Dingo Firestorm (29 page)

By now, the trooper helicopters, having offloaded their troops at New Farm, had started arriving from the south, and landed near where PB stood, and then some of the K-cars that were either damaged or out of ammo started arriving too. To make things more difficult, some of the Polo helicopters started arriving early from Lake Alexander, one carrying the Special Branch team. Unsurprisingly, the post-Dingo debriefing made the point that the Polo admin helicopters should not have landed at the same time as the attack helicopters. It looked chaotic – drum and ammunition pallets raining from the sky while helicopters started converging on the base.

The 10 G-car trooper helicopters had done their work for now; refuelling them was not a priority. But it was critical to turn the K-cars around fast so they could return to battle and secure the eastern side of the box.

‘I had abandoned any hope of getting fuel and ammunition down to where I needed them,’ recalls PB. ‘I had no choice but to move the admin base to where the drums were. In these circumstances, you must forget errors and blame, and just sort things out as they are.’

The 16 RLI protection troops were supposed to get onto the high ground quickly to observe and react to any hostile enemy movement. Says PB: ‘The RLI officer sent only two men with a mortar onto the high ground. The rest of the troops remained behind to give us a helping hand. The G-car pilots and technicians also pitched in. You didn’t have to ask for help – everyone mucked in. They were fantastic.’

PB’s main concern was that there might be an accident. The K-car pilots, keen to get straight back into the heavy battle raging at New Farm, had little option but to land close to the fuel drum pallets. This exposed them to the risk of the collapsed parachutes billowing in the rotor wash and snagging the rotors. But the pilots were wise to this and there were no accidents.

Mark McLean, now out of ammo and needing to refuel, takes up the story: ‘When we landed, we just tucked in and helped ourselves to fuel. I landed near a fuel pallet, hopped out and helped my technician roll drums to the chopper. We also collected our own 20-mm ammo – there was no problem.’

PB decided the immediate priority was to clear areas near the drums and remove the parachutes from the pallets. At the same time, men shifted the heavy 20-mm ammo boxes to the clearings. PB remembered the moment: ‘I was running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to get things sorted.’ It was not until 08:15 that the words ‘Cover Point’ were transmitted to the command helicopter.

Just as PB thought he was getting on top of things, Sod’s Law struck again. Suddenly, Norman Walsh’s command helicopter arrived – way ahead of schedule.

The next major phase of the battle would be tightening the noose. The paratroops would start sweeping towards the central area. As this began, Robinson would radio the code words ‘Long Stop’ to General Peter Walls in the command Dak. ‘Short Leg’ would be the code words used later to indicate that the sweep was complete.

Brian Robinson was anxiously watching as a large group of ZANLA south of Chitepo College tried to break out towards Stops 4, 5 and 6. Because of the dense tree cover around the central target area, most guerrillas had probably not seen the parachutes coming down and had no idea they were running straight into a trap.

The stop groups stuck to their orders from Robinson: ‘On landing, get out of your harness, take good cover, wait and shoot.’ One SAS paratrooper in four was carrying an RPD light machine gun chucking out 650 rounds a minute, so the firepower was devastating. Waves of panicking guerrillas were cut down. The same was happening on the western flank, where the RLI engaged enemy as they broke cover from a riverbed between them and the HQ area.

There was little that Robinson could do until the battle stabilised. Finally, at 08:10, 25 minutes after H-hour, he was able to call his commanders to establish whether their sticks were all right. It was quite a challenge controlling 184 men. Each stop group had its own radio frequency, and the seven commanders also monitored the main battle frequency of 132.20 MHz. With the paratroops scattered over nearly seven kilometres and behind cover, it was not obvious where the lines were, and the haze didn’t help. Robinson had planned for this, however, telling the men at the main briefing: ‘The man on the extremity of each stick is to carry a white-phosphorous grenade, ready to throw on my command.’

