brought him to be the Commander of the Rhodesian Air Force in 1973 in the rank air marshal.
There were no doubts in the minds of most officers that Mick was the right man for the job because he had proved himself in every way. However, the discontent of one or two superseded senior officers reached political ears. For reasons I do not know, the politicians decreed that no such accelerated promotion should occur in the future and that Air HQ must pre-select officers to be groomed for the top Air Force post.
Frank Mussell was the obvious man to succeed Mick McLaren when he retired in 1977. For the term commencing 1981, Keith Corrans and Tol Janeke were earmarked as running mates and were immediately promoted to wing commander. This politically induced situation proved to be a bad move because it had forced Air HQ to pre-judge individual standings eight years ahead of time, and this had the effect of limiting the prospects of many officers who might have aspired to positions that now seemed blocked. Keith and Tol were both fine men but we could not understand how either one of them could have been selected ahead of Norman Walsh. Anyway, this early selection failed because Keith and Tol both took early retirement and Norman became Commander in 1981 in circumstances that couldn’t have been foreseen in 1973.
Night ops diffculties
MY EXPERIENCE ON HELICOPTERS HAD highlighted the dangers of flying on dark nights. This was largely due to the helicopter’s inherent instability, but following Guy Munton-Jackson’s death, helicopter pilots were forbidden to fly unless there was a clearly defined horizon. For slow fixed-wing pilots who continued to operate at night in all conditions, save for low cloud and storms at destination airfields, dark nights presented very real difficulties.
Most readers will have flown many hours in airliners and may wonder what is so difficult about flying at night. Many scheduled departures and arrivals occur at night in marginal weather conditions, so where are the problems? Well, it is all a matter of instrumentation, flying aids, navigational aids and a second pilot to monitor and assist his captain at every stage of flight. These are all routinely available in all airliners that operate in and out of fully equipped airports having qualified air-traffic and radar controllers.
Although we were equipped with standard flight instrumentation, it was necessary to physically control an aircraft every second it was airborne. There were no such luxuries as autopilot, a second pilot, aids to pinpoint one’s position or to guide one in for a safe landing. The airfields into which we operated had no let-down aids of any description. Very often, when cloud cover necessitated flying above minimum safe altitude to clear all high ground, our best assistance came from men on the ground saying something like, “We can hear you to our northeast.”
Once guided to approximately overhead it was a matter of entering into a gentle descending turn hoping to break cloud close to the airfield before reaching minimum safety height. Over flat sections of the Zambezi Valley this was not too bad, but in mountainous terrain immense tensions built up in one’s mind and body before breaking out below cloud and seeing one’s destination.
With no aids to assist navigation and let-down in remote areas I, like most pilots, often wondered how I could have let myself in for such a hazardous occupation. On these occasions I longed for the safety of jet flying which always brought one back to a major airfield with all aids, including radar. But, being stuck with the problem, one had to work at remaining calm and reminding oneself that Air Force training had been geared to cater for these frightening situations.
Even when the destination airfield, other than Air Force FAFs, had been located, danger existed because pilots were forced to rely on soldiers, policemen and civilians to mark the runway. I will say more about this subject later.
Flying Provosts was always less trying that flying Trojans in identical situations. The Provost felt sturdy, it had ample power to cater for the unexpected and responded well to throttle and flight controls. Wearing a parachute also gave some comfort if everything went pear-shaped. On the other hand, the Trojan could be a real bitch, particularly when laden and there was no alternative but to stay with the beast, no matter what happened.
Trojan characteristics
THANKS TO SUPERB TECHNICIANS AND the excellent training given to its pilots, the Trojan did a marvellous job despite its limitations. All the same, this aircraft’s unusual characteristics often took one by surprise by day as well as night.
I was returning from one recce sortie in Mozambique low on fuel when I encountered a solid line of cumulonimbus running the length of the escarpment. There was no way around the storm line, which was putting on a spectacular display of near-continuous lightning strikes. My destination was Centenary and it was already too dark to go into Mukumbura or Musengezi, so I selected a section between two huge cumulonimbus columns that appeared to offer the safest passage through the storm line.
With lights set to maximum brightness and having transferred attention to instruments, the cloud was entered with stopwatch running at an indicated height of 6,500 feet above sea level. Instantly smooth, straight and level flight changed as unseen forces within the storm cloud took hold of the Trojan and lifted it as if it was feather-light. Inside the aircraft the sensations, sounds and instrument indications were terrifying.
With all my strength I worked to keep wings level, paying scant attention to the varying pitch attitude as the airspeed indicator fluctuated rapidly between stalling speed and somewhere beyond VNE. The Vertical Speed Indicator was against its upper stop and the whole airframe shuddered and shook so violently that I thought it might break up. One minute and ten seconds after entering cloud, which felt like an eternity, the aircraft was spewed out of the storm into clear, calm air at 11,500 feet above sea level. Stretched out ahead was a fairyland of security lights burning brightly from Centenary’s farmsteads.
5,000 feet gained in such a short time was one thing; unstoppable descents towards the ground with full power applied was quite another. There were times when it seemed such descents must end in disaster. On one particular occasion I was flying along a narrow valley in the Shamva area with the high ground right and left a little below the level of flight. The aircraft started to descend rapidly under the influence of a strong crosswind flow so I applied full power and was in a normal climbing attitude, but the aircraft continued descending into the valley.
I was not concerned about going all the way to ground because it was obvious that wind flow must level off before this occurred. My concern was for the ridge at the end of the blind valley that was too narrow to allow turn-about. The aircraft levelled out at about fifty feet as expected and remained there until lifted upwards so fast that it had risen above the high ground well before valley’s end.
The Trojan’s response to local windflow and thermal activity could have it descending like a streamlined brick or climbing like a homesick angel. For me the Trojan’s sensitivity to air currents was especially annoying when I first started visual recce. It took some time to get used to trimming the aircraft and allowing it to float up and down without fighting to hold a fixed height. Somehow the downs seemed to equal the ups as the aircraft yow-yowed about the intended recce height.
SAS ops in Tete
