SAS externals
FOR SOME TIME DURING THE second half of 1976, the Special Air Service squadron was employed in the Repulse area and participated in a number of Fireforce actions. Although there was urgent need for experienced soldiers in the south at the time, use of the SAS inside the country was an incredible waste of their specialist skills.
Nevertheless, on 22 September, the first use of a Dakota in support of Fireforce was made possible because all the SAS were para-trained. The ground action was controlled from a K-Car by Major Brian Robinson who, because of his eighteen paratroopers, had more than double the number of troops that would normally have been available to a four-G-Car Fireforce.
In another SAS Fireforce action on 10 October, Brian Robinson was flying with Flight Lieutenant Ken Law in a KCar. They were fortunate to have Cocky Benecke supporting in a Lynx. Cocky found a group of CTs hiding under bush 1,500 metres away from where troops had been deployed. This initiated actions with other CT groups scattered about in the same vicinity. The Dakota flying in support of Fireforce was called upon to drop its load of twenty SAS paratroopers, which was a task made easy because the KCar was able to mark the drop-line with the first of our newly developed smoke markers. Happily Cocky Benecke was the first pilot to be armed with boosted 37mm rockets that gave spectacular returns. Between himself in his Lynx and Sergeant Merber firing the K-Car’s cannon, they accounted for fourteen CTs.
Whilst they were still in the Repulse area, the SAS were used for a pre-planned attack on a ZANLA staging camp known as Mavue Base, which was just over the border inside Mozambique and a little south of the wide slow-flowing Sabi River. Again Brian Robinson was in K-Car, this time with Mike Borlace who was leading another K-Car, and five helicopter troopers.
The OC SAS seemed to be present in a number of Air Force ‘firsts’. This time it was the first live Alpha bomb attack by three Canberras. The operation did not go too well for many reasons, the greater of which was that the Canberras missed their assigned targets because the Hunters responsible for marking for the bombers had misidentified the base centres. Mike Borlace in his ASR said that, this had been a great pity because, having seen an Alpha bomb attack for the first time, the CTs, who were in both bases in great numbers, would have suffered high casualties had the strikes been on target.
Three Dakotas dropping SAS troops west, south and east of the target from 500 feet were all observed to have airburst explosions around them. In their descent to ground, the paratroopers experienced plenty of ground fire and airbursts. Because there were ground explosions preceding the airbursts, it was assumed that ZANLA had employed their TNT and stick grenade ‘air ambush’ system.
Brave and accurate boosted rocket and Frantan attacks by Air Lieutenants Clive Ward and Mike Delport flying Lynx took care of troublesome anti-aircraft fire. The SAS conducted a sweep through the target but apart from capturing large quantities of equipment that had not been destroyed during Hunter re-strikes; they found only thirty-two CTs dead. From an SAS point of view, this was less than they were used to achieving in Tete with a handful of four-man callsigns.
Shortly after this action, increased infiltrations down the old Tete routes into the Hurricane area forced the SAS back to the style of operations that suited them best. They returned to the Tete Province of Mozambique south of the Zambezi to take on both FRELIMO and ZANLA. Air involvement in support of SAS operations remained low-key until 1977.
SAS hit-and-run tactics had been developed to such a degree that the small four-man offensive units had, themselves, become the elusive terrorists within Mozambique. They had learned how to keep out of trouble whilst meting out hell and destruction in no small measure. Apart from the odd casevac, helicopters only flew in to recover four-man patrols to Rhodesia. Dakotas were used in HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) deployment of two or more sticks from high altitude necessitating the use of oxygen until the free-fallers actually left the aircraft. HALO deployments were usually made just after sunset, and on the whole seemed to go unnoticed. Dakotas were also used occasionally at night to resupply the ground units.
The SAS were so successful that ZANLA and FRELIMO were forced to abandon forward bases and move right back to the FRELIMO main base town, Tete. Undeterred by the fact that the enemy had moved so far from the Rhodesian border, the SAS worked on the fact that ZANLA would have to cover the increased distances to the Rhodesian border by vehicle, and this offered new possibilities.
To circumvent the problem of working too far to the north of the border and too close to Tete town, the SAS decided to turn things around by using the newly formed Lake Cabora Bassa as a safe haven. Canoes were to become their means of transport, thereby turning the direction of attack southwards. Villages that used to be on the banks of the Zambezi River had disappeared under water and most of the population had moved miles away. No one was living in the ground beyond the lake’s southern shoreline but ZANLA and FRELIMO were committed to using the few roadways that ran through remote countryside some distance farther south.
Only three four-man callsigns were used and they played merry havoc against an enemy that could not understand where their problems were coming from. Whereas the men in the canoes, nicknamed ‘Cockleshell Heroes’, gained most of their ammunition resupply from captured equipment and had plenty of water when not too far from the lake during their offensive forays. On the lake they needed regular resupply, which came in by Dakota at night.
I managed to tag along on one of these midnight flights. Together with spares, some canoe components and ration packs to be para-dropped were hampers of fresh hot food and other perishable delicacies prepared at SAS’s Kabrit Barracks just before we climbed aboard the Dakota. For me, this was a great change from project work and I had not been airborne at night since the Lynx ferry twelve months earlier.
Flight Lieutenant Bob d’Hotmann was the skipper with Flight Lieutenant Bruce Collocott as his second ‘dicky. I was standing between and behind the pilots watching proceedings with interest whilst squeezed against an SAS officer who I think might have been Scotty McCormack. Initially Bob could not raise the callsign whose position was on a tiny island fairly close to the southern shoreline almost due north of Nova Mague. The night was clear and very black. Even though the lake was vaguely illuminated by starlight it was insufficient to pick out any island, even from our height of only 500 feet.
Then we spotted a flashing strobe light that stood out so clearly from the air it seemed impossible that the SAS position would not be compromised. Scotty said it was OK because the strobe would be so positioned that nobody on the shoreline would see it. We had turned towards the strobe when the callsign came up loud and clear. Because the aircraft was heading directly for the strobe, all that needed to be said from the ground controller was “Red light on…. Green light on”. The pannier was launched into the night; and that was that! The callsign confirmed that he had received resupply, thanked Bob and bid him farewell.
The descent to the lake had been a long one at low power. Bob had been at pains to ease on the power very gently as he approached his run-in height so that nobody on the ground would detect any change in engine note that might give away the SAS position. Having completed the drop, Bob held heading and height for at least ten kilometres and even then he powered up very slowly, allowing the Dak to drift gently upwards, again to avoid drawing attention. We were miles past the Cockleshell Heroes before turning for Salisbury.