An amazing feature of free fall is that there is no sensation of falling whatsoever. The feeling is one of floating – floating in a very powerful wind. The only time a feeling of speed is experienced is when the freefaller passes something static, hopefully nothing firmer than a cloud.
Schulie fell for another 40 long seconds, during which he looked up, his face distorted by the powerful wind, to see his three team members free-falling above him, and he could just make out Barratt’s men in the rapidly fading distance. Schulie saw his altimeter go through 3 000 feet as it approached the red zone of 2 000 feet, at which height the freefaller is only 11 short seconds from impacting the ground. Schulie waved his arms to signal to his team that he was going to open his chute, reached in with his right hand and tugged the metal ripcord from its housing. The sudden deceleration from 200 to just 20 km/h made him dangle like a rag doll for a brief moment and then there was absolute silence. The contrast between falling in a super-hurricane and floating quietly under the canopy is dramatic.
Then Schulie saw one of his men, Sergeant Frank Wilmot, plummet past him in full free fall. Sadly, Frank’s parachute did not open and he fell to his death in a deserted gully near the Musengezi River. The SAS would never know precisely why Wilmot failed to open his chute, but he was in a spin as he plummeted earthwards. In the fading light, it may well have been that Wilmot was focusing so hard on stopping the spin that he lost awareness of his altitude. Frank Wilmot’s death on 19 January 1973 was ‘the worst possible birthday gift I could ever have received,’ recalled Brian Robinson.
After Wilmot’s body had been recovered by helicopter, Schulie and Barratt picked themselves up and continued the mission. Although the SAS never found Hawkesworth, they managed to ambush quite a few ZANLA forces, who had no idea any Rhodesians were in Tete.
This set the tone for operations in Mozambique over the next few years, when the SAS, operating by parachute, canoe, foot and from a fixed base in Tete, would inflict serious damage on ZANLA’s war effort in the province.
While the SAS were upsetting things for ZANLA in Mozambique, Operation Hurricane was making life very tough for ZANLA within Rhodesia. The Selous Scouts were mastering ‘pseudo’, the art of deception, in the targeted area. Using black and white soldiers, and captured ZANLA guerrillas whom they had turned, the Selous Scouts were able to impersonate real ZANLA groups and cause mayhem. The main objective of the pseudo operation was to infiltrate areas where real ZANLA groups were known to be by asking the locals to guide them to their ‘comrades’. Once the scouts had located a group, they would call in heli-borne troops and direct them to the target by radio.
The Alouette helicopter was again proving its worth by carrying troops quickly to ZANLA positions. Although the number of contacts and the kill rate increased, too many were getting away. Once the guerrillas heard the sound of approaching helicopters, they would bombshell in all directions; the optimum time to hit them was when they were still grouped together.
If the fixed-wing Provost managed to attack guerrillas while they were bunched, the kill rate was good. But more often than not, they were already legging it by the time the strike aircraft arrived, making things much more difficult. Also, after each attack, the Provost had to reposition itself for subsequent dive attacks, losing yet more time.
The side-firing machine guns on the Alouette troop carriers did account for a number of enemy kills, but hitting a moving target from a moving platform with ordinary bullets was difficult. The sights were calibrated at a given airspeed (easy to replicate) and at a given height above the ground (hard to replicate over hilly terrain). More firepower with a greater spread was needed. Ideally, a helicopter that could lob bomblets among the enemy quickly and continuously, without having to reposition, would have been best.
The answer was the Matra 20-mm cannon, which some Rhodesian pilots had first seen mounted in a Portuguese Alouette helicopter at Bene, Mozambique, six years earlier. Rhodesian procurement agents eventually managed to secure a supply of the weapons and ammunition, and a few helicopters were fitted with the cannons for trials. This newly fitted Alouette gunship was called the K-car (command car, also known as the killer car). The size of the cannon, firing from the left doorway, meant that no troops could be carried; the K-car was a dedicated gunship.
Soon a place was made on the floor in the left bubble of the Alouette for the infantry commander, who sat in an armoured seat facing backwards. A force of one K-car, three G-cars (Alouette troop carriers with machine guns) and an armed Provost made up a highly effective new counter-insurgency unit, which soon took on the name ‘Fireforce’, or, in radio speak, ‘Foxtrot-Foxtrot’.
