At about this time the reserve helicopters from Grand Reef were approaching Lake Alexander.
Bill Sykes and I did not see the airstrikes going in southeast of us but landed to prepare to take the DC7 drops. The rotors had not yet stopped turning when I spotted the big aircraft already running in from the east. It was two minutes too early, yet the Admin Base protection troops were already peeling out of the huge cargo door before I had a chance to call Squadron Leader George Alexander, who was flying second pilot to Captain Jack Malloch.
The DC7 lumbered past and rolled into a slow starboard turn to re-position for its second drop. On the ground and out of sight 500 metres away, the troops were gathering up their parachutes, well beyond the position I would have placed them; had I been given the chance. As the aircraft lined up for its second run, I called George by callsign, instructing “Red light on…” then waited for the position I wanted the first fuel drop to be launched. However, well before this position, the first pallet of drums was followed rapidly by three more. All were descending way, way short, just as first helicopters arrived over the Admin Base.
George Alexander, an excitable man at the best of times (he was part-Greek), cursed the helicopter pilots for being in the way of the DC7 that was, by necessity, staggering along close to stalling speed. I could see that all the helicopters were well clear but George who was used to Air Traffic Control separation was unaccustomed to seeing other aircraft so close to his. This was not Salisbury Airport! It was a piece of foreign bush supposedly controlled by a man, me, whose instructions were either not being received, or were being ignored because of George’s stressed state. The helicopter pilots ignored his curses and landed next to me.
One of the trooper helicopters had taken serious hits that rendered it unfit to fly, even for a one-time flight to Rhodesia. The others could not take on fuel immediately, because my instructions continued to be ignored and fuel drops were going in where George chose to place them. When eventually the Chimoio operation was over, George claimed he had not received my instructions, even though the helicopter pilots had heard them clearly.
I had abandoned any hope of getting fuel and ammunition down where I needed them when Norman Walsh arrived, way ahead of time. His command helicopter was shot up and he needed to borrow another in a hurry. Both he and Brian were deeply frustrated by their unplanned absence from the action at the most critical time in the battle; but there was no aircraft immediately available.
Fortunately I had already arranged for the RLI protection troops, who should have been climbing a small feature next to the Admin Base to watch for enemy movement, to roll some drums clear of the drop zone so that helicopters could commence refuelling. The first machine to be refuelled was commandeered by Norman and Brian who rushed back to the action.
I inspected the command helicopter and the other damaged one. A complete main rotor head change was needed on the command aircraft and the other needed replacement of the entire tail cone. There was no hope of switching the complex radio system on the command aircraft, so I asked the 7 Squadron technicians present if they thought it possible to substitute the command helicopter’s damaged main rotor head with the good one from the aircraft requiring tail cone change. “What a question, sir. We will have it done sooner than you think.” With no rigging equipment or specialised tools, half a dozen technicians and two pilots descended on both aircraft with standard tools and plenty of energy.
I moved away from the repair party to attend to the removal of parachutes from drum and ammunition pallets lying in open ground so that helicopters could land next to them. This was important because parachutes blown up by rotor-wash could be drawn into spinning rotor blades with disastrous consequences. I was still dealing with this when the repaired command helicopter was flown in right next to me to be refuelled. I was happy to let Norman Walsh know his aircraft was ready for him. Being unable to communicate directly with the Command Dak, I asked Norman to arrange for a set of rotor blades and a tail assembly to be flown in from Lake Alexander. These arrived a little after midday and by 4 o’clock the damaged machine was ready to fly.
Many drums had landed amongst high bushes which necessitated manhandling them into positions where helicopters could land. There was no alternative but to use all available pilots and technicians as well as the RLI protection troops who, to their credit, never hesitated or moaned but got stuck into these onerous tasks. No sooner had they completed the work than I had to impose a lighter but equally onerous task on them. This was to flatten most of the low scrub for improved landing space, concentrate empty drums lying on their sides and position full drums standing up at twenty assigned spots so that crews coming in for fuel could differentiate between full and empty drums.
K-Car pilots and gunners arriving to refuel and re-arm reported that they were having a tough time with high volumes of small arms, anti-aircraft gunfire and more targets than they could handle. Flight Lieutenant Mark McLean, who had taken early retirement from the Air Force, was on call-up for Op Dingo. Sporting a beard he would not have been allowed to wear in regular service, he landed and removed his shattered bone dome. The graze and large swelling above his right eye bore witness to how close he had come to death from a vertical bullet-strike that had torn a section out of his protective helmet.
As with Mark’s aircraft, every other K-Car had taken many small- and large-calibre strikes, but none too serious to keep them from returning to the fray.
Mark had been allocated a satellite target that was believed to be a camp for wounded veterans who had returned from Rhodesia to recuperate in Mozambique. It seemed to Mark that the intelligence on this ‘soft target’ must have been totally incorrect because there were far more anti-aircraft guns there than at any of the other satellite camps. In consequence he had been forced to call on two other K-Cars to help him neutralise the heavy-calibre guns.
During a few quiet moments at the Admin Base it was possible to hear the rumble of Alpha bomb and rocket strikes that Norman was directing against troublesome anti-aircraft guns and other points of resistance.
During his approach to Chimoio, the medium-level cloud he could see over the target area concerned Norman Walsh. Fortunately this did not trouble Squadron Leader Rich Brand as he led his Hunters in for their initial strikes. He fired 30mm cannons at the Chimoio HQ buildings before Vic Wightman’s Golf bombs hit the same target spot on H-hour. Squadron Leader Randy du Rand saw the Golf bombs exploding exactly where he expected them and led the four Canberras over the smoke and dust to deliver 1,200 Alpha bombs exactly as planned to cover an area of 1.1 kilometres in length by half a kilometre in width.
In spite of the shock effect of the opening air strikes, and those still in progress, some anti-aircraft guns took on the six slow-flying Dakotas as they passed in extended line astern at 500 feet, disgorging heavily laden paratroopers. During their short descent to ground, the paratroopers were surprised to see many CTs running towards them with some already passing directly below. Their drop line had been planned to be far enough from the campsites to ensure that all ZANLA within the primary target area would be contained before the paratroopers landed. As it happened, many paratroopers landed amongst fleeing ZANLA who, though armed, seemed to have only one thing in mind; escape!