destruction could only come from cutting through one or both of the suspension cables. The question was how this might be done. So far as I was concerned great accuracy would be required, so low delivery at high speed would be essential against this target sited at the edge of a highly defended town. It also meant that our fastest aircraft, Hunters, could make only one pass.
The system I conceived may sound too James Bondish but I have no doubt the project team could have developed it given time to perfect the explosive shearing device I refer to as a ‘cable cutter’.
None of our team had any experience in high-energy shaped charges and explosive shearing devices so I went to Cambridge-trained ex-British Royal Engineers Captain Charlie Small with whom I had worked on the odd inter-force project. One of these projects had been to design a bridge and culvert destruction device to be mounted on a self-propelled vehicle that could be lifted by helicopter and placed on a safe section of the Maputo to Malvernia railway line. Once on the rails the vehicle was to be controlled remotely from the air and run to the target, bridge or culvert and usually defended, where it would be brought to a halt at the selected position for command detonation.
Charlie, who was then working with Selous Scouts, was experienced in the destruction of bridges as recently proven during Op Virile. His approach to dropping a bridge was to calculate the amount of explosive required for the job then double the quantity. Because of this, the rail vehicle became too heavy for carriage by one or two helicopters. Charlie’s explosives alone required two Alouettes, another to carry the vehicle and a fourth one to transport engineers to assemble the unit on site. Though the feasibility work and designs were completed, the device was never put to the test.
Charlie’s reaction to my plans to drop the Tete bridge was “it can be done”. But he needed the cutting charge, 100kg minimum, to be in direct contact with the suspension cable and oriented so that the explosive ‘cutting’ wave faced the cable.
Arising from Charlie Small’s advice, my concept involved two Hunters each carrying two 150kg bomb- shaped cable cutters under slung, and partially imbedded, within and under, 500kg inert bombs. One Hunter would approach on a line just inside the bridge towers at one end of the bridge whilst another did the same at the other end of the bridge approaching from the opposite direction. Both pilots would have to aim to pass thirty meters above the suspension cables at the relatively slow speed of 300 knots
To give them safe passage, another pair of Hunters would precede them by a few seconds flying at maximum speed directly over Tete town. This pair would then pull up into a steep, noisy, full-powered climbing turn away from the river to draw attention from the slower-flying Hunters approaching each other at low level along the river.
At half a kilometre from target the cable cutters would be released. As they fell away they would draw out a heavy twenty-metre length of super-strong stranded steel cable from a drum mounted inside the inert bomb. Just before the cable was fully withdrawn, as measured by the number of rotations of the drum, the 500kg inert bomb would release automatically from the aircraft.
The requirement was for the inert bomb to pass above the suspension cable and the cable cutter below it. Both units would have passed the suspension cable before their linking cable came taught against the bridge cable. The heavier bomb would continue on and the shock load on the cable (the reason for the slow attack speed) would be slightly damped by the inert bomb’s flight line being drawn down. The cable cutter would pitch steeply upwards as it was brought to a rapid halt before changing direction back towards the suspension cable. As each cable- cutting device slammed up against the suspension cable it would fire its cutting charge.
If all four cable cutters succeeded in cutting right through their respective section of suspension cable that would be fine but it only needed one severed cable to drop the bridge. However, if neither cable was completely severed, the damage done would render the bridge unsafe, thereby necessitating many months for disassembly of the entire bridge before replacement of the custom-designed suspension cables was possible.
There was another unusual project explored but never put to the test. This was to have been a Hunter- borne, non-explosive, man-killing device. It all started with an article I read in some scientists’ magazine reporting the potential of low-frequency noise to subdue riotous crowds or to actually kill large numbers of people if applied energy levels were high enough. The article told of a French scientist and his four assistants who were all killed in the wee hours of the morning when they conducted their first-ever test on an oversized, low frequency, ‘whistle’. Disaster struck when they passed large volume airflow from a compressed air tank through the sound generator. Not only were buildings for some distance around subjected to severe damage, the autopsies carried out on all five victims revealed that their vital organs had been pulverised by the high energy, four cycles per second, sound force.
I was intrigued by this information and looked into the possibility of towing a suitable ‘whistle’ through the air behind a Hunter flying at high speed. Calculations, or should I say guesstimations, showed that the required amplitude of sound waves oscillating at four cycles per second could be achieved without danger to the pilot or anyone on the ground. Only in a sustained steep turn at the right speed would ‘killer sound waves’ focus for the few lethal seconds needed to cover a fair sized area within the orbit.
Had we had the time and found a suitable way of testing such a device, we might have produced an ideal low-cost weapon for a large variety of CT targets. I am left wondering if the concept was realistic, or not.
Katoog
DURING MY VISITS TO CSIR in Pretoria I became very interested in an aeronautical division project known as Katoog, which is Afrikaans for ‘cat’s eye’. This project looked to the future when a helicopter gunship pilot would be able to aim his power articulated guns by simply placing an illuminated spot in his helmet visor onto a target.
When I had checked on the project, back in February 1978, no noticeable progress had been made since my previous visit many weeks earlier. The South Africans were obviously in no great hurry as they knew that helicopter gunships and their rotating ‘chin turrets’, for which Katoog was intended, lay a long way off in the future.
For my part I could see immediate use for the Katoog system in a side-firing mode, so I asked if it would be possible to let me take the equipment, as it was, for a short-duration trial in Rhodesian operational conditions. The CSIR engineers were especially keen because this would give them early technical feedback; so a signal was sent up to Air HQ in which I made a proposal to borrow the equipment. Authority was given for me to pursue the matter with the South Africans.
Because Katoog was a top-secret project there was much to-and-fro communicating in Pretoria before the request was accepted in principle. However, the South Africans insisted on finishing an incomplete mounting for four .303 Browning machine-guns and conducting ground-firing trials before passing the system over. The gun mounting incorporated hydraulic servos to traverse and pitch the guns in direct response to Katoog’s sighting sensor.
There was no hope of finalising a pilot helmet sight before the gun system itself was ready. So I requested that CSIR produce a simple mounting post on which to fix their angle-sensing device with a collimator-reflector gunsight affixed between two handgrips incorporating a firing button. The idea was that the guns would be operated by one of our helicopter gunners sitting in a sideways-facing seat set central to the front doorway of an Alouette. On his left side, the multiple-gun platform would be wholly accessible to him with gun barrels projecting through the rear doorframe.
By early May the system was working well and was transported with the senior project engineer to Salisbury on six weeks’ loan. As soon as the whole unit had been fitted to an Alouette, firing trials were conducted with the CSIR project engineer making suitable adjustments to allow for direct aiming at targets with the guns offset for normal attack speed. Squadron Leader Ted Lunt and Corporal Thompson conducted these tests.
Ted Lunt was the Squadron Commander of 8 Squadron, which had only just been created, ostensibly to