But now was not the time, as the battle was raging all over the place, from the convalescence centre in the west to the recruits’ camp in the north-east. So heavy was the fighting that soon many of the K-cars ran out of ammunition, and retired to the admin base for rearming. Norman Walsh filled the K-car gap with additional jet strikes. Walsh’s voice was virtually continuous on the battle frequency as he prioritised targets for the jet pilots and coordinated the effort with Brian Robinson, and all this while piloting the command helicopter. The workload was intense. Then disaster struck. A loud bang startled the occupants of the command helicopter, and the Alouette started vibrating badly. ZANLA men firing a 12.7-mm heavy machine gun had found their target. One round went harmlessly through the tail boom, but another hit the main rotor system, causing the severe vibration. Although a bit rusty on helicopters, Walsh acted quickly, and lowered the collective for a rapid descent to tree level, both to avoid further fire and to assess whether he needed to put the helicopter down immediately. ‘Controlling the helicopter became a problem because the hydraulics were affected by the vibration and the controls went sloppy,’ recalled Walsh. ‘Had the vibration got worse, I would have landed immediately; but it remained constant so I flew back to the admin base.’ Dave Jenkins praised his pilot:

Boss Walsh had been off operational flying for a while prior to the op. He did a quick refamiliarisation course on choppers, and I suspect that on this occasion it was the first time he had come under fire from a 12.7-mm. When the gun opened up on us, I think he said something to the effect of ‘What’s that funny noise?’ [First you heard the rounds go past, then the sound of the weapon firing.] As soon as the first round hit us, as quick as a flash, he dumped the collective and put us on the trees.

There was a contingency plan. If the command chopper became incapacitated, Squadron Leader Harold Griffiths would take over from Norman Walsh, picking up Major Mike Graham to stand in for Brian Robinson. Unfortunately, Alpha 7 (Griffiths’s callsign) was heading back to the admin base to get ammo and refuel. And Graham was on the ground in a heavily wooded area, unable to be picked up.

Brian Robinson had no option but to call his commanders; he told them to ‘hold current positions until I am back’. Walsh too had to think quickly as he tried to control the stricken helicopter: ‘Alpha Four from Delta Zero, take command of the air effort until I am back.’ With that order, Walsh instructed the lead Lynx pilot to assume airborne control. Walsh had barely transferred control when the Lynx also took a hit from ground fire. This was the worst possible time to lose airborne command.

Bob MacKenzie, commanding Stop Group 4, heard the exchanges on the battle frequency:

The command net crackled and I heard that the C & C [command and control] helicopter had taken a hit and had to retire. Robinson said he would be back soon and ordered all units to hold their present positions until then. Attempts were made to get a chopper in to pick up the alternate commander, but he was engaged in a firefight far from an LZ and was too busy being a rifleman to take command.

The ground war tapered off to sporadic bursts as Mugabe’s finest tried to escape through the closing Rhodesian lines. For more than an hour, officers and men waited in the heat, fuming at the delay, knowing the enemy must be slipping away through the inevitable gaps in their lines and through the side of the box that was supposed to be closed by K-cars. The gunships were much diminished in their number now, due to refuelling and rearming.

The admin base commander, PB, was just bringing order to the rather chaotic situation caused by the DC-7 dropping the fuel in awkward locations, when suddenly he saw the command heli stagger in. ‘Norman Walsh arrived, way ahead of time. His command helicopter was shot up and he needed to borrow another in a hurry. Both he and Brian were deeply frustrated by their unplanned absence from the action at the most critical time in the battle, but there was no aircraft immediately available.’

There was another problem. The command helicopter had a special multi-radio stack to allow Brian Robinson to simultaneously monitor and talk to a number of callsigns on different frequencies. It would be incredibly difficult using a single helicopter VHF radio, so it was essential to repair the command ship quickly. PB explained how he got things going:

There was no hope of switching the complex radio system on the command aircraft, so I asked the No. 7 Squadron technicians present if they thought it possible to substitute the command helicopter’s damaged main rotor head with the good one from the aircraft requiring a tail-cone change. ‘What a question, sir! We will have it done sooner than you think.’ With no rigging equipment whatsoever and no special tools, half a dozen technicians and two pilots descended on both aircraft with standard tools and plenty of energy.

Norman Walsh picked up the story: ‘Brian Robinson went off in an interim helicopter, until I had my aircraft repaired. The techs were fantastic, as usual. They did a high-speed blade change, then Brian was called back and we went off in the command helicopter again.’