The first major K-car action took place in June 1974 from Mount Darwin, when a group of 35 ZANLA guerrillas were spotted by a Selous Scouts ground observation post. Flight Lieutenant John Annan, piloting the K-car, and his technician, Gary Whittal, operating the Matra cannon, accounted for a large portion of the 20 killed and five wounded. A number of things went right that day, but by any measure it was a spectacular success, proving the effectiveness of the K-car and setting the tone for things to come.
So effective was the 20-mm cannon that captured guerrillas would often recall their fear of the K-car, describing it as ‘the helicopter that throws down grenades’.
Flight Lieutenant Mark McLean, a K-car pilot, described the role of the Fireforce pilots:
The K-car pilot has the advantage of having an overall picture of the contact and you’re directly involved with the airborne army commander. You carry out his wishes in directing the G-cars to their drop points. At the same time, you are watching the ground for gooks, watching own forces, talking on the radio, looking out for other choppers, and so on. When you have a target you need to get the gun to bear and give the gunner a decent platform, regardless of where you may be in either height or pattern.
The great thing was that when you saw the enemy, you put down some 20-mm high explosive and you would get them.
The G-car pilot drops the boys wherever he is directed. So he has to be slick in finding an LZ, sussing it out at a glance and sliding his machine in fast and efficiently. Most times the boys go out from a low hover – that reduces the risk of a tail strike or damage to the belly from stumps or rocks. And then, as soon as they’re out, you scoot via the ‘safest’ departure route. No guarantee that it’s safe, as many pilots either landed near gooks or flew over them.
What were the elements that made for a successful Fireforce deployment? McLean believed it was down to a combination of the variables:
If the topography is good for Selous Scout observation – koppies and river lines – chances are that the action will go well because the enemy are enveloped by the attackers. But even then, they might slip past the end of a sweep line or you run out of daylight before you can make the kill. If the countryside is flat and a callsign has made contact and called for back-up, the enemy could be long gone before the Fireforce arrives. A frightened man can run a long way in 30 minutes, so your area of uncertainty enlarges with every minute of response time.
The combination of the Selous Scouts and the Fireforce was proving to be a deadly weapon. Kill rates soared in the Chiweshe and nearby Madziwa TTLs, and two of the most sought-after ZANLA commanders, going by the
noms de guerre
James Bond and Mao, were eliminated. Their bodies, and those of hundreds of other ZANLA guerrillas killed in the area, were taken to the Mount Darwin police station for identification by SB. Thereafter, a uniformed police detail would take the bodies on the back of a Land Rover to an old disused mineshaft, known as the Monkey William Mine, and tip them in. The duty became known as the ‘Mashfords run’, named after a local firm of undertakers. The remains of these dead guerrillas (and probably some post-war additions) were only discovered in 2011, which caused quite a stir.
These heavy losses put ZANLA squarely on the back foot in the Hurricane arena.
The Fireforce deployment evolved and improved with experience. A key change was made – instead of the Alouettes picking up the nearest available troops, dedicated RLI or Rhodesian African Rifles troops were used, based permanently near the helicopters.
Later, the ageing Provosts were replaced by the French-built Cessna 337 or Lynx attack aircraft fitted with machine guns, rockets and frantan. But there was a limitation – the Alouette could carry only four troops. The Fireforce commander would have his four-man sticks dropped in strategic places, either in the likely line of enemy escape (known as a stop group) or to sweep towards the enemy to flush them towards a stop group. As the ZANLA groups grew bigger, it was not uncommon for a four-man Fireforce stick to find itself in a firefight with a much larger enemy force.
The limitation of the Alouette helicopter’s carrying capacity was overcome a few years later when a World War II–vintage Dakota aircraft was added to complement each Fireforce unit. The Dakotas carried some 20 paratroopers, which instantly more than doubled the available ground troop numbers.
The success of the Fireforce in the Hurricane arena swung the momentum right back to the Rhodesian forces. ZANLA admitted that half of its forces had been killed. Even so, the insurgents were staying ahead in one crucial part of their strategy – recruitment.
