by Al Venter
This work wasn’t without its share of experiences, not all of them pleasant. Captain John Wesley and I once had to fly an Impala 1,000 miles from the Cape to Atlas Aviation in Kempton Park. There we picked up another Impala, which had just been serviced, and headed back south. We’d re-fuelled at Bloemfontein, and then suddenly found ourselves caught in a massive storm between Kimberley and Upington, which lies on the Orange River.
We were flying at about 37 000ft and we picked up comms from a nearby Learjet at 45,000ft, which reported that it was only just above the weather. Meanwhile, we were getting thrown around at altitude as if we’d landed in a maelstrom: we ended up with bank angles of up to 60 degrees and severe up and down nose pitching. At one stage, I felt a kind of twitching in my ears, almost as if they were being flicked. It was a peculiar sensation and I thought: ‘What the fuck is this instructor playing at?’ It was as if I was back at school and the science master was flicking my ears with a wax taper when my concentration started to lag. For a few moments I thought he was flicking my ears from the rear seat. Then I thought again. I was wearing a flying helmet so of course he couldn’t flick me. Eventually, I realized that the sensation was from static sparks coming through the radio system, my first experience of St Elmo’s fire. The hues—muted greens and yellows—and the radiance coming off the nose of the aircraft all added to it. It was really quite eerie.
We got out of the storm eventually and after we’d landed at Langebaan, we noticed that our vertical stabiliser had a two centimetre hole burned right into it. There was also something that looked like blobs of solder scattered all over the wingtip tanks where the static charges had been breaking away. Hail had destroyed some of our navigation lights, and there were dents on the wings from these projectiles which, considering our flying speed, must have hit with considerable impact. There were even dents on our nose cone.
The stress limit for an Impala is 7.5Gs (or seven-and-a-half times the force of gravity), but we’d apparently hit almost double that. The plane wasn’t flyable thereafter so they trucked it back to Atlas and basically pulled the aircraft apart for a completely new overhaul. Captain John Wesley, who taught me many of my flying skills in those early days wasn’t all that phased by the experience. A real gentleman aviator, he left the air force soon afterwards, enrolled at university and qualified as an aeronautical engineer.
Still a second lieutenant, Neall Ellis was next posted to Bloemfontein with orders to join 8 Squadron, which flew Harvard T-6s, a World War II vintage prop-driven trainer. With the Border War in the north-west gathering a sudden momentum of its own, Air Force Headquarters in Pretoria needed pilots to be trained for conversion to Impala jets, which could be used in cross-border support strikes into Angola.
The T-6 could be a tricky plane to land. However, when I arrived at my new posting, the first Impala jets had been delivered and I was spared the Harvard conversion. So I just continued flying jets.
Life at 8 Squadron under Major Hans Conradie, our officer commanding, was good. Although keen for ‘Border Ops’—as the counter-insurgency conflict was referred to—only helicopter pilots were then being sent north on Alouette 111s and I didn’t rate. Instead, I trained with a bunch of Citizen Force (CF) pilots, among them a major who’d served in the Korean War.
The unit had a unique set of Standing Orders, one of the most important being that every Thursday night everybody had to be in the pub. Even if you drank only coke, no excuses were accepted. In a peculiar way, that and other quirks under good leadership made for great camaraderie in the squadron. However, with a serious war threatening from Black Africa to the north, the good times couldn’t last.
In 1974, the youthful Neall Ellis was posted back to the Cape and Langebaan Road for an operational training course. Almost overnight, he was introduced to air combat manoeuvring, rocket-fire in combat, aerial bombing, air-to-ground attacks and so on. Because of the war, a new dimension had been created for the air force, which had been considered a ‘peacetime air force’, and the training reflected that.
At heart though, young Ellis was still a schoolboy. During a return visit to the Saldanha Military Academy, he was challenged to climb the ship’s mast on the parade square and place a beer can on the top.
Of course, after I had done the dreaded deed we had a crowd of military police on our tail and we ducked out towards the rear of the establishment. The bottom line is that I drove off, had an accident, and while trying to get my gear out of the car, the police arrived and, as it is phrased in the lingo, I ‘thumped a cop’ for being impertinent.
