Hispano cannons for Scouts
THE SELOUS SCOUTS HAD EXTENDED their roles beyond pseudo operations within and outside the country. During May and June 1976 they conducted vehicle-borne operations across the border into Mozambique. On one excursion, they went into the Gaza Province in an attempt to stem the tide of ZANLA forces that were using the road and rail from Maputo to Malvernia. Air support for this operation was limited to one Alouette for casualty evacuation and one Lynx flying at great height to act as a radio relay between the ‘flying column’ inside Mozambique and the Scouts’ forward HQ inside Rhodesia.
For over a year Selous Scouts’ over-border operations had been conducted with the clear understanding that no air support would be given, even if the units ran into lifethreatening situations. This restriction applied equally to operations in Botswana and Zambia. Even after the new President of Mozambique, Samora Machel, closed the border with Rhodesia on 3 March 1976 and vowed to provide full support to ZANLA, the ‘no air support’ ruling remained. Machel’s statements were, in effect, a declaration of war, but this made no difference. Political restraints on the external use of air support were almost certainly intended to keep international pressure off Prime Minister Vorster; otherwise we might have experienced further disruptions in our supplies from RSA.
This situation was no less frustrating for the men on the ground than it was for the Air Force. We knew that Scouts had suffered the loss of Sergeant-Major Jannie Nel, killed at Mapai on 26 June 1976. In the same action, Lieutenants Dale Collett and Tim Bax were seriously wounded. Tim recovered after many months, but Dale’s bullet wound confined him to a wheelchair for life. Although I did not know the exact details, the lack of air support and possible limitation in ground firepower led me to make a telephone call to Ron Reid-Daly.
Some time in April 1976, I had approached Major Brian Robinson at his SAS HQ to ask him if he was interested in 16 of our 20mm Hispano cannons that had been removed from four time-expired Vampires. Considering the great weight of these guns and the nature of SAS operations, Brian could see no use for them at the time, but he did not close the door on the offer. My approach to Ron Reid-Daly met with a totally different response because he was in urgent need of improved firepower for his mobile columns operating in Mozambique.
Within an hour of the call I met with Captain Rob Warraker and a small group of Selous Scouts territorial engineers at New Sarum. With Air Force armourers and myself, the Scouts engineers lay under a Vampire to be shown how the cannons were mounted on swinging arms that allowed them to rock backwards under recoil, and forwards from the press of sturdy rear-mounted springs. This rocking action was used to retain a powerful spring in the BFM (belt-feed mechanism) that was fitted next to the cannon. The BFM was the essential component that pulled the heavy ammunition belt from the ammunition-bay and fed rounds into the gun’s breach.
Air Force had considered mounting the cannons in purposemade swivel platforms for vehicles assigned to airfield defence, so we had a good idea of what technical work needed doing. The Scouts engineers picked up the ideas immediately and Rob Warraker, fearing we may change our minds, hastily left with the four cannon and 20,000 rounds of ammunition he signed for. In no time at all the Scouts completed the mountings and finalised range testing. Three vehicles were fitted with these cannons for a forthcoming external operation against a large base in Mozambique where ZANLA groups were assembled, armed and briefed before being launched into the Thrasher area.
Captured CTs repeatedly referred to ‘Pungwe Base’, which they said was sited on the banks of the Pungwe River, but photo-reconnaissance along this large east-flowing river failed to find anything. Then, quite by chance, Squadron Leader Randy du Rand was returning from an unrelated Canberra task when he happened to fly directly over Pungwe Base. His navigator spotted the large camp through an opening in the cloud and rolled the cameras just before cloud obscured the ground again.
When the JSPIS interpreters at New Sarum viewed the photographs of this large base, they were astounded to see hundreds of people gathered in a box formation around a flagpole in the centre of a large parade ground. What excited them was the fact that the flagpole itself stood at the centre of an outline of Rhodesia that was fashioned from whitewashed rocks. The word ZIMBABWE, also laid out in painted rocks, clearly identified the base as belonging to ZANLA.
Ron Reid-Daly was delighted with the Air Force find that gave final proof of the large number of ZANLA in residence. The location of this base was not on the Pungwe River as reported but was on one of its south-flowing tributaries, the Nhazonia River, also known as Nyadzonya. With the position of the Pungwe Base established, the Canberra squadron flew repeated photographic sorties to monitor developments. These showed that base occupancy was increasing daily. Captured CTs continued to indicate that this was ZANLA’s primary base and their hand sketches confirmed the base layout, including the whitewashed outline of Rhodesia surrounding the word ZIMBABWE, also structure from whitewashed rocks.
After much detailed planning for another ‘flying column’ assault, a Scouts force was authorised to attack the Nyadzonya base. But again, direct air support was disallowed. The attack was a huge success and something in excess of 2,000 armed ZANLA, plus a few FRELIMO, were killed, wounded or drowned in the Nyadzonya River. The barrage of light and heavy automatic gunfire, including high-explosive rounds from two Hispano cannons, had been devastating. (The third vehicle fitted with a Hispano cannon met with misfortune just before the raid was launched.)
Only when the column was under attack from FRELIMO very close to the border during exfiltration, was air assistance authorised. A pair of Hunters flown by Flight Lieutenant Abrams and Air Sub-Lieutenant Lowrie neutralised troublesome FRELIMO mortar and gun-emplacements in failing light. A helicopter collected the most serious of four wounded men and a Lynx, flown by Air Lieutenant Ray Bolton assisted the column by choosing the best route for it to bundubash its way to safety inside Rhodesia.
A Canberra photo-recce sortie was run over Nyadzonya after the attack. The resulting photographs revealed hundreds of bodies strewn across the parade ground, between the many burnt-out buildings, and in the adjacent bush. As our politicians had feared, but expected, the international press reported the action as a slaughter of innocent refugees—ZANLA having registered Nyadzonya and all its other bases as refugee centres.
For years Rhodesia had suffered bad international press at the hands of unscrupulous sensation-seeking reporters and photographers. Even before ZANLA became effective, British reporters deliberately produced misleading articles that were supported by concocted photographs. For instance, one reporter and his photographer threw coins and sweets into rubbish bins to induce children they had gathered together into frenzied scrambling for prizes in what the children believed was a lovely game. Photographs appearing in overseas newspapers showed ‘starving children scrambling for food on the streets of Salisbury’.