The first thing he demonstrated to me seemed crazy. In the hover at about shoulder height he applied full rudder. The helicopter tail swung around with increasing speed and the nose pitched progressively downward until it seemed the main rotor blades were about to strike the spinning ground. At this point full opposite rudder was applied to stop the rotation, which caused the aircraft to shoot off into forward flight as if catapulted. It was nice to know this was possible but, not seeing any operational value in the manoeuvre, I never tried it myself.
Next, Roland asked me to hover. I was settled when, without warning, he slammed the fuel-flow cock closed. This was my first-ever powerless landing that worked out well enough, although touchdown was a bit heavy. Only then did Roland realise that I had no prior ‘engine-off’ experience, so he repeated the exercise twice. Next on his programme were three engine-off autorotations from height, which I enjoyed. This is when he told me that, when instructing a student, I should always cut power when the student least expected it to happen.
He insisted that it was absolutely essential for an instructor to be quite certain that his students would automatically check the yaw that occurs with power loss and instinctively ‘dump’ the collective pitch lever to ensure minimal loss of rotor speed. Hesitation would be fatal. He then demonstrated and made me practise hair-raising, power-off, forced landings from the hover at 500 feet. When hovering below this height recovery from an engine failure was impossible.
At the moment the engine cut, it was necessary to dump collective and pitch the aircraft into a vertical dive. The helicopter accelerated rapidly in its hair-raising descent but this kept the rotor blades spinning at a safe speed. The nose was then pitched up quite rapidly with the ground rushing up as the rotor blades spun up to maximum rpm, providing plenty of rotor speed to reduce the descent rate to zero for a gentle roll-on landing. As with the power-off practices from forward flight, use of the collective pitch control, other than to prevent the rotors from over-speeding, had to be left to the last moment to utilise the kinetic energy within the spinning rotor blades to make a controlled touch down. Good judgement was paramount.
Roland made it known to Air HQ just how important it was for pilots to experience and handle unexpected power failure. This was accepted and 7 Squadron instructors were cleared to cut power in flight. However, Air HQ ruled that this was only to be done at base where the resultant forced landing would be onto a runway. This ruling completely defeated Roland Coffegnot’s insistence that pilot reaction could only be adequately tested if engine failure was induced when a pilot least expected it. When flying anywhere near the main runway with an instructor, pilots were always wide awake and expecting fuel flow to be cut.
Operation Griffin
IN MID 1968 BERYL AND I went on long-overdue leave. During our absence ZAPU made its third attempt to establish the safe route through Rhodesia that they so dearly wanted to create for their SAANC mates. The employment of large forces during Operations Nickel and Cauldron had failed dismally, but ZAPU’s James Chikerema and SAANC’s Oliver Tambodid not seem to grasp the reasons for these failures with high losses. This time they used a small group of twenty-nine menwho crossed the Zambezi River on the night of 15 July.
Their crossing point between Chirundu and the Kariba Gorge aimed for a shorter route to the African populated areas of Vuti Purchase Land and Nyaodza Tribal Trust Land where they intended to establish firm bases. However, unbeknown to them, they had an SB plant in their midst. Glenn MaCaskill had launched his agent into Zambia in April 1968 and was surprised by his early return as a ‘trained terrorist’. The agent had slipped away as soon as it got dark and made a beeline for the Police base at Chirundu to report the incursion.
The group’s spoor was located at 08:30 on 16 July by trackers and Border Control troops. RLI troops were brought to immediate standby at Kariba and four helicopters with two Provosts bolstered FAF 2’s regular contingent. Terrorist tracks were followed westwards to the opening of the Kariba Gorge then southward up the steep escarpment line before entering a level, south-flowing valley with moderately high hills bounding its flanks.
Ahead of the tracker group, Second Lieutenant Jerry Strong’s callsign was established in an ambush for the night of 17-18 July. At 07:00 on 18th he broke ambush to conduct a cross-graining search. He came upon the terrorists’ tracks and asked his OC, Major Rob Southey, for two additional sticks (then five men) including a tracker to be flown to him.
A narrow river running from the eastern high ground with very steep slopes was the place the terrorists had moved from the main valley to rest and shelter in amongst large boulders that packed the twisting ravine. Jerry’s callsign moved along the north bank of the river line with a supporting callsign paralleling on the south bank. Two terrorist backpacks were then located giving warning that the terrorists were very close by. Twenty metres farther on lead scout Lance-Corporal Lahee on the north bank came under fire from about ten terrorists. This forced him and the whole of Jerry’s callsign to retire a short distance and regroup in cover.
Jerry and Lahee then moved to higher ground and crawled forward onto a ledge to overlook the cave from which terrorist fire had come. They lobbed in all of their hand grenades, fired one 32Z rifle-grenade each and emptied their rifle magazines before they became pinned down from a different terrorist position. They could not withdraw.
Overhead, Norman Walsh and his gunner ‘TJ’ van den Berg stood by to give covering fire from their MAG but, because he was pinned down, Jerry found it impossible to give proper direction. The callsign on the south bank then made contact killing one terrorist but sustained one wounded casualty before becoming pinned down also. Reinforcements arrived on Jerry’s side of the river allowing him to draw back under their covering fire. At this point Major Southey arrived and, together with Jerry, he moved callsigns downriver before crossing over to move up the south bank with the aim of relievingthe pinned-down troops who were taking casualties every time they moved. This failed and the rescuers themselves became pinned down by heavy accurate fire from well-sited terrorist positions.
Up to this point the terrorist group was thought to be ZANU because ZANU had not shown up for a long time and the crossing into Rhodesia had been conducted in typical ZANU fashion. Besides, SB had not disclosed anything to ensure their agent and their methods remained secret. But now the aggressive resistance, good tactical siting and controlled accurate fire, made it obvious to the troops that they were in contact with ZAPU.
While refuelling, Norman Walsh discovered that his helicopter had sustained two 7.62mm strikes to fuselage and tail rotor and Peter Nicholls’ had taken a single strike through the rear fuselage and fuel tank which, by design, had self-sealed. This was the first time aircraft had sustained hits, but at no stage had the aircrew seen a single terrorist.
Unable to give direction for helicopter supporting fire and realising that terrorists under boulders would be immune to vertical gunfire anyway, Jerry suggested to his OC that Provosts with Frantans might provide a solution. Time had flown by and it was already 15:00 with only two and a half hours of daylight remaining.
Tony Smit and Ken Law few in from nearby FAF 2 with two Frantans each. With the troops so close to the terrorists, it was essential to drop the first Frantans short of their target. Release of each Frantan had to be made in a steep dive whilst turning hard starboard to avoid the southern face of the mountain. After release, still turning steeply, high ‘G’ and full power had to be applied to recover from the dive where the river exited into the open valley.