7-mm anti-aircraft guns that he forgot about his ZANLA captive:
I turned my back on him while struggling with the heavy weapon in front of me. I heard him calling softly to me, but recall telling him a couple of times to keep quiet, as I was too busy to deal with whatever his problem was. Eventually, I responded to the urgency in his voice and turned around to see what the man wanted. He beckoned me over to where he was standing, about five paces from me. As I walked over to him, he pointed at an object lying in the grass at his feet and said, ‘I think you must pick this up and take it away.’
It was an AKM assault rifle, with a full magazine and, as it turned out, loaded and cocked, with the safety catch set to ‘fire’! I went completely cold as I looked down at the weapon at his feet, and then up into his eyes. He stared back at me, not saying a word. I picked up the weapon and told him to sit down where he was and not to move. I was shocked and shaken as I contemplated how easy it would have been for him to pick up the AK and shoot me in the back, before turning it on the other men in the stick.
Jackson put on a brave face and continued dismantling the captured weapons, his mind racing with conflicting thoughts:
Eventually, I realised what I had to do. Before calling in the helicopter, I went over to the man who had spared my life. Telling him to stand up, I turned him to face in a southerly direction, where I knew there would be no stop groups in his path. I instructed him to walk slowly, not to run, next to the river, for two kilometres, and then to cross the river to the western bank; then, and only then, was he to run as far away as he could. He said nothing, but looked me in the eye, looked at the troopies standing behind me, and started walking. My MAG gunner sidled up to me and asked expectantly, ‘Can I pull him now, sir?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Let him go. He has earned his freedom.’
And so the ZANLA man walked free, saved by the reciprocal compassion of an RLI officer.
Norman Walsh again ordered Petter-Bowyer to go forward to inspect the effects of the air weapons, in particular the flechettes. ‘The entire parade ground was crowded with the darts’ partially embedded pink tail fins, which had separated from the steel shafts, now buried below the surface. Nobody, but nobody, would have survived the daily parade had it been held at the routine time,’ said PB.
Later, during the interrogation process, it became abundantly clear why the resistance was less than expected and why the parade square at Camp C had been empty when Wightman’s Whites had dropped their flechettes. Most of the trained guerrillas, 1 500 of them, had moved out the previous night. About 1 000 had gone to a new camp further north, and 500 to Bene on the first leg of being deployed into Rhodesia. A captured guerrilla knew exactly where the new camp was, pointing on the map to a place called Usata, quite close to Tembue Town. The new complex had huts and other structures, recently built around a neat parade square. This information was quickly relayed to the command helicopter.
Brian Robinson and Norman Walsh knew that everyone for miles around would have heard the explosions and seen the attacking Rhodesian aircraft, virtually guaranteeing that the guerrillas would long since have legged it into the bush and into the nearby hills. This likelihood, and the late hour, meant an infantry attack was not feasible, so Walsh asked General Walls for permission to attack Usata with Hunters and Canberras. ‘Delta Zero, you have permission,’ said the general.
Later that afternoon, Blythe-Wood’s Blues put rockets into the new complex to mark the target for the Green Section Canberras. The attack was successful, setting more than half the new huts on fire. Intelligence received later surprisingly revealed that ZANLA had suffered many casualties at Usata – one would have expected them to have fled after the Tembue raid. Nevertheless, the casualty rate would have been much higher had the occupants remained in Camp B.
It was a huge disappointment for the Rhodesians that 1 500 ZANLA guerrillas had slipped through the net. Had the attack been launched 24 hours earlier, the outcome of Zulu 2 would have been very different. The feeling among the Rhodesians was that news of the Chimoio attack had prompted the evacuation. That may have been so, yet the fact that the camp at Usata had just been completed points more to luck more than a deliberate plan.
Ron Reid-Daly added an element of controversy to Zulu 2. He believed the attack should have been aborted. ‘Lieutenant Schulenburg of the Selous Scouts was actually close to Tembue at the time, observing the place with, I think, Martin Chikondo. Schulie had come through the night before on Morse code, advising he was not convinced that the numbers expected were actually in the camp. I relayed this to ComOps, but the attack still went ahead.’ Reid-Daly felt that the SAS had deliberately avoided communicating with Schulenburg directly, as they ‘did not want the Scouts to be involved’.
Back at Camps B and C, the K-cars were still trying to flush out what few guerrillas remained, and sometimes the pilots became frustrated with the process and lack of targets. Mark McLean, flying his K-car near Camp B, was told to go and check out an area that he had already checked:
I got a message relayed by another helicopter pilot to go back and check this place, so I said that I had already checked it and nothing was happening. In fact, I started arguing over the air with the guy, when, suddenly, a clear voice came over the air saying, ‘Kilo 6, just do it.’ It was Peter Walls talking from the command Dak. I whispered into my mike: ‘It’s the voice of the Lord.’ After that, I didn’t argue any more. When the general spoke, you jumped.
The rain started falling in the late afternoon in Tembue, disrupting the process of lifting men and equipment out. It soon became apparent to Robinson and Walsh that they would have to ask Peter Walls once again for permission to leave men in the camp for the night.
News of the overnighter did not surprise Captain Bob MacKenzie: ‘First in, last out is what I do,’ the American observed wryly. Arms and ammunition caches were dotted all over the camps, so the SAS teams were kept busy until dusk, and again at dawn, blowing up what could not be airlifted out.
A huge line of storms on the escarpment acted like a dark curtain covering the late-afternoon sun and bringing early twilight. The helicopters evacuating troops from Tembue to the Train would have to hurry up. Neill Jackson’s Stop 2 was one of the first to be lifted out. Jackson and three of his men boarded their Alouette. As the six helicopters were crossing Lake Cahora Bassa, Norman Walsh got a call: ‘Pink 4, red light on, I need to land.’ Walsh told the pilot, Dave Rowe, to land on one of the larger islands in the lake and wait for fuel.