Through encouragement and often by force, ZANLA ensured that a steady stream of young peasants flowed into Mozambique’s Tete Province for training. As the influence of the guerrillas spread, local chiefs, headmen and sometimes schoolteachers became a key part of the recruitment chain. And to bolster its numbers in Mozambique, ZANLA trained people locally, known to the security forces as LTTs (locally trained terrorists). However, even with the addition of the LTTs, the task of spreading the ZANU message across the vast Hurricane area was time-consuming and difficult.
ZANLA addressed this shortcoming by co-opting a massive number of impressionable rural children, instilling in them an unquestioning idealism with a ruthless streak. The chosen youngsters, known as
mujibha
(boys) or
chimbwido
(girls), would act as the eyes and ears for the guerrillas. They were their messengers. The most effective task these kids performed was reporting the presence of Rhodesian forces.
But there was a sinister side to the role of the
mujibha
and
chimbwido
: reporting traitors, or sell-outs. The youngsters were encouraged to report anyone who was ‘betraying the struggle’. They did this to a degree. Reporting traitors, however, also allowed the young recruits to exact revenge as it suited them, on somebody who had been unkind to them, such as an overly strict schoolteacher, for instance.
A culture of spying on neighbours and even relatives was developed, much like the systems Stalin and Hitler used to great effect to neutralise opposition. There was no appeal process – once a youngster had identified a
mutengesi
(sell-out) to a ZANLA commander, no further investigation was done and no other witnesses were called to substantiate the allegation. The victim was executed on the word of a young boy or girl. Therefore, these youngsters became very powerful people in their villages; they wielded power over life and death.
The worst possible fate that could befall a person in the rural areas was to be labelled a
mutengesi
. Once identified as such, the guerrillas would choose the right moment to make a public example of him, and it was always brutal. The victim would be summoned, accused of being a sell-out, usually beaten and then summarily executed in front of family and friends, normally by a single shot to the head.
To add to the family’s misery, the guerrilla leader would often order that the body was to be left where it fell, usually outside the victim’s house, for days or even weeks. The sight and smell of a decomposing body was a forceful deterrent to anyone who contemplated dissent.
Mourning a
mutengesi
was forbidden, which violated the deeprooted Shona custom of mourning their dead and burying them after proper funeral rites had been performed. Thousands of rural people, including schoolteachers, administrators and businesspeople, would be branded as sell-outs and executed by ZANLA during the Rhodesian War. Whether the victims were innocent or guilty, it was a highly effective way of forcing total loyalty. Indeed, so effective that ZANU would use this system of rooting out and punishing sell-outs long after the war was over.
The intensification of Operation Hurricane and increased SAS incursions into Mozambique worried Rhodesia’s neighbour, South Africa. John Vorster, the South African prime minister, was concerned that his country was gradually being sucked deeper into the Rhodesian War. South Africa had already dispatched a police force with helicopters to Rhodesia in response to the South African ANC joining their traditional allies, ZAPU, in combined excursions into western Rhodesia.
What worried Vorster most was that South Africa’s involvement in Rhodesia was giving political ammunition to the global anti-apartheid lobby. To reduce this political pressure on South Africa, Vorster started an exercise he called ‘détente’ – engaging in dialogue with friendly anti-communist African leaders. On his way to his first meeting with a black African leader, President Hastings Banda of Malawi, Vorster spent a night at the Rhodesian prime minister’s residence. Vorster explained his ambitions to Smith, who thought it all sounded quite reasonable. Little did Smith suspect that Vorster’s new policy would prove to be more of a threat to Rhodesia than the combined menace of ZANLA and ZIPRA.
The first inkling Smith had of the issue was the sudden shift in the Afrikaans press in South Africa from a very pro-Rhodesian stance to one of hostility. Smith recalled:
They [the Afrikaans press] were now indicating in no uncertain manner, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, that Rhodesia was not doing enough to settle the constitutional problem. At the same time they started reminding us that we were leaning heavily on South Africa for support, and that this was becoming an embarrassment.