Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot

by Peter Petter-Bowyer

  I could not get over the fact that Mark Smithdorff always had his map facing north no matter the direction of flight. Like all the other pilots, my map was turned to face in the direction of travel. If Mark tried this he became as confused as I did with the map the right way up when flying on any heading but north. Mark had another peculiarity. When writing on a blackboard, he would stand at its centre writing from left to centre with his left hand before transferring the chalk to his right hand and continuing uninterrupted in identical neat style towards the right-hand edge of the board.

  Cargo slinging, hoisting slope landings on mountain ledges.

  Mountain flying was by far the best part of training. On my first time out, Mark had arranged for us to route via Mare Dam in the Inyanga area to collect young breeder trout that we were to release into pre-selected pools in the Bundi Valley high up in the Chimanimani mountains. Rex Taylor had done this previously with fingerling trout but platanna frogs had devoured all of them. We were trying larger fish. There were about fifteen six-inch trout sealed in plastic bags that were half-filled with water and blown to capacity with oxygen. Each bag was in a cardboard box and about thirty-odd boxes filled the rear cabin. It was necessary to fly the one-hour leg directly to Chimanimani to limit damage that fish could cause each other.

  The beauty within the mountain range astounded me because previously I had only seen the side of this range from Melsetter village. Hopping from one pool to the next we emptied the trout into the cold water and saw them all swim off strongly. These fish survived and more trout were flown in for National Parks over time. By early 1970 all the pools within the Chimanimanis, both within Rhodesia and Mozambique, carried good populations of large trout.

  On completion of basic training, I flew my Final Handling Test with Ozzie Penton who declared me ready for the Ops Conversion phase. My instructor, Mark Smithdorff, was one of nature’s natural pilots who made everything look so simple. When he hovered, the helicopter remained absolutely static no matter how the wind gusted or how high the hover.

  Cargo slinging, hoisting slope landings on mountain ledges, forced landing precisely on any point of my choice – all so smooth and unfussed yet always too good to be repeated with Mark’s precision and ease. I was fortunate to have had such an instructor to prepare me for my final handling test.

  The final test was conducted by Ozzie Penton who had been promoted to Wing Commander as OC Flying Wing at New Sarum. By this time Squadron Leader John Rogers had returned from South Africa.

  Sinoia operation

  Squadron Leader John Rogers (left) takes command of 7 Squadron.

  FOR BECOMING THE RRAF’S FIRST wholly trained helicopter pilot, I was made squadron standby pilot for the next seven days. Because of this I was the one called out following a report of terrorist activity near Sinoia. My flight technician for this trip was Ewett Sorrell. We set off for Sinoia not knowing more than an attempt had been made to blow down pylons on the main Kariba to Salisbury electrical power-line at a point just north of Sinoia town. Sinoia lay some sixty miles northeast of Salisbury on the main road to Zambia via Chirundu. The town served as the commercial hub and rail centre to large farming and mining communities in the region. It was also home to the Provincial Police HQ, which commanded a number of outlying police stations.

  Superintendent John Cannon DFC was very pleased to see us on our arrival in his HQ building and invited us to lunch with his charming wife before getting to the business at hand. I had not met John before although I knew that he had served with distinction as a Lancaster pilot during WWII.

  In his quiet, precise manner, which I came to know quite well over the next couple of days, John gave me a detailed briefing before we flew off to inspect the pylons against which sabotage had been attempted. The inspection revealed a very low standard of training by the ZANU men who had tried to knock out the country’s power supply. They obviously knew nothing about pylon design or how to use explosive charges to shear steel structure. Damage at the points of detonation was so minor that no repair work was necessary. At some points scattered chunks of TNT showed that detonators had been thrust into the end of the Russian-made TNT slabs and not into the purple dots which clearly marking the location of primer pockets. All that ZANU had achieved was to show us that they intended to do harm.

  John’s information was that seven men known as the ‘Armageddon Group’ were one component of a group of twenty-one ZANU men who had entered the country together some ten days earlier from Zambia. This group was responsible for this job. Where the remaining fourteen men were John had no idea but he said they could not be too far away. All the same the Armageddon Group, having shown its hand, was the one we had to locate and destroy.

  During the first afternoon at Sinoia I found that, for all my training, I had not been properly prepared for operations. To fit a helicopter into an opening in the trees with no more that six inches to spare was fine in training, yet here I nearly fell out of the sky when landing full loads of Police Reservists (PR—mostly portly farmers) and their equipment. The enormous reserve of power available from the Alouette’s jet engine, small though it was, was sufficient to destroy the main-rotor gearbox if the calculated maximum collective pitch angle on the rotor blades was applied too long. I exceeded the gearbox limits during a number of landings by yanking on excess collective pitch to check the helicopter’s descent for a soft landing. This necessitated the removal of a magnetic plug on the gearbox casing to check for telltale iron filings. Fortunately nothing was found, so no damage had been done. But it took a number of exciting ‘arrivals’ on terra firma before I got the hang of making full-load landings safely, particularly on sloping ground.