Neill Jackson was not wearing headphones, so he remained blissfully unaware that there was a serious problem, made worse because they were over water. ‘As we were crossing the wide expanse of Cahora Bassa,’ recalls Jackson, ‘our pilot indicated that he was flying on red light, meaning that our fuel was running dangerously low. Once again, our adrenalin levels were raised as we wondered what was going to happen next. The pilot spotted a tiny island ahead of us, and landed safely on its highest point, while the rest of the helicopters continued on their way back to safety.’
Tony Merber, the helicopter’s technician, recalls: ‘We had gone on the raid as a gunship, but for the extraction of the equipment and troops, some of the K-cars, including myself, had removed our 20-mm cannons on the first ferry trip out and had then returned lighter and with more space to help the G-cars ferry the rest of the guys out. I guess we cut back on fuel load to have more capacity on the ferry trip out.’
As soon as the Alouette landed, Jackson’s stick clambered out of the chopper and spread out into all-round defence, searching the watery horizon for any signs of the approaching FRELIMO navy. Jackson recalled:
We didn’t have long to wait, as we soon heard the drone of approaching aircraft engines and were delighted to see Jack Malloch’s DC-7 approaching our little island at low level. Fuel drums were thrown out of the open rear door, and descended slowly under their parachutes to land perfectly on the small drop zone. We retrieved the drums and helped Tony Merber refuel; we then took to the air again and continued with our journey southwards.
But there was more excitement in store for Jackson and his men. The delay on the island had pushed them well into the premature twilight. They were joined by the last gaggle of helicopters bringing troops out of Tembue. Jackson remembered:
As the darkness began to creep over the bush, we started climbing gradually up the steep sides of a huge mountain range. It became darker as we climbed, and, at one stage, with the helicopter’s landing light illuminating the thick bush on the mountainside, I could clearly see the long grass waving in the rotor wash. For all the world, it looked and felt as if we were hovering for ages in one spot. This, however, was an illusion, and we soon reached the mountain’s plateau. We had landed on top of the legendary ‘Train’ in Mozambique.
Jackson and his men deplaned and, in typical fashion, took up defensive positions around the helicopter. And then something unfamiliar happened:
Our chopper then lifted off into the hover, only a couple of metres off the ground, the landing light illuminating the ground ahead and below. It remained in that position as the other helicopters came in to land and disgorge their troops. Then those helicopters too pulled up into the formation hover alongside the others.
This procedure appeared to take an absolute age, while we cowered, totally confused, in the long grass, being blasted by the gusts of wind and debris from the whirling rotors, and not daring to venture out of the lit area into the forbidding blackness beyond.
Eventually, all the aircraft landed together and shut down, and a semblance of normality returned, as the techs jumped out of their aircraft, and the familiar faces of Major Simon Haarhoff and his 2 Commando men welcomed us to their admin base and directed us to our sleeping places.
Why the strange procedure of hovering in the dark?
‘One of the pilots later explained,’ said Jackson, ‘that the procedure they had followed was standard practice for a number of helicopters landing together in a confined LZ at night, and was designed to prevent damage to aircraft that had shut down on the ground, by the rotor wash of the incoming choppers. All very frightening and confusing, especially after all we had been through during that long and stressful day!’
Quite a few helicopters managed to leave for Mount Darwin before darkness overwhelmed the Train. The biggest problem the pilots now faced was not simply the fading light, but the storm starting to break along the escarpment. Norman Walsh decided that for safety reasons, the helicopters should fly back independently. The pilots, at least those who had arrived early enough, managed to pick their way through gaps in the storm line; others were less fortunate, including Walsh.
PB was on one of the earlier helicopters and reached Mount Darwin after dodging the storm under low cloud: ‘I became really concerned when a fair number of the helicopters, including the command helicopter, were well overdue.’
Some pilots made it to Centenary, where there would be hot water and cold beer, but others were less fortunate, and had to land in the bush for an uncomfortable night.
Norman Walsh could have got back sooner, but he first wanted to ensure that the stranded, fuelless Alouette was safely off the island. In the storm and the darkness, Walsh managed to find Chiswiti, where he and Brian Robinson allegedly drank the army pub dry.
Back at Tembue, a few contacts erupted during the night, particularly along the Bene–Tembue road, which guerrillas were drawn to as they tried to find their way in the dark. Other than that, it was a quiet night until Bob MacKenzie’s Stop 4 moved into Camp A at first light. A group of ZANLA guerrillas had formed into a defensive position, putting down heavy fire as the SAS men advanced. After a brief but intense firefight, the few survivors surrendered or bolted. MacKenzie reported that the Hunters and Vampires had done an excellent job the previous day – at least three-quarters of the camp infrastructure had been destroyed by the aircraft.
The scattered helicopters started arriving at Chiswiti after first light, ready to fly back to Tembue via the Train to pick up the overnighters. Hunters and Vampires covered the withdrawal from above.
Just after noon, Stop Group 4 were lifted out, completing the evacuation. Captain Bob MacKenzie was the last Rhodesian soldier on Operation Dingo to step from Mozambican soil into an Alouette helicopter.
At 12:55 on Sunday 27 November 1977, Major Brian Robinson effectively closed Operation Dingo by transmitting ‘Broken Nose’ to General Peter Walls – the signal that all Rhodesian forces were back safely on home soil. The general recalled: ‘The thing that stands out from Operation Dingo was the magnificent cooperation between ground and air, and the planning, execution and direction from Robinson and Walsh. It was just great.’
The men of the SAS, RLI and RhAF had indeed inflicted a most painful broken nose on Robert Mugabe’s ZANU forces in one of the biggest battles in Rhodesian history.