Kutanga Range. He had completed a pass on his target and was running low-level on the downwind leg to position for another attack when his aircraft suddenly dived into the ground, narrowly missing the tented base of a small Army training camp. It was assumed that Roy might have been reaching for something he had dropped on the cockpit floor because there was no other explanation for this sad occurrence. It seems more likely, however, that seat-locking on the height adjusting mechanism disengaged in turbulence dropping the seat so low as to place Roy’s eyes below the cockpit combing. This technical difficulty became well known before the FB9s were withdrawn from service.
Larger groups of CTs were crossing the border when, on 15 November, a Fireforce action in the Honde Valley resulted in one CT group being cornered on a long, heavily forested hill. At the end of a long day of fighting, thirty-one CT bodies were counted. This was the largest number of kills in a single internal action to date. Regrettably, three weeks later this action brought about a CT reprisal with the murder of twentyseven workers on nearby Katiyo Tea Estate.
Although brutal murders by CTs were commonplace, this one was unusual and difficult to understand, because the victims were Mozambican migrant workers. FRELIMO had made it clear to ZANLA that Mozambican people were royal game, never to be touched, no matter where they were. Yet the CT gang visited this workers’ compound after sunset and went about their business in their usual way.
They rounded everyone up and, whilst getting high on
On a lighter note, I received visitations from a few Americans during the year. One of these was an arms dealer. He was a neat, dapper, dark-haired fellow whose good looks and quiet manner gave no hint of his sadistic nature. He hoped to interest me in a new type of bullet that he could supply for any calibre ammunition of my choosing. The 8mm rounds he showed me looked and felt quite normal. However, the projectile consisted of a light outer casing within which were tiny tightly packed steel slivers. The American told me that upon impact with anything, the casing yielded and released the slivers in a highenergy, fan-like shower. A single strike anywhere on a human body created such trauma that death was virtually guaranteed. The man told of this awful killing device with such passion and enjoyed the gory supporting photographs so much, that he had my blood boiling. I kicked him out of my office saying we had no interest in such dastardly devices. However, when he was gone, I wondered why I had been so put out by the man and this style of killing when I myself was so tied up in developing and producing a whole range of very unpleasant killing devices.
Another American who visited me must have done the Dale Carnegie course that teaches one to remember names by association. Knowing I was called PB, he obviously linked my name to fuel because, when he spotted me at the end of a long corridor a year later, he shouted at the top of his voice, “Hi there Shell.”
At about this time I met a very different type of American. Bob Cleaves came to my office with Ian Player, brother of the world-famous golfer Gary Player. Bob Cleaves’s purpose in regularly visiting South Africa and Rhodesia lay with his wildlife interests. However, Ian Player, a noted wildlife man from Natal, had brought Bob to Air HQ at Bob’s request. Bob was both very pro-Rhodesia and fiercely anti-communist so, with his good connections in the USA, he wondered if there was anything that he could do to help us. I asked him for samples of three things. Gyro-stabilised binoculars for visual recce, intensified-light night-vision binoculars for night recce and bulletproof vests for aircrew protection. All of these were delivered when Bob came back again six months later.
A strange incident occurred on 17 December 1977 when CTs mounted an attack on FAF 8 and the Army base that was also sited on Grand Reef Airfield. A long time prior to this, a project proposal by armourers at Thornhill was brought to me. This was to arrest enemy mortar bombs in heavy diamond-mesh fencing stretched above the roofless protection pens in which our aircraft parked at forward airfields. I was very sceptical initially, but the armourers proved their theory by successfully arresting a number of captured 82mm mortar bombs, none of which detonated. In consequence all forward airfields had the appropriate heavy netting stretched out high above aircraft pens.
When I heard that mortar bombs had been used against Grand Reef, I flew down immediately without waiting for details. On arrival I spoke to Flight Lieutenant Rob McGregor who was FAF Commander and was disappointed to learn from him that none of the bombs had come down over the aircraft pens. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see how the CT group, which had been specially trained and briefed for this job, had botched it.
The group, consisting of about forty men armed with AK-47 assault rifles, RPD machine-guns, RPG rocket- launchers and another six men with a single 82mm mortar tube, approached Grand Reef under cover of darkness. All the CTs carried mortar bombs, which were dropped off with the mortar crew who set up about forty metres behind the left flank of the main line. In this line the men set up next to a cattle fence that ran parallel to the runway. Just 150 metres from their position, across the runway, lay the Army camp with the Air force camp adjoining its right side.
All guns opened up together, sending a hail of bullets towards both bases. Rob McGregor told of the incredible noise and brilliant display of red and green tracer bullets, most of which went over the camp. The CTs may have been overexcited or blinded by their own tracers because, considering the weight of fire, amazingly few rounds hit their intended targets, though a few RPG 2 rockets detonated on sandbag protection walls.
In the meanwhile the CT mortar crew, launching bombs as fast as they could, were oblivious to the incredible cock-up they were making, simply because they had been too lazy to bring along the heavy but all- important base-plate for their mortar tube. The first mortar bomb landed in the Army camp, killing an unfortunate soldier, Signaller Obert Zvechibwe, whose body was found lying under his bed. With the launching of this bomb the mortar tube, without a base-plate to distribute the heavy shock-load, bedded into the ground. With each successive firing, the tube bedded deeper and deeper causing the tube angle to progressively steepen. The consequence of this was that the second bomb fell short of the Army camp and every bomb thereafter moved further from target and ever closer to the line of CTs still firing their guns along the fence line. When the angle of the tube was close to vertical, bombs fell amongst the CT gunners, killing two and seriously wounding others. Panic set in because the men believed the mortar bombs were coming from the Army camp. The attack broke off and the CTs ran for their lives, leaving their wounded to crawl away unaided.
Vic Cook
ON 20 DECEMBER 1976, THERE WAS a lucky escape due to brave and aggressive actions by Flight Lieutenant Vic Cook. Vic was a quiet character who was often ribbed by his colleagues for appearing to be a bit dozy. An example of this occurred when he was in his second-floor bedroom at his parents’ home. He was awakened after midnight by the sound of someone creeping up the staircase. Arming himself with a baseball bat, Vic waited for the intruder to come through the door then laid a genuine thief low with a mighty blow to the throat. He then called the police. When asked how he knew this was not one of his parents coming to his room, Vic said he had not considered that possibility.
In the Op Repulse area, Vic was flying a G-Car with Corporal Finch Bellringer and an army medical orderly en route to casevac black civilians who had been injured by CTs near Malapati. He was some way short of the Army callsign to which he was going when he came under intensive smallarms fire that severed his tail-rotor drive shaft. This is a situation that every helicopter pilot dreads. During the short period of the forced-landing, the helicopter continued taking hits. Vic was struck in the foot, though he did not know this at the time, and his
