Dingo Firestorm (30 page)

The task of informing Phil Haigh’s wife, Dot, fell to a fellow pilot, at the time the officer commanding Administration Wing at Thornhill, Squadron Leader Prop Geldenhuys. ‘Advising next of kin of a fatality is a job I would not wish on my worst enemy,’ wrote Geldenhuys in his book
Rhodesian Air Force Operations
.

He found Dot Haigh at the airbase canteen shop and broke the awful news to her in her car, then drove her home, where medical staff were waiting to take over.

Second Lieutenant Neill Jackson of the RLI, who was part of Operation Dingo, paid tribute to Haigh: ‘I was particularly saddened to hear of the death of Vampire pilot Phil Haigh, who had extricated me from a very difficult situation earlier that year with some very skilful flying and excellent close-quarter weapons delivery.’

Steve Kesby described Phil Haigh as ‘an Englishman who readily fitted into our air force and society. He was quiet, with a good sense of humour, and flew well.’

Back at Chimoio, while the command helicopter was out of action, there had been no overall command. It was a tribute to Norman Walsh’s detailed briefing and the professionalism of the pilots that the jets and K-cars continued attacking key targets, harassing the enemy and neutralising many anti-aircraft sites. The commanders on the ground were using their wits and initiative by calling in jet air strikes to neutralise enemy positions. This wasn’t without its problems. K-car pilot Mark McLean was engaging targets in his zone:

With all the shit that was going down, a lot of smoke and haze had built up over the target area, and, to make matters worse, we weren’t on the same frequency as the guys on the ground calling in the air strikes. I was in my attack orbit when I saw a Vampire suddenly pass in front of my gun barrel, underneath me and very close. In reaction, I pulled up and then looked back and there, sure enough, was his number two coming for me. So thereafter I was not looking at my target, but rubbernecking [looking for other aircraft], searching the grey haze for aircraft coming down the slope, and sure enough, there they would be.

McLean knew the modus operandi of the jet pilots from his earlier days of flying Vampires and Hunters: ‘It was quite exciting for us because the guys would have been concentrating on the gun sights and probably not thinking too much about a camouflaged helicopter drifting out of the haze into their flight path.’

Fierce firepower was pouring out of the triangular area bounded by the HQ, Chitepo College and Nehanda Camp. The Canberras, now refuelled and rearmed, were again approaching Mozambique. As Walsh and Robinson rejoined the battle at 09:35, the first thing Walsh did was to direct one of the Canberras to strike the troublesome triangle.

This meant Brian Robinson would again have to hold off with the sweep until the Canberra strikes were over. Green 3 dropped a load of Alpha bomblets between Chitepo College and Chaminuka Camp, taking two hits from ground fire in the process – the element of surprise had now long worn off. Walsh requested another Canberra strike, while Robinson asked Stops 1 to 3 to throw smoke, initially to give a marker to Hunter pilot Vic Wightman to attack the enemy in front of them, and to give Robinson an accurate fix of where the stop groups were as he prepared to start the sweep.

At last, more than two hours after H-hour, Robinson was able to give the order that the ground troops were anxiously waiting for: ‘Stops 1, 2 and 3, prepare to start sweep. Stops Alpha to Juliet and Stops 4 to 6, to watch out. Sweep from present loc towards target area.’ Robinson was moving the western side of the box in towards the HQ area, with the northern and southern groups holding ground, ready to pick off any ZANLA flushed out by the sweep. But as he did so, an enormous volume of fire erupted from the central area, forcing the advance to take defensive cover.

The sweep was put on hold while another Canberra was brought in to soften the target. A Hunter of Blue Section marked the spot for the Canberra, but the haze was so bad that the Canberra crew never saw the marker, and planted its load 200 metres beyond the target. More Canberra strikes were brought in, with better effect. However, most of the guerrillas had taken cover in the elaborate zigzag trench system that surrounded the main target area, which protected them from the Alpha bombs. Like most battles, the ground forces would have to finish the job.

Robinson, now very concerned about the time, ordered the sweep to resume, letting General Walls know that ‘Long Stop’ was under way. Robinson asked the general how long the attack troops could stay. Peter Walls, sitting at his table in the command Dak, poring over his maps and scribbling on his notepad, replied: ‘Nine, this is Zero. You can continue the sweep, but do not get bogged down.’

