forty-four-gallon drum suitably elevated to fill the tank quickly when it was secured to the floor next to the rear door of a Trojan.
I was returning from a routine flight when I noticed a gang of prisoners working on a taxiway close to the threshold of grass runway 13. Gwelo Prison Services provided Thornhill with a limited labour service and had a small prison at Thornhill for the minor-offence prisoners who were about to become my target. The dump tank was fitted to a Trojan, chop chop, and charged with the liquid dye. I then got airborne on the pretext of needing low-level circuit practice. Once airborne I manoeuvred to pass over the prisoners in what would appear to the Air Traffic Controllers to be a low tight turn onto the runway. As the men came almost abreast of me on the outside of the turn the dye was dumped. Control Tower immediatelycalled to say a shower of green liquid had been seen to fall from my aircraft. I acknowledged this by saying the fluid had been dumped deliberately and that I was returning to the squadron.
I got into my car and drove over to the prison gang. Every prisoner was covered in green on one side of his body and all had copper-gold hair. Unfortunately the two uniformed prison guards, whom I had thought safe, were also green from cap to boots. I cheered them all up with two large bottles of Coke and set off to visit the Prison Superintendent in Gwelo to let him know what had happened. I told him exactly what I was trying to achieve and offered to pay for the cleaning or replacement of uniforms. He said there was no need for that because he was delighted that in future it would be possible to mark riot leaders. He agreed to let me know how long it took to remove dye from the uniforms of both guards and prisoners. I told the Superintendent that I was more interested in the length of time the dye remained visible on skin and hair. Ten days later I received the answers. Seven launderings for uniforms, three days to restore hair colour and four hours for skin. I was pleased with the results but no riotous situation ever developed to put the system to the use for which it was intended.
Next I produced a simple, cheap projectile to simulate the clumsy flight of Frantans and teargas so that we could make low-cost simulated attacks outside approved weapons ranges. This was a 100mm Kaylite foam tube filled with sand and white powder with flat discs taped on each end. The armourers called them BUBS, which simply stood for Break-up bombs.
It was already clear that there was going to be a need for 4 Squadron to undertake accurate marking of targets for jet-strikes. 37mm Sneb rockets provided the best option to cater for adequate standoff range, accuracy and reasonable cost. However, we needed to introduce highly visible smoke into these small rockets to clearly show their points of impact. To achieve this, the armourers produced aluminium extension-tubes filled with white phosphorus. These were screw-threaded to fit between the rocket motors and their high-explosive heads. It was pleasing to find that the accuracy of these extended rockets was better than standard ones and that the increased weight only required a small sight adjustment to cater for increased gravity drop.
Delivery of 37mm Sneb rockets from Provosts was well tried but an attack profile had to be developed for the Trojan. John Blythe-Wood and I flew together to develop a profile that would allow a steep delivery from 2,000 feet without over-stressing the airframe during recovery from the dive. I discounted medium dive angles because it would mean having to pass too low over hostile targets.
It took only one flight to find a suitable profile. Keeping the target visible just to the left of the flight line, we ran up until the target was almost at right angles to the aircraft. At this point the nose was pitched up to around forty degrees, followed by a full aileron port roll through 180 degrees, assisted with plenty of rudder. This allowed the nose to pitch down into a sixty-degree dive commencing at low speed. Minor corrections brought the collemateur sight onto the target and immediately a pair of Sneb rockets was fired. Quite unlike the powerful whooosh of 60-pound rockets, Snebs went away with a sharp crack. Accuracy was excellent and recovery from the dive was gentle. Having tested this method of marking targets a few times, John taught the profile to all the squadron’s pilots.
To give very close armed-support to the Army in bush-warfare conditions, we needed to develop slick, uncomplicated procedures that soldiers under stress could use to bring a pilot’s attention to the precise position of any target he was required to strike.
FAC (Forward Air Controller) training for Army officers learning how to direct heavy jet-strikes in conditions of conventional warfare had done wonders in bringing the Air Force and Army close together. We now had the opportunity to build on this by introducing different techniques required in bush warfare. For this GAC (Ground to Air Control) was introduced.
For GAC we needed to have a thorough understanding of each other’s situations and difficulties. When flight trials started, Army officers flew in the strike aircraft (Provosts and Trojans) to experience and appreciate air perspectives and pilots joined Army on the ground for the same purpose. At Kutanga Range aircraft could land after each GAC run. This facilitated quick debriefing, re-planning and switching of personnel. Procedures and techniques were modified and improved until GAC procedures were considered ready for operations.
On the ground the commander of an Army callsign would have a good idea of an enemy force’s disposition and where one or more air strikes needed to be placed. Generally he would also know the air weapon best suited considering the enemy’s situation and how close his troops would be to the strike. Guns and Frantans could be used as close as thirty metres but bombs and rockets needed more than 100 metres separation to cater for potential errors and shrapnel effect. A pilot had to know with certainty the disposition of the entire callsign calling for support—we called this the FLOT (Front Line Own Troops). He also needed to know the nature of support required to be certain of selecting the correct weapon switches, the direction of attack, enemy distance from FLOT, and the precise position he had to strike. FLOT was seldom a straight line so only the extremities of troops nearest the enemy were marked. This could be done in a number of ways. The simplest of these was an unfolded map placed upside down on the ground but this usually delayed the air strike because a pilot might not see the small white markers in heavy bush conditions until he was directly above the callsign.
The preferred method of marking was by smoke grenades, yellow and white were best, which could be used as soon as the callsign could clearly see or hear the approaching aircraft. Too often in operations, heavy ground fire made this difficult so an initial indication of a callsign’s position might need a single highly visible white phosphorus grenade. It was then up to the pilot to call for FLOT markers when he was close enough for his attack.
FLOT markers provided a pilot the reference line for his attack direction. As soon as he had FLOT he would position to attack along that line. At ‘perch’ (start of attack dive) the pilot would call “Mark target”, whereupon the ground commander fired a red flare which he attempted to place in the centre of the intended strike point.
By the time the flare reached ground the attacking aircraft was usually established in its attack-dive. The callsign commander would then give quick corrections. He would either call “On target”, if the flare had landed where he intended or give corrections ADD or DROP, LEFT or RIGHT with appropriate distances. Typically this might be, “To my marker, Drop 20—left 10”. Add and Drop, Left and Right corrections all related to the aircraft attack-line. This meant that the GAC soldier on the ground had to adopt the pilot’s perspective to bring about the corrections he wanted.
We perfected procedures and ran many successful courses for all RLI, RAR and Territorial Army platoon commanders and senior NCOs. Inter-service and personal relationships that developed between the bush squadrons (ourselves and helicopters) and the Army’s fighting soldiers proved to be of immense importance in operations.
When our GAC procedures were eventually used in hot operations, marking FLOT became impossible during high-stress running firefights, but pilots were able to adapt by attacking at ninety degrees to a single marker flare and responding to the usual corrections.
4 Squadron was doing well, morale was high and training had become interesting. We flew many first-light and last-light GAC strikes and also made first-run attacks on targets marked by airborne FAC using 37mm Sneb rockets. Realising it may be necessary to call in a number of aircraft from different locations to link up for combined first-light strikes, we ran exercises in which three or four aircraft met before dawn at a prearranged position well away from target.
Meeting in the dark required height separation initially and cautious manoeuvring to come into formation on the navigation lights of the assigned strike leader. There was something magical about those early morning flights when the progressive brightening of the sky revealed the black shapes of Provosts, or Trojans, flying together in loose formation.