  Having established the right techniques I vowed to myself that, when I was instructing on helicopters, I would prepare future pilots better than I had been prepared myself. This in no way reflects on Mark Smithdorff’s instructional abilities because mine was the first genuine operational deployment for a helicopter.

  Tony Smit proved the difficulty some months later as seen in this crunch-up from his botched ‘slope landing’ in training.

  Once the PR had been taken to their assigned locations I decided to take a look around the search area with Ewett Sorrell who had remained on the ground whilst I deployed the PR. It makes me shudder to think how, having first orbited suspect locations and old roofless buildings, we moved close in hovering to inspect every nook and cranny. Within six years this would have been suicidal and no pilot would have been so foolish as to think of terrorists simply as peasant farmers with guns.

  During the early evening of 27 April, John Cannon received hot intelligence from Police General Headquarters in Salisbury to say that a ‘Police source’ was in contact with the Armageddon Group. This police undercover man, operating within the ZANU organisation, was due to meet up with the group near Sinoia the next day when the gang would be changing into black dress for their first planned attack against a white farmstead. The contact man was delivering some supplies and written instructions from ZANU HQ. He was not expected to be with the gang for more than ten minutes.

  The contact was going to travel by car from Salisbury to Sinoia where he would be met by one of the gang at about 11 o’clock. He had been briefed to proceed along the main road to a point where the old strip road went left off the main road. Along this road he would find a member of the gang who would take him to the gang’s night camp. He understood that the gang would be between the main road and the old strip road. For us this was a gift for both planning and execution of a classical police-styled cordon and search operation.

  It seemed ‘too good to be true’ because the relevant sections of main road and strip road, each about one-and-a-half kilometres’ long, formed an acute triangle with the Hunyani River forming its short base of about half a kilometre. The Hunyani River ran south to north on Sinoia town’s eastern flank and both roads came to the river from the east. The only advantage the terrorist group would have was the heavy bush coveri
ng the entire area within this triangle. But the bush posed a real danger to the Police Reservists wearing their highly visible dark-blue fatigues.

  Great secrecy was required concerning the police source. This contact man was not to be spoken about nor was there to be any indication of his being followed on the journey from Salisbury. I recommended that a helicopter should be employed to tail the contact vehicle all the way from Salisbury. The pilot would be able to do this and witness interception by the man from the Armageddon Group as well as the point at which the contact was taken into the bush. Just as important was the need for the helicopter pilot to let us know when the contact was clear of the target area. I assured John that a helicopter flying at great height would not upset the contact man or the terrorist group because it would appear too high and insignificant to constitute a threat to anyone.

  Agreeing that this was a better option than attempting to follow the contact in another vehicle, John sought and gained PGHQ approval. I contacted Air HQ and arranged for the high-flying helicopter and also asked for three additional helicopters. These were to land at Banket, twelve miles from Sinoia, after the contact vehicle passed that village.

  Hoffy, with Mark Smithdorff, had recently returned to Rhodesia from his Alouette conversion course in South Africa and had just completed a short OCU with Mark Smithdorff. I was told he would be following the contact vehicle.

  Murray Hofmeyer and Mark Smithdorff.

  Both John and I felt that the Army should conduct the operation, as a firefight seemed certain. The Commissioner of Police, Mr Barfoot, would have nothing of it. Notwithstanding the fact that the Armageddon Group was armed with automatic weapons and hand-grenades, he insisted we were dealing with law-breakers requiring armed Policemen and Police Reservists to kill or apprehend them; Army would only be involved if a state of war existed.

  The dawn of 28 April 1966, like most Rhodesian mornings, was cool, bright and clear. Soon a stream of private vehicles started arriving at the Police Sports Club where men changed from civilian clothing into their dark-blue uniforms. These uniforms were intended to give high visibility for riot control but certainly not for bush warfare where the wearer presented an easy target to armed men in hiding.

  Thick black ammunition belts set at various inclinations accentuated the corpulence of some amongst the PR, most being farmers and miners. They looked an unlikely bunch of fighters appearing too relaxed for the purpose of their gathering. In their clumsy uniforms the very wealthy and the poor were indistinguishable, their inbuilt courage hidden, as John Cannon arranged them into seven groups under regular police Officers.

  Nobody but John and I knew what was going on. We alone knew there were to be three groups each along both roadways and one for the river line. Alpha 1, 2 and 3 were nominated and allocated their vehicles, as were Bravo 1, 2 and 3 and Charlie 1. When this was done John Cannon told the expectant gathering that they were about to be involved in a cordon and sweep operation. Alpha would form one stop-line, Bravo the second line and Charlie the third one. Everyone knew there was at least one terrorist group in the area but when John told of the Armageddon seven in such a nearby triangle of ground, the level of excitement rose. His briefing was simple.

  "At the word, ‘Go’, Alpha will move off along the main road dropping off Alpha 3 first, starting from the bridge, then Alpha 2 and finally Alpha 1, ending at the junction with the strip road. Bravo will do a mirror image of Alpha’s deployment along the strip road to its junction with the main road. The officers are to shake out their men for even distribution along the entire length of both roads. Charlie is to proceed to both bridges, half the men to each, then walk in towards each other on the west bank of the river and shake out.

