Gunship Ace

by Al Venter

  The final body count for that day was 116 SWAPO dead and two captured. Of particular satisfaction was the fact that we were able to capture quite a few enemy heavy weapons and a huge amount of ammunition. Our forces suffered no casualties, not a single man wounded. I made the point in the subsequent debrief that had we been able to get our men on the ground sooner, the real tally would have been closer to 400 of the enemy killed.

  There was an incredible amount of chopper activity as the war dragged on. In fact, because the SAAF Mirages and Buccaneers were no match for the modern Soviet fighter aircraft that had been phased into the conflict by the Soviets, it was left to the Pumas and Alouettes to do much of the donkey work, sometimes at night. Without these helicopters, this guerrilla struggle would have taken a very different turn. Nellis comments:

  Operating out of Ongongo in Western Ovamboland, there would usually be a pair of gunships deployed to a forward base and on standby for a Koevoet1call-out. Sometimes there would be certain areas partitioned off as ‘no-go areas’, such as the training area during Operation Silver, a Chief of Staff Intelligence effort to develop and train Dr Jonas Savimbi’s Special Forces. However, as in any struggle, nothing on the ground remained static for long.

  At one stage, intelligence came through of suspected insurgent movement in an area where nothing was supposed to be happening. I was flying back to base and spotted a group of more than a dozen people, obviously troops because they were armed and walking military-style, in single file. I radioed back to base, but they knew nothing of any deployment of either UNITA or other friendly forces in that area, so I checked again with headquarters: still nothing. I had no option but to go in on the attack. The men on the ground started running for cover but it was too late. They ended up taking a lot of casualties. I killed eight and wounded six, all seriously. It turned out that they were all UNITA troops. It was a catastrophe and a terrible price to pay for some desk jockey’s laxity back at base.

  Another time, working in South Angola with my wingman Bakkies Smit and gunner/engineer Lange Pretorius, we were called out after 32 Battalion had been involved in a serious firefight in the vicinity of Xangongo, one of the biggest towns on the Kunene River and a provincial capital during Portuguese colonial times.

  It was already late afternoon and we were told to provide close air support but, as usual, being 32, they didn’t give us the whole story. Had they done so the air force almost certainly wouldn’t have allowed us to participate in an action that was heavily weighted against us. Not long after we arrived over the grid reference, we suddenly found ourselves circling a large enemy camp and picking up intense ground fire that included RPGs, 12.7s, 14.5s and AKs all at the same time. It was withering, intimidating and more than a little frightening. Of course, we retaliated but our machines were taking quite a few hits.

  I’d just entered our second orbit when there was an immense blast right alongside the helicopter. Bakkies came through on the radio and said we were on fire. Looking at our shadow on the ground, with the sun directly overhead in a brilliant clear sky, there was no mistaking the huge plume of smoke emerging from our Alouette.

  In those days I used to fly with no socks. It was desert boots (veldskoene in South African parlance) only. We had all been taught during training that if there was a fire on board, it would come through the hold at the base of the bulkhead behind us. However, I couldn’t help sensing an imaginary heat around my ankles and was suddenly quite alarmed: we had flames below us. It didn’t make sense, but then few things do when that sort of thing happens. So I wasted little time in auto-rotating down, which was when I saw a veritable army of black enemy troops careering across the countryside in our direction. They thought they had shot us down and were heading our way to claim their prize.

  It was a macabre situation and I, along with the rest of the crew, wanted out of there. Therefore, I wound up the chopper once more and limped cross country for another 10 or 12 clicks, engine revs oscillating furiously, which was when I had to go into full auto-rotation. Our rotor cable had been nicked somewhere along the way and it snapped. We were pretty low by then and went into a couple of revolutions before hitting the ground.

  It was pure luck that one of my standard operating procedures was always to call for fuel as soon as I was heading out: I had done that earlier because I knew we wouldn’t have had enough get us back home again, all the way from Xangongo. Consequently, there was a pair of Pumas nearby with our drums and they took us on board. I was fine, but Lange had a hurt back, nothing serious though. The Alouette was recovered that evening, slung unceremoniously under a Puma all the way back to Ongongo. They techs counted 54 holes in my machine. The real damage had been caused by an RPG-7 grenade that exploded alongside the engine, cutting the oil line, causing it to spray onto the red-hot engine exhaust—hence the smoke and our belief that we were on fire.

  I was ordered back to headquarters at Ondangua and, because it had been a pretty nasty experience, they wanted to evacuate me back to Pretoria. The base doctor maintained that I was in a state of ‘traumatic shock’, which was bullshit so I refused. Finally, I managed to convince the ops guys that I was ‘all systems go’ and that if the camp near Xangongo needed to be taken out, I’d personally lead the force in there to do the dirty deed. The other only notable event to emerge from that little scrape was that I never again flew without socks!

  We had more fun and games during Operation Protea which launched in August 1981. I was on an operational conversion course in South Africa when an Alouette got shot down. I was immediately ordered back to Bloemfontein, from where I would leave for the operational area the next morning.

  By the time I reached Ondangua again, most of the fireworks were over and the Angolan Army was in retreat, heading north and away from the South African threat. However, there were still lots of pockets of resistance about, especially around Xangongo again, where the main spans of the bridge across the Kunene had been dropped into the river.

  On that sortie, I was flying on the far side of the river, towards Cahama, where I was able to destroy my first enemy tank. It wasn’t one of the Soviet T-54/55s or T-62s, which were regarded as fairly sophisticated in those days, but was actually a German WWII-era T-34. I could see that it was armed with an 85mm gun and that it had company. There were a lot more Angolan tanks in the vicinity, all of which had taken up ambush positions. They were probably waiting either for a South African or a UNITA convoy to pass or for all our aircraft go home for the night so that they could escape northwards with their comrades.