Not unsurprisingly, Lieutenant Ellis was arrested and, after blood tests to establish his alcohol level, he was taken to the Wynberg Military Hospital in Cape Town to be treated for torn ligaments in his leg which came with the altercation. ‘They put me in an empty ward and then just forgot about me. Next morning I had to hobble out and search for food and some attention.’ Nothing came of the fisticuffs, though. Taken off the course as medically unfit, he went back to Bloemfontein for a couple of months to recuperate, and then went on to finish the course.
There were four of us doing this advanced training, which included a pilot attack instructor’s course, or PAI, as well as operational training. We’d been advised earlier that we had one weekend off a month and for that we’d be given a pair of aircraft. This allowed us to head out Fridays after lunch and report back for duty the following Monday.
But then, towards at the end of the course, they cut the availability of planes to a single machine and, being the junior, the major said that I had to stay in the base. At which point, I suggested that he strongly resembled a part of the female anatomy. That, in brief, terminated my stint in what we had started to refer to as the ‘Junior Space Club’ and instead of heading on to the next phase, where ‘suitable’ pilots would fly sophisticated French-built Mirage supersonic fighters, I was ‘relegated’ to helicopters.
The year was 1975 and Angola was in a state of protracted civil war. Cuban troops had entered Angola in their thousands and Moscow was pushing offensive weapons into the region as if there was no tomorrow. Clearly, I had done myself an enormous favour.
The operational conversion course on helicopters, to which Nellis was assigned, took place at Ysterplaat in Cape Town. The air base had strong World War II link, as many British and Commonwealth airmen had their basic training there. Quite a few of them went on to make names for themselves in the great upheaval then taking place at the far end of the African continent.
The men who were in charge when the still-obstreperous Nellis arrived were among the best aviators in Africa, and included men such as Captain John Church, who ultimately retired from the SAAF with the rank of general. Bloemfontein followed Ysterplaat, where this by-now reasonably experienced helicopter pilot was attached to B Flight, 16 Squadron.
Time spent operating out of the Free State air base involved intensive flight training in the mountains, which meant lengthy spells in the Drakensberg Mountains and advanced training in navigation (of the type that pilots would eventually put into use when they were deployed with their Alouettes in the semi-arid regions of northern South-West Africa), gunnery skills, trooping drills and a lot else besides.
With trooping drills, SAAF choppers followed some of the principles already in operational use in Rhodesia, where that guerrilla war was escalating far too quickly for Ian Smith’s government to be able to adequately cope with it, which was one of the reasons SAAF pilots were sent to help out government forces fighting ‘terrorists’.
South African Alouette helicopters would usually board four soldiers at a time, five at a pinch, which was just beyond the specified weight limitations of the machine as detailed by Aérospatiale, its French manufacturers. Basically, the ‘Enplaning Drill’ for an operation—colloquially termed ‘Fire Force’—was simple. The troops would approach the chopper in echelon from the pilot’s one o’clock position, the ‘stick leader’ having raised his right arm to show that his group was ready to bo
ard and having had a ‘thumbs up’ from the pilot. To avoid confusion, the ‘stick leader’ would be the last to board and in the Rhodesian Air Force he would sit facing towards the rear and the rest of his squad, with the MAG gunner to his right. In that war, the troops always had loaded magazines in their weapons and, more often than not, one up the spout. Any additional packs carried by the soldiers would be held in their laps during flight.
In the early days of the war airlifted troops were allowed to retaliate to ground fire while still aloft, but that was soon stopped to prevent their FNFAL spent cartridges ejecting upwards into the chopper’s rotor blades. The MAG, in contrast, ejected downwards, or, in later modifications, the brass was captured in leather pouches attached to the gun.
Neall Ellis was sent to Rhodesia for his first operational bush tour in the winter of 1975. Normally, he would first have spent time in South Africa’s then escalating Border War, adjacent to Angola—usually two months at a stretch—but conditions in Rhodesia’s guerrilla war had deteriorated alarmingly and he was needed as a stop-gap. Seconded to 7 Squadron Rhodesian Air Force, Nellis and his group went into the neighbouring territory as part of what was termed ‘clandestine assistance’.
