During early tests each pair of bombs landed close together; so we decided to improve the ninety-metre diameter bush-clearing effect by retarding one bomb to force it to fall short of the unretarded one. Spring-loaded metal paddles were used initially but these were clumsy and inefficient. They were discarded as soon as we learned how to absorb the high shock loading involved in deploying our own designed and manufactured drogue chutes. The drogue chutes worked well and forced the retarded bomb to fall about thirty-five metres short of the streamlined unit. From then on a pair of ANFO bombs gave a bush flattening-pattern ninety metres wide by 135 metres in the line of attack.
450kg Golf bombs were cleared for operational use in March 1977. Testing continued for some time thereafter, resulting in the ANFO bombs being upgraded with double steel cylinders sandwiching thousands of pieces of chopped 10mm steel rod to give lethal shrapnel effect beyond the over-pressure boundaries. Although officially termed 450kg HP bombs, the project title stuck and everyone knew them as ‘Golf bombs’.
Cavalry Fireforce
IN MARCH 1977, OZZIE PENTON asked for my temporary release from project work to conduct recce training camps for all PRAW crews. To make this manageable and to minimise disruption to my own work, I arranged for four separate five-day camps to be run in March, April, May and June. I chose Marandellas Airfield for the first recce camp and had Cocky Benecke, Francois du Toit and Norman Maasdorp along to assist me. Francois had resigned from the South African Air Force to join our force and was keen to get back to air recce work.
John Blythe-Wood, as lead K-Car pilot operating out of Mtoko, had been having a run of first-class successes in which he had twice called for Canberra Alpha bomb strikes. My wish was to find a target for John’s Fireforce in the hope that he might use Canberras again because I had not personally witnessed an Alpha bomb strike from the air.
On 22 March I found a plum target and counted thirty-eight CTs moving out of a their well-defined base camp. Unfortunately the Mtoko Fireforce was not available, so the Grand Reef Fireforce, led by Mike Litson, responded instead. An agonising fifty-five minutes elapsed before the Fireforce came into view. I put Mike onto the campsite first for orientation purposes and, considering the long delay, it was fortunate that my guess at where the CTs might be found turned out to be correct. In the action that followed, sixteen CTs were killed, one was captured unhurt and seventeen escaped, most having been peppered with 20mm shrapnel from the K-Car.
Although I read all the Air Strike Reports in Air HQ it was not the same as seeing for myself the existing problems of having too few Fireforces. They had to cover many thousands of square miles in which ever-growing numbers of CT groups were operating. I wondered if employing a new approach might offset the shortage of Fireforces and allow air recce finds to be less dependent on their availability.
Lieutenant-Colonel Tony Stevens, commander of the horse-borne troops of the Grey’s Scouts, listened to my ideas of using his Grey’s Scouts as an alternative to the heli–borne Fireforce. He leapt at the opportunity and we made plans to give it a try the next day in the St Swithins Tribal Trust Land. This was to have a force of twenty horsemen moving along a predetermined line at a gentle walk whilst I conducted air recce five kilometres on either side of their line.
I found the force immediately I arrived at the appointed RV and the sharp accent of the Grey’s Scouts major made me realise he was Australian. He confirmed the line he would ride and I confirmed the procedure I would adopt. Not ten minutes passed before I found a base under trees on high ground, commanding an excellent view of surrounding grasslands in which were some bare maize fields, very few trees and three small villages.
My 1:50,000-scale map showed a shallow depression running west to east 500 metres to the north of the base but this was not obvious from my recce height. I had no knowledge of horse-borne tactics for approaching targets unseen. Having given him the relevant grid references, I asked the major’s opinion on the cover the depression would afford him. He assured me he could get to a position 500 metres north of the base without being seen and said he would call me across two minutes before his arrival there. At the time I was about five kilometres away, having maintained a routine orbit line, but I could see the horses clearly even when they passed through tree cover. The speed at which the horses covered the ground was very impressive.
When the force turned right to move directly towards the base, ten pairs of horsemen surged forward, galloping at different speeds to place them in a wide crescent before the centre horsemen came to a halt and dismounted. In no time there were ten pairs of men surrounding the base site. The nearest troops to the base were about 150 metres away. No more than ten minutes had passed from finding the base to having it surrounded by men who had dismounted to commence a cautious approach towards the base.
Disappointingly, the base was empty, having been vacated about two hours earlier. Nevertheless it was clear to me that this silent force would have achieved complete surprise and total encirclement. Had there been serious opposition, a status quo could have been maintained for as long as it took for a regular Fireforce to reach them.
Unfortunately, the success of the trial ended abruptly. I had continued searching for another target when I saw smoke rising from two villages close to the base. I could not raise the major on radio so flew back to see what was going on and was horrified to find all huts of the third village in the process of being torched. My presence overhead brought the major back to his radio set and we entered into a very heated exchange. The major maintained that the locals needed to be punished for feeding the CTs. I objected and insisted that these same locals, who really had no alternative but to feed CTs, would more willingly support ZANLA following this senseless action.
I terminated the trial even before a whole hour had passed because I needed to discuss Grey’s Scouts’ procedures and attitudes with Tony Stevens. He was very apologetic about his Australian major’s actions and assured me that appropriate action would be taken. Nevertheless, Tony was delighted to learn that, in my opinion, Grey’s Scouts could be employed in a Fireforce role in support of air recce and Selous Scouts. Regrettably I never found another opportunity to pursue the matter personally and the concept was lost.
Testing American equipment
BOB CLEAVES RETURNED FROM USA with the equipment I had requested for field trials. The gyro-stabilised binoculars were mind boggling on the ground. Superb magnification and a rock-steady image, no matter how much one trembled, made them a perfect aid for game-viewing. In the air, however, the binoculars were only useful to inspect selected points during a gentle orbit. The moment one tried to keep an eye on a point whilst in forward flight, even at 4,000 feet above ground, the rate of scan induced precession of the gyro beyond its limits and toppled the spinning mirror.