Dingo Firestorm (34 page)

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.