Prior to departure, the entire flying group was taken to Defence Headquarters in Pretoria and briefed. They were told they could take no South African identification, money or any other documentation which might disclose their origins if they were shot down. Everything had to be left behind, even their uniforms. Instead, each man was issued with Rhodesian money and told to be at Swartkops air force base in civilian clothes at four o’clock the following morning. There, they were loaded into an unmarked DC-3, flown to the Rhodesian base at New Sarum, again briefed, this time by a Rhodesian officer, given Rhodesian uniforms and identity cards and ordered not to speak Afrikaans. ‘But nobody told the poor Afrikaans guys in our group, almost all of whom spoke in broad and unmistakable South African accents … it was actually a bit of a farce’, Nellis recalls.
Within days, the South African newcomers had relocated into rugged bush country to the north of Salisbury and been told to get on with the war. Neall Ellis was put at the controls of a G-car, which was a trooper. The trooper, unlike the gunship, was armed only with a light machine gun and was used to ferry troops into position. It was in this G-car that Neall experienced his first hostile action against what he soon came to accept was a tough and resilient enemy.
Although described today as a low-key struggle, the Rhodesian War could be extremely hairy at times, especially if the enemy was about, which was often enough. Throughout, it was not nearly as intense or as widespread as similar wars then taking place in South-East Asia. Altogether, about 1,500 members of the security forces died during the course of Rhodesian hostilities. Of the 25,000 people of African origin who were killed, roughly two-thirds were insurgents. The rest were civilians, mostly tribal people, caught in the crossfire of a conflict that many of them did not even begin to comprehend.
Air support—so crucial and so often decisive—was provided by the eight squadrons of the Rhodesian Air Force. There were sufficient Hunter ground-attack fighters, Canberra light bombers and Vampire fighter bombers armed with cannon, rockets and locally manufactured blast, shrapnel and napalm bombs to devastate external camps and other targets. To this tally the RhAF defied international arms sanctions imposed by the United Nations (UN) and added light aircraft for liaison, reconnaissance and light attack. Most important, though, was a small squadron of French Alouette helicopters. With time, more would be acquired, including some from Spain, and others loaned to the Salisbury government by South Africa.
The 1978 clandestine acquisition of elderly Agusta-Bell 205s from Israel gave the helicopter forces greater range and load-carrying capability and was to play a vital role in enabling the security forces to cut off and surround guerrilla units on larger bush operations.
In a report on the war, appropriately titled Rhodesia: Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat1, U.S. Marine Corps Majors Charles M. Lohman and Robert I. MacPherson provided an insight into the country’s aviation assets. The Rhodesian Air Force, they said, was able to call on 25 ground-attack aircraft (nine Hawker Hunter FGA9s, a dozen antiquated but still-effective Vampires and four OV-10 Broncos) as well as 11 T-55s. There were also 19 trainer reconnaissance aircraft (nine BAC Provosts and 18 Cessna-337s) and 30 counter-insurgency/reconnaissance planes (12 Al-60s and 18 Cessna-337s). Transports included a single Be-55 Baron, six BN-2 Islanders and ten DC-3 (C-47s).
Top of the list were the 77 helicopters fielded by the Rhodesian Air Force. These comprised 66 Sud-Aviation SA 316/-318 Alouettes as well as the Bell 205s bought from Israel. Lohman and MacPherson tell us that the air service was composed of approximately 1,300 personnel, which, considering the paucity of numbers and the extent of the war was remarkable. The two officers reported:
Pilot training was unique by American standards, but it followed British traditions. The pilots and crewmembers were trained to become individually proficient in the maintenance of particular parts of the aircraft. If the aircraft experienced a malfunction, the entire crew was able to perform fairly sophisticated levels of maintenance. This system included the incorporation of maintenance technicians as members of helicopter and transport carrier crews.