A rotor blade is a heavy piece of kit, so removing one and carrying it to another machine is hard work. Even harder is lifting the blade up to the rotor head for attachment. The technicians and pilots climbed onto fuel drums and guided the blade onto the mast. Once attached, the blade needed adjustment to be in harmony with the other two blades. Special tools are needed for this, but the technicians only had a few spanners. Nevertheless, they completed the task in 45 minutes, probably a world record for a rotor-blade change in the field, and a tribute to the skill and can-do attitude of the No. 7 Squadron technicians. Walsh and Robinson lifted off again at 09:25, just under an hour after the aircraft had been hit.

While the command ship was being repaired, many aircraft over the target area were also taking hits, including most of the K-cars. At 08:40, a chilling call came over the airwaves: ‘Venom Two is hit.’ It was a distress call from Air Lieutenant Phil Haigh in his Vampire FB9. His squadron boss, Steve Kesby, recalled:

On positioning for the third attack, I heard No. 2 call: ‘I’ve been hit.’ I immediately turned to where I knew he would be and told him to continue straight ahead. I then told Varky and the rest of the squadron to make their own way back. I caught up with Phil and moved into tight formation as we climbed through the cloud cover. Once above the cloud, we changed radio channels and I carried out a thorough close inspection of his aircraft. I couldn’t see any obvious damage. He reported that all indications were normal, except for the JPT [jet pipe temperature], which was indicating off the clock. A further inspection of this area revealed nothing.

Phil was rightly worried, and I suggested he could land at Marandellas Airfield, which had a tar strip, if he felt that there was a major problem. He replied that the aircraft was handling okay – but the JPT was a threat. We levelled off at about 15 000 feet and throttled back as far as we could and headed for base. I positioned myself about 100 yards line abreast, with his aircraft on my right.

Kesby switched radio frequency to Grand Reef and explained the situation. After this radio exchange, he reset the domestic channel and called Phil: ‘No reply. I looked for where he should have been, but was unable to see him. I realised then that there must have been a development with Phil and his aircraft. He never replied to my desperate calls.’ What Kesby did not know was that a bullet had entered the Goblin engine, rupturing a burner tube.

Haigh nursed the stricken Vampire towards Rhodesia, but soon the engine failed completely. The Vampire was now a glider, with only precious height keeping it flying. He had two options: bail out or find a suitable field for a forced landing. Unfortunately for Haigh, the FB9 variant of the Vampire was not equipped with an ejection seat, so he would have to escape manually. This involved jettisoning the canopy, climbing out, jumping clear and pulling the ripcord – easier said than done. All Vampire pilots knew that they risked colliding with the twintail boom assembly when jumping from an FB9. This is probably why Haigh chose the forced-landing option. By the time the Vampire had crossed the Eastern Highlands of the Rhodesian border, Haigh was running out of sky and would not make it to an airfield – he had to land.

He chose an open field, near Inyanga, but, sadly, there was a concealed ditch traversing the field, and a pilot gets only one shot at a forced landing. Haigh touched down in the right place, but the thin Eastern Highlands air meant the Vampire needed a greater-than-normal landing distance, which extended beyond the ditch. The aircraft collided with the edge of the ditch and flipped over. The engine broke free and crumpled the cockpit, killing the pilot instantly.

Steve Kesby had already radioed Grand Reef for helicopter assistance. Then he headed for the most likely field, diving down to about 1 500 feet above ground. ‘I saw a large plume of black smoke in the middle of the field. I flew overhead and saw that I would not be able to help in any way – the aircraft was very badly damaged.’

Kesby returned to New Sarum critically short of fuel. ‘The mood was very sombre, but with all that was happening, we had little time for reflection.’

Air Lieutenant Philip Wilfred Haigh, a direct-entry pilot from the RAF, became the first Rhodesian casualty of Operation Dingo.

Often forgotten after an air crash are the people who have to deal with the wreckage and remains of the pilot, and those who have to inform the loved ones. First Warrant Officer Charles Penney was sent from Lake Alexander to recover the wreckage. ‘It looked like a perfect forced lob, but the Vampire hit this big donga and flipped over. The first thing I found was the pilot’s watch.’