  "When everyone is ready, a sweep is to commence from the east at the road junction. As the sweep line moves westward, the stop lines are to bunch up with every second man joining the sweep line.”

  After the briefing I walked the short distance to my helicopter parked by the HQ building. I checked in with Murray Hofmeyr who was following the police contact’s vehicle, flying his helicopter at 6,000 feet above ground. All seemed to be going to plan when an Army Land Rover pulled up next to my helicopter. Major Billy Conn climbed out and came over to me to ask what was going on. I told him the story, including PGHQ’s refusal to involve the Army.

  Billy was on his way to Kariba and had popped in to see his old friend, John Cannon. He could not resist this opportunity for action and asked John if he and his sergeant could be fitted into the plan. John agreed and put them in with Bravo 2. A good choice as it happened!

  All vehicles were assembled in two lines along a road running past the Police HQ building. I noted that the regular policemen and both Army men were armed with 7.62mm SLR assault rifles whereas the PR men were armed with an amazing mix of self-loading shotguns, .303 Enfield rifles, Sten-guns and the odd sporting rifle. All that was missing from this scene was a film director, huge movie cameras and a glamorous actress. It all seemed surreal but like everyone else around, I was pretty excited.

  I heard Hoffy tell the other three helicopters they were cleared to land at Banket, the contact vehicle having passed there. Gordon Nettleton transmitted an acknowledgement. The time was 10.45 and I told Hoffy we were ready to roll. Only then did he let me know he was armed with an MAG machine-gun just in case there was need for such a weapon.

  It seemed a long wait before Hoffy called; “The contact vehicle has been stopped at the road junction, Stand by." A moment later he said someone had climbed into the vehicle that was now proceeding slowly along the strip road. Next Hoffy said, “The vehicle has stopped and the occupants have gone into the bush on the south side, repeat south side, not north as expected.”

  This turned our planning upside down but I was pleased I had asked for extra helicopters. Having studied my map to consider possible changes to plan, I knew precisely what needed to be done. Hoffy in the meantime was moving very slowly westward still at 6,000 feet watching for the contact man’s departure from the area. I asked him to get the other helicopters airborne for a circuitous route to avoid their sound reaching the gang. Their final approach to Sinoia was to be from the west. Fuel was already set out on the sports field.

  John Cannon accepted my recommendation and quickly prepared his men for a reverse image of the first deployment plan. A power-line ran eastward from the strip-road bridge and crossed a north-to-south cattle fence line next to open farmland. This fence line ran from there to the junction of the main and strip roads. Bravo units would move up the strip road by vehicle, as planned. Using five helicopters, I would arrange for the deployment of Alpha units along the power-line and place Charlie along the farm fence. Charlie would no longer be a static line but would constitute the sweep line for a westerly drive.

  This would have been easy enough if the police radios on the ground were compatible with those in our helicopters, as would have been the case with the Army. We had no means of communicating with any ground unit other than through John Cannon’s radio room. All Alpha and Charlie units were instructed to get over to the sports field and prepare themselves for helicopter deployment. Way up in the sky the tiny dot of Hoffy’s helicopter still moved very slowly westward as men hurried over to the sports ground. As soon as they were positioned, the three helicopters came in across town, landed and commenced refuelling.

  I briefed my new OC Squadron Leader John Rogers, my ‘A’ Flight Commander Gordon Nettleton and Flying Officer Dave Becks on their tasks, I told them that I would take only one load of men and immediately commence a recce of the area. The first loads of six policemen per helicopter were aboard and all pilots were ready to start engines when Hoffy called to say the contact vehicle was clear and heading for Salisbury.

  I led the way and deposited my load by the power-line nearest the river then climbed to orbit the area looking for signs of movement. A grassy vlei running both sides of a rivulet split the search area in two. It ran from the farmland almost to the Hunyani befo
re crossing the strip-road 100 metres short of the bridge. The trees were fairly open along the edge of the vlei itself so I felt confident that I would see anyone attempting to cross from the northern bush area to even thicker bush on the power-line side of the vlei.

  I noted that Bravo was in position along the strip-road and watched the helicopters as they raced back and forth placing down men and returning for more. Hoffy had refuelled and joined the other three helicopters who were all having difficulties finding landing spots along the power-line. Eventually all was in place and the sweep line started moving westwards from the fence. I flew over to see if the stops along the power-line had shaken out correctly but I could not find a soul until, to my horror, I found a disjointed line of men moving northward through the bush towards the vlei. The danger of these men converging on the correct sweep line was obvious so I asked John Cannon’s radio room to instruct all Alpha units to hold their positions.

  Dave Becks had refuelled and came to help me prevent Alpha and Charlie from bumping into each other. For over an hour Dave hovered at treetop level just ahead of the primary sweep line with his technician waving at men and pointing to those they were closing on. He did a great job and no policeman shot at another. Dave’s noisy manoeuvring may have been the main reason the terrorists remained on the north side of the area. My presence over the vlei would also have limited them until I was forced to pop into Sinoia for fuel.