The commander-in-chief, knowing that FRELIMO had not yet made any attempt to intervene, was allowing Robinson to push the time out, but only if there were no more hold-ups. Captain Bob MacKenzie was worried:

With the all-important element of surprise having been used up, there was a growing apprehension that some of the enemy commanders could be organising their forces for a concerted attempt at breaking out of the box, or worse, a counter-attack. Even a concentrated group of 30 or so guerrillas would have little trouble in smashing through the one-man-thick Rhodesian line. Clearly, the enemy had scant idea of how few troops were attacking them, and the constant presence of the air force was both deadly and demoralising …

MacKenzie had summed up the situation well. After Rich Brand’s opening attack, ZANLA were preoccupied predominantly with their escape and survival. It was only when the braver ones realised there was a wall of enemy between them and escape that they decided to defend or fight their way out.

Stops 1, 2 and 3 eventually started sweeping in earnest towards the HQ and Chitepo College area. RLI Colour Sergeant John Norman, part of Stop 1, marshalled his 11 Troop sweep line across some clear ground and then into thick tree cover. Norman was standing in as troop commander for Lieutenant Rod Smith, who was away on a Selous Scouts selection course.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. ‘There was the sound of heavy firing from above,’ recalled Norman. ‘I thought the gooks were firing at us from up in the trees and I told my men to move forward to engage them. When I tried to stand up, I couldn’t.’ Norman had not yet realised that he had been seriously wounded in five places by pieces of flying shrapnel from a 20-mm cannon. Also injured were three of his men: Troopers Furstenburg, Hooley and Grobler.

In the haze and confusion, a K-car had mistaken 11 Troop for ZANLA forces and opened fire. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ was screamed over the radio and the K-car backed off. Paul Furstenburg, the designated stick medic, attended to Norman, not yet realising he had been injured.

‘Paul, is my eye still there?’ asked the troop commander frantically; blood and swelling had closed his left eye. His eye was still there, but the most serious wound was to his leg. Also, Norman’s right toe was nearly severed, saved only by his new, and now ruined, steel-capped Australian para boots.

The battle was raging too fiercely for a G-car to get in to pick up the wounded, so Norman and the other wounded soldiers had to wait for more than an hour before a G-car, Pink 5, arrived to take Norman, now very weak from loss of blood, straight to the resuscitation unit at Lake Alexander. Already on board the G-car when it stopped to uplift Norman was the body of a dead SAS soldier.

Robinson could now start the sweep from the south. SAS Stop Groups 4, 5 and 6 started sweeping towards the main area. As the stop groups advanced, the noose tightened and they came under almost continuous fire. Bright-orange luminescent patches stitched onto the ground forces’ caps helped the pilots differentiate friend from foe, but they occasionally gave ZANLA marksmen nice bright targets to shoot at. It took the death of an SAS soldier for them to realise the problem. Trooper Frans Nel was shot in the forehead by a female guerrilla. Barbara Cole tells the story in her book
The Elite
: ‘As one SAS group advanced … the enemy opened fire. Corporal Trevor Kershaw looked to see if the sweep line was straight, and as he did so, a single shot struck the man next to him between the eyes.’

Under fearsome fire, Nel’s brave fellow troopers tried to revive him, but to no avail. Trooper Frans Jacobus Nel, a 24-year-old SAS soldier hailing from Karoi, became the second Rhodesian casualty of the day.

The Rhodesian sweep lines were now very close to the enemy defences, making it ever more difficult for air support to be effective. Much of the battle would now be at close quarters – shoot or be shot.

One of the stick leaders sweeping north towards the triangle with Stop 5 was SAS Lieutenant Darrell Watt. Someone who had enormous respect for Watt was Mark McLean, who described him as ‘a short and very muscular guy, with a very thick neck, and as tough as nails. He was also an excellent tracker.’

Watt told the story: ‘After organising ourselves, we went north in a sweep line. We came to a deep riverbed that was dry. As I peeped over the edge, I saw a gook pointing his AK straight at me. He pulled the trigger first and shot me through my right thigh, missing the bone and femoral artery.’ Watt wasn’t to let the injury stop him, and he and his men carried on fighting. ‘I was bleeding a lot. But we then got them all.’ That was the calibre of the men ZANLA were facing, Rhodesia’s crack troops from the SAS and RLI.

Watt eventually accepted first aid to stem the blood, yet because of the intensity of the enemy fire, he also had to wait more than an hour before a casevac helicopter came to lift him out.