In 1978 the serviceability of the Rhodesian Air Force was 85 per cent. This is exceptional when 60 per cent is generally considered as ‘good’ throughout the West. This is a greater accomplishment considering the international sanctions levelled against Rhodesia in 1965 and 1970. The majority of its military re-supply was built upon a system of improvisation and invention.
Seminal to the Rhodesian war effort was the Alouette 111, which followed the Mark 11, an early-era combat helicopter that in 1958 set a new world record for rotary craft at more than 36,000ft. The frail look of these choppers was deceptive. Armed with single- or twin-barrelled heavy machine guns poking out the open port door, they could give much more than they got. However, the Alouette did have a chink in its armour, and that was speed. It could maintain a maximum of only 105 knots at sea level and cruise at about 85 knots fully loaded with troops or, in the case of a gunship, loaded to the gunwales with 20mm ammo.
Because of the country’s Central African altitude, Rhodesian Alouettes flew at between 65 and 84 knots, with a range of 210 nautical miles. That meant that on distant operations—into Mozambique or the south-eastern or south-western districts of the country—refuelling was vital.
The mainstay of the helicopter Fire Force attack team was what was referred to as the ‘K-Car’ (Alouette gunship), armed with a 20mm cannon and manned by three crew members. With 600lbs of fuel, it had an endurance of between 75 and 90 minutes. In contrast, the trooper, or ‘G-Car’, with only 400lbs of fuel and a crew of two packing a 7.72mm MAG machine gun, was able to uplift a ‘stick’ of four fully equipped troops. The men were usually dropped straight into a contact, the chopper itself often taking hits from the ensuing firefight.
There was no question that the Alouette 111s were always regarded as excellent combat machines for this kind of low-key counter-insurgency war. Both burnt jet fuel, but in emergencies could operate on diesel or gasoline and paraffin for short bursts. They were also able to absorb astonishing amounts of punishment.
Almost overnight, Neall Ellis found himself in an African environment that was like nothing he had experienced before. Although he had grown up in Rhodesia, the region in which the war was being fought was very different from the Bulawayo area, or even the nearby Matopos Hills.
North-eastern Rhodesia, then and now, was a world of undulating bush and huge granite outcrops, some as tall as skyscrapers. The countryside provided the kind of ground cover that tended to favour insurgents rather than helicopters. Also, it was a war that came in brief, intense spurts and firefights that did not always leave bodies behind
Most of our actions came from sitting perhaps 50ft above ground and looking for targets that were elusive and deadly. The AK
-47 was obviously no match for our 20mm cannon, but there were sometimes an awful lot of Kalashnikovs, along with the occasional blast from an RPG-2 or, in later phases, the more ubiquitous RPG-7.
I don’t like to use the phrase ‘adrenaline rush’—I think it’s overused and more than a little facile—but there is no other way to explain the sensation felt when you’re in somebody’s sights and there is green tracer all around you. More to the point, nobody had ever used either me or my machine for target practice before. In short, I’d never come under fire before.
It didn’t take us long to get into the war: only hours, in fact. We’d gone out, following an urgent call from a Rhodesian African Rifles fire force, a mainly black unit with white officers, better known as the RAR.
Once over the combat area, with the gunner and three or four troops in the back, I couldn’t have been more than 10 metres off the ground when there was a sudden rattling in the cockpit, like three or four people banging away at typewriters. I turned my head around towards the engineer—which is actually quite difficult when you’re wearing a flying helmet—to ask him what the hell that noise was. However, the spectre that greeted me was one of sheer terror. All those sitting behind me had their bodies pressed up hard against rear bulkhead as tracer fire came through the door. Tracer fire was whizzing through, right between them and the two soldiers in front with me.
Their eyes weren’t exactly the size of saucers, but I got the message. Volleys of rounds continued coming at us from the bush below. What was astonishing was that the first salvo—probably an entire ammo clip—didn’t hit any one of us. Talk about luck! For me, the experience was sudden, unexpected and, frankly, terrifying. But then when you’re at the controls, flying low with a chopperload of people on board and other gunships in the air in the immediate vicinity, you cannot allow yourself to become distracted.