Rhodesia, 1965-1979. Period photos and Bush War history, daily. Fireforce, Selous Scouts, RLI, RAR, and the Rhodesian Air Force.
Rhodesia
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the k-car. one Alouette III in the Fireforce carried a 20mm cannon firing from the port door, with the Fireforce commander aboard directing the fight from 800 feet. the g-cars dropped the sticks, and the k-car stayed overhead until it was over.
Ten RLI men got lost in the Zambezi Valley in 1967 and ran out of water. Balaam writes they ended up drinking urine mixed with lemonade powder until a white phosphorus grenade signalled the rescue helicopter. The ordeal, he says, made the army teach survival instead of drill.
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The plan was to blow the turbines at Chicamba Real. When that failed, Watt's team put eight rounds from a 75mm recoilless rifle into the power station from 1,500 metres, and Beira went dark. Wessels records the team then hid for two weeks, living on grass and a last teabag.
A clear explainer, and the diagram at the end is the part to study. Once the ring closes on paper, the whole tactic suddenly looks simple, which it very much was not.
One of the most effective counter-insurgency tactics in history was the Rhodesian "Fire Force".
The Rhodesians had to protect a vast area from insurgent strikes.
Their solution was to have three Fire Force groups ready to deploy at a moments notice.
Each Fire Force group an initial wave of 32 men, transported in 4 Allouette III helicopters and a single C-47 Dakota aircraft. They would also have a single "Lynx" light attack aircraft.
When observation posts or scouts spotted insurgents, a Fire Force unit would get to the area and do an aerial envelopment.
4-man sticks carried by the Allouettes would drop in to set up a perimeter. Then the main force in the Dak would land and sweep in. The insurgents would be surrounded and usually defeated with low losses for the Rhodesians.
If there was heavier resistance, the helicopters would return to base and pick up a second wave of troops.
At any one time there were 3 Fire Force groups at the ready, each one stationed at a single airfield.
To fight a widely dispersed enemy that could strike anywhere and anytime, this kind of rapid response vertical envelopment was highly efficient.
Obviously only works with a very professional military where most of the infantry are trained in para-drops though. Many armies today couldn't pull this off.
Kabrit Barracks had its own menagerie, and Enoch the baboon ran it. He led the animals in file, took a Castle beer at four in the afternoon, and then did a parachute course. Eleven jumps later, Wessels records, the baboon was awarded his wings.
Named after Major Drake of the Rhodesian African Rifles. Most officers get a plaque. He got a verb.
Rhodesian troops in the Bush War used a kind of reconaissance by fire known as "Drake shooting".
Instead of waiting for the enemy to reveal themselves, troops would proactively shoot into likely hiding spots: bases of trees, rocks, thickets or anthills.
The goal was to kill concealed insurgents without first needing a clear visual on them.
They didn't waste ammo. Riflemen fired "double taps" or controlled semi-auto shots up to 12 inches off the ground.
This targeted legs and feet or ricocheted debris upward into the enemy's face and body.
If the enemy flinched, moved, or returned fire, it instantly revealed their position for accurate follow-up shots.
This was a very effective counter-insurgent tactic for the terrain they were fighting in.
A question from the DMs: ZIPRA or ZAPU? Both names, one side. ZIPRA was ZAPU's army under Joshua Nkomo, and ZIPRA fired the Strela missiles that brought down both Viscounts, the Hunyani in September 1978 and the Umniati in February 1979.
3 Commando flew a rampant yellow banana on green, with a 3, and called themselves 'The Lovers'. Cocks writes that the first flag was sewn by the OC's wife in 1968, during Operation Cauldron. The troops flew their own: legs, a captured Russian flag, bombs, and the poachers.
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RLI paratroopers called themselves 'meat bombs'. Operational drops were usually from 500 feet or lower, sometimes under 300, straight into trees and rocks. Chris Cocks logged 42 jumps in all, 18 of them operational, and wrote it down in FIREFORCE.
Five SAS men freefell from 20,000 feet into Mozambique on Operation Ecstasy, May 1979. One broke his neck landing in a tree. The rest spent ten days on the run, over 100 men tracking them, ComOps telling them 'you're on your own'. They made it to Cabora Bassa.
That standard is what made their pseudo operations possible. Men who passed a course like that could live as guerrillas and still fight at the end of it.
In April 1979, 48 SAS men drove eight Sabre Land Rovers into Lusaka to kill Joshua Nkomo. They crossed the Kafue bridge on the code words 'Kermit the Frog', fought through his guards, and found only his uniform in an empty room. Scheepers tells it in We Dared to Win.
They look remarkably relaxed for men about to jump into combat. The shorts and the waiting around give the game away.
The Rhodesian Light Infantry accepted foreign volunteers and mercenaries from all over the world.
Australians and Americans who had fought in Vietnam.
Englishmen who had fought in Northern Ireland.
South Africans who had fought in Angola.
Why did these guys go to Rhodesia?
Partially it was ideological. They wanted to stop communism.
But mostly it was because they wanted action and adventure in an elite unit.
They wanted to be jumping off helicopters into a hot LZ, every day.
A rare breed.
Bax records hiding inside a cloud from a scrambled Zambian MiG during a 1978 air recce over Zambia. The MiG pilot told his controller he badly needed to urinate, and went home. The ZIPRA camp they were hunting, K16, was found and hit later.
Bax records the recce for the June 1976 Mapai raid: two tandems bolted together, pedalled 120 miles along the railway track. It fell apart within minutes on rotten Mozambican rails. Bax was shot in both legs in the raid, three years before Operation Uric hit the same town.
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30 January 1979: Rhodesian voters backed the Internal Settlement constitution by 85 percent. Smith had predicted 70, and writes that the result beat his own expectation. Zimbabwe Rhodesia followed within months, though the war went on.
The photo gives it away: blackened faces, FRELIMO uniforms, and a convoy that drove straight through the camp gates at Nyadzonia before anyone realized.
Only two Grand Crosses of Valour were ever awarded: Chris Schulenburg of the Selous Scouts and Grahame Wilson of the SAS. Smith records meeting the first black holder of both the Bronze and Silver Cross, Sergeant Wuranda, back on raids on an artificial foot after a landmine.
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Face blackened, FAL across his lap, cigarette in his left hand. The FAL was the standard rifle of the Rhodesian Army, yet here it is just leaning on a step. The sandals beside him are the detail that stays with you.