Anti-aircraft fire was still coming from the triangle, even though the Hunters and Vampires had attacked most of the gun emplacements. Eventually, it was the ground troops sweeping towards the triangle who managed to silence the guns. Stop 3, led by Captain Colin Willis, spotted a heavy-calibre weapon manned by eight ZANLA guerrillas – a lot of personnel for a gun. ZANLA had big teams manning its numerous guns, and was able to get many of its guns firing again soon after the jet strike. Willis’s men flanked the position and killed all eight crew.

Bob MacKenzie’s Stop 4 also put paid to a troublesome 12.7-mm anti-aircraft weapon:

Leading a 15-man patrol back into the forest towards our next objective, the ZANLA intelligence centre, my point element signalled there were enemy ahead. The patrol deployed on line and advanced cautiously toward a large clearing. In the middle of the clearing stood a 30-foot tower with a DShK 12.7-mm anti-aircraft machine gun, its crew frantically blasting away at every plane in sight.

Preoccupied with aerial targets, neither of the four gunners nor their security party on the ground saw the SAS patrol creeping to the edge of the clearing. Silhouetted against the hazy sky, the crew were perfect targets. On command, my troopers opened fire. Bodies tumbled off the tower onto the group guarding the base of the tower, who were shot before they could return fire.

A moment later, MacKenzie’s group came across a far more formidable anti-aircraft weapon, a Chinese twin-barrelled 37-mm cannon, obviously a new acquisition, as it was still covered in gun grease. ‘Happily for the air force, it had not been put into action. A few pounds of plastic explosive soon ensured it never would be.’

To the north, the RLI helitroops were meeting fierce resistance from the Takawira complex, housing semi-trained guerrillas ready to be dispatched to other countries for training, and in particular from the Pasidina 1 complex, which housed limbless guerrillas. The K-cars helping the RLI also came under heavy fire.

Dave Jenkins was amused by the call from one of the K-cars: ‘I think it was Baldy Baldwin or Gaps Newman, but it went something like this: “Christ there are thousands of the bastards here, all with automatic crutches, shooting the shit out of us.”’

Norman Walsh brought the Hunters in to help, ordering Vic Wightman’s White Section to hammer the area from Takawira to Pasidina 1.

Mark McLean’s helicopter, Alouette serial number 5037, now resembled a flying sieve; it had taken 12 hits. ‘You know when you have taken a hit, it’s a “ting” sound. A crack is just a near miss.’

Mark remembers that his technician, Finch Bellringer, was still sporting fresh wounds in his back from his last Fireforce action before Dingo, which made him ‘aware of his mortality, not overly nervous, but aware’. Then, just after 13:00, one round got much, much closer: a bullet passed right through McLean’s helmet. ‘I was in my left-hand attack orbit, and then I woke up to hear Finch Bellringer shouting, “Are you all right; are you all right?” By then, we were in a righthand orbit. We must have flipped over into a right turn during the moment I was unconscious, or at least stunned, and Finch didn’t know what the hell was going on. He must have thought his pilot was dead.’

A bullet had entered the front of McLean’s helmet just above his right eye, smashing the visor and exiting above and behind his right ear, grazing his right temple. The bullet brought the total number of holes in the helicopter to 13, excluding the two holes in the pilot’s helmet. McLean recovered his wits enough to stabilise the helicopter:

It felt like I had been smacked by a prizefighter. I can only think that the resistance of the fibre in the helmet must have snapped my head to the right. It certainly gave me a savage headache, which lasted for the rest of the day. I remember the headache being worse the next morning, but that was probably more to do with the amount of beer I drank at Grand Reef that night.

Mark McLean, sporting a huge AK-47–induced lump over his right eye, and his recently wounded technician, Finch Bellringer, bravely continued with the task of eliminating ZANLA resistance without any thought for their own discomfort or safety. McLean carried on flying his K-car, clocking a total of six hours, 40 minutes in the air that day.

Soon after McLean’s incident, another K-car had a lucky escape. Ian Harvey was engaging the enemy when their 20-mm cannon jammed. Mark Jackson, Harvey’s technician/gunner, confirmed that a round was stuck in the super-hot barrel. ‘Get it sorted, quickly’ was all the world’s most experienced Alouette pilot said. Jackson had to first remove the hot barrel and insert the spare. But heat-swollen barrels are not easy to remove and Jackson struggled to loosen it. Eventually, he had no choice but to undo his safety harness so that he could lean well forward to get the required leverage. As he was doing this, their K-car took hits from ZANLA ground fire. A bullet smashed into the pilot’s door handle, spraying Harvey’s right elbow with shrapnel. Another bullet passed through the upper part of Jackson’s seat – exactly where he had been sitting moments before moving forward to change barrels.