The first demonstration was announced as four Provosts peeled over in line astern diving steeply, each to deliver eight British-made 28-pound fragmentation bombs against the closest target that was about 500 metres away. The loud crrrumping denotations of each cluster of bombs following close upon each other had all the African chiefs and African soldiers diving for cover with loud cries of fear. When the Provosts cleared, they all rose cheering, dusting themselves off, laughing loudly and slapping each other on the back.
For the next two hours ever-noisier attacks had the spectators enthralled, but none more than our black countrymen who, to the end, bubbled and babbled after every noisy airstrike. Following the last bang spectators were moving off for drinks and lunch when four Hunters came in from the rear of the stands flying very low close to supersonic speed. This gave everyone the greatest fright of all and even caused that ‘particular’ photographer to drop his camera. The entire demonstration had proved a resounding success.
Early weapons testing
WHILST PREPARING FOR THE WEAPONS demonstration, I was required to fly a number of tests for Wing Commander Sandy Mutch who was then Staff Officer Operations at Air HQ. Working for him was a private engineering company seeking to improve two locally manufactured weapons and develop a new one. Twenty-eight-pound fragmentation bombs and their equivalent practice units were undergoing tests to prove new impact and airburst fuses. My involvement in this was straightforward because these bombs had been in use for some time.
The use of locally designed and manufactured fragmentation and practice bombs resulted in considerable savings in both cost and foreign currency. The fragmentation bombs were specifically intended for Canberras but could be delivered by any weapon-carrying aircraft. Ninety-six of them could be dropped from a Canberra bomb bay in a rippled release from a locally designed and manufactured carrier device nicknamed the ‘bomb box’. The practice bombs, which fired a small smoke marker charge on impact, were used for training by all the strike aircraft.
The Staff Officer Armaments, Squadron Leader Ken Gibson, and two assistant armourers had brought all the bombs and fuses to Kutanga Range. Use of a dedicated Provost piloted by me and operating out of Kutanga made loading, air releases and on-site inspection quick and simple.
Included for first tests were eight prototype sixteen-gallon napalm bombs that had not previously been used by the RRAF. Napalm was considered an excellent weapon for bush warfare but its use invariably attracted considerable criticism from a number of world bodies. In an attempt to disguise the real purpose of these units, they were referred to as ‘frangible tanks’, giving rise to the abbreviated term, ‘Frantan’. The early Frantans comprised of three sections fashioned from 1.5mm mild steel sheeting. These were a short conical nose, a central cylinder incorporating filler cap and suspension lugs and a tail cone incorporating a fuse pocket. Welded together these formed the 1.8-metre-long Frantan. In early tests Frantans were filled with reject aviation gas and soap flakes that together produced a sticky gel. I was very concerned when I learned that the test units were fitted with modified phosphorus grenades to ignite the gel.
The use of phosphorous igniters was what concerned me more than the fuel gel, though I did not know why at the time. Four sorties were to be flown with two Fantans per sortie delivered singly at low-level onto open ground. All went well with the first three sorties though I was surprised by the high level of radiated heat on the back of my neck.
On the last sortie one of the Frantans refused to separate from the carrier even when high ‘G’ and excessive yawing was applied. There was nothing I could do but land with the ‘hang up’. Having touched down and rolled along the grass runway for some distance the Frantan came away from the carrier, bounced up into the tail plane and ignited. A fiercely hot fireball engulfed the fuselage right up to the cockpit for just a moment but I rolled to the dispersal area none the worse for the experience. Apart from mild scorching of my neck, similar to sunburn, and blistered paint on the aircraft’s rear fuselage, fin and tail plane no real harm had been done. Had the Frantan dislodged at slower speed the outcome might have been serious.
A close inspection of components revealed that the suspension lug, upon which the Frantan hung on the carrier hook, had been the cause of the hang-up. This was rectified and I flew many further Frantan tests after locally designed ‘multi-directional inertia pistols’ had been fitted to fire the flash-powder charge that assisted in bursting the tank to free and ignited gel.
During these trials I got to know Wing Commander Sandy Mutch better than before. Though still bulldoggish in manner, he listened to my opinions about our air weapons in general and grudgingly agreed that most were totally unsuited to the type of conflict we seemed headed for; counter-insurgency warfare. I committed these same opinions to writing and, through Group Captain Whyte, the paper was submitted to Air HQ.
The result was that the CO received a reply asking, “What does that puppy PB know about weapons effectiveness? Had he seen how 60-pound rockets destroyed German trains and how 1,000-pound bombs blew buildings to smithereens, he might be wiser." I knew very well that our weapons were effective in conventional warfare but nobody seemed interested in considering anything beyond the small fragmentation bombs and Frantans I had been testing for bush warfare. Twelve long years were to pass before I was taken seriously and, eventually, given authority to develop locally manufactured weapons that better suited our needs.
Deaths of Bruce McKerron and Henry Elliot
ON THE AFTERNOON OF 22 June 1964 I was returning to Thornhill from Salisbury cruising at 15,000 feet. Strictly speaking the Provost was not permitted to operate above 10,000 feet because the unpressurised cockpit was not equipped with oxygen. However, out of curiosity, I was establishing the aircraft’s performance at that level. I suffered no ill effects and watched my nails continuously to make sure there was no bluing of the cuticles, an early sign of oxygen deficiency.
When I switched radio channel from Salisbury Approach Control to Thornhill, I was asked to divert to the Jet Flying Training Area. A mayday call had been received from Bruce McKerron who was flying an FB9 but nothing had been heard from him since. I made a long, full-powered descent directly towards a major feature named Umgulugulu where I intended to commence my search. Along the way I called Bruce repeatedly whilst scanning for any sign of smoke.
There was no reply and I saw no smoke. Over the massive granite dome of Umgulugulu, I looked down on the white painted numbers made by successive Pilot Training Courses. The smallest simply read ‘14 PTC’ and each PTC number was larger than the preceding one. 18 PTC was the largest and whitest having recently been put there above the others.
I looked at 15 PTC, which was McKerron’s course, and for some unaccountable reason sensed from it that Bruce was dead. It took me a while to spot the thinnest wisp of white smoke rising way back along the route I had just come. With nothing else to work on I flew to this point where a small fire was burning along a thin line of grass half way up the slope of a granite outcrop.