  We’d actually only spotted the T-34 after it had started to move, and I made my decision. I had to add a Soviet tank to my list of ‘conquests’. Normally, the 20mm ammunition that we carried for our cannon was all high explosive, but I knew those charges would never penetrate the tank’s armour, which was more than two inches thick in places, so I concocted something else. I’d always made a point, when working in remote areas, of taking on board a dozen or so rounds of ball ammo. Therefore, I instructed our flight engineer to remove all the HE rounds and use those hard points instead. I then told him to aim at the rear of the tank, where we could see black exhaust fumes and he fired the lot into the engine grill, disabling it.

  At the end of it, Operation Protea was like many other strategic raids launched by the South African military into Angola during the 24-year war. As usual, the enemy suffered huge losses, substantial quantities of war booty were captured (and handed over to UNITA to use in their own efforts to gain ground against the Luanda regime), and the SADF—usually at the behest of angry American and UN protests—pulled back behind its own frontiers. Having achieved a bit of breathing space, Pretoria immediately started planning for the next season’s war against SWAPO and its Angolan allies.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KOEVOET, NIGHT OPS AND A LIFE-CHANGING STAFF COURSE

  Gunship … Gunship … This is Zulu Sierra.’ The call was urgent and authoritative.

  Reply was immediate: ‘Zulu Sie
rra go’.

  ‘This is Zulu Sierra. We have spoor approximately 15 minutes old. Number in group … five.’

  ‘Roger Zulu Sierra … We should be overhead in five minutes. Stand by to throw white phos.’

  ‘This is Zulu Sierra. Standing by.’

  ‘OK Zulu Sierra, you’re visual … throw phosphorus now!’

  ‘Confirmed’, came the reply ‘white phos on the ground.’

  ‘Roger Zulu Sierra … I have your white phos visual. We’re approximately two minutes out … you should be hearing our rotors any moment.’ ‘Gotcha gunship … let’s do it!’

  ‘Gotcha gunship … let’s do it!’

  The white phosphorous grenade exploded on the ground and the mission leader in the Alouette altered his heading to fly directly towards the cloud of white smoke rising above the trees. It marked the call sign’s position. The scenario was typical of a call-out for chopper support from one of the most successful fighting forces used in the insurgent war along the Angolan border.

  In South-West Africa, the Police Counter Insurgency1unit was called Koevoet, the Afrikaans word for crowbar. Loosely defined, a crowbar is a straight metal rod or bar of steel with one end flattened like a crow’s foot which is used as a lever. Koevoet’s declared role was to prise out insurgents sheltering among the local population.

  Insurgents active in South-West Africa feared them as did FAPLA, especially whenever Koevoet units in their Casspir infantry fighting vehicles crossed the border to do battle with government forces. As a police unit, Koevoet was not supposed operate beyond the frontiers of the home state, but they did so, often.

  In its everyday duties—either in the Operational Area or in the later stages of South Africa’s domestic insurrection before Nelson Mandela was released from prison—Koevoet had acquired a reputation as an efficient, no-nonsense unit with a remarkable élan that usually only became evident when circumstances became tough.

  The unit’s role in the bush war—in contrast to its urban control in South Africa—was exemplary, largely because of its astonishing strike rate. Koevoet notched up more confirmed kills than any other unit, the South African Army included, for the duration of this two-decade conflict.

  Comparatively small compared to other fighting groups, Koevoet operated largely as a Pseudo Unit. Apart from its white officers and NCOs, it was composed almost entirely of former guerrilla insurgents who, having been captured, usually in battle, were ‘turned’ to fight for their former enemies. Similar ploys were used by the British in Kenya against the Mau Mau and, before that, in the Malaysian Emergency of the 1950s and 1960s against what were referred to in news reports as ‘Communist Terrorists’ or, colloquially, CTs.

  The unit had several additional strengths, including remarkable tracking skills. Their staying power in the field was regarded by those who spent time with them as phenomenal: kills were sometimes made days after the first set of tracks had been spotted in the dry, arid country adjoining Angola. This was not an unusual feature in time of war, but Koevoet’s adversaries were young, strong, fit and able to keep on the move, usually at the double, sometimes for days at a stretch. However, Koevoet regulars proved equally resilient and more often than not were able to stay on their tracks, also on foot and also at the double.

  Also, the Koevoet’s officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned ranks, had the ability to ‘talk’ approaching Alouette gunships into the fray moments before a full-blown contact became imminent. In Nellis’ view, this was helicopter warfare at its most effective and, as he likes to point out, the tactics employed are likely to be studied by protagonists of this form of counter-insurgency warfare for a long time to come. Certainly, the systems employed have an application today in some of the small wars with which the international community remains saddled in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

  As a thoroughly integrated black and white unit, with Africans in the majority, the combat unit in the field had few of the customary military trappings that one usually expected to find. During time spent with the Koevoet, both in Ovamboland and in the adjoining Kaokoveld region, where conditions on the ground were even more unforgiving, this author was regarded as little more than one of the gang. Scribblers embedded with military units usually enjoy certain perks, but not with this crowd. My food was the same as that of the rest of the team and so was my strap-up seat in the Casspir. My bedroll was also solely my responsibility.

  The unit was formed in 1979, initially with a preponderance of white security policemen and black special constables. Its objective, when the call came, was to react quickly by vehicle to any intelligence that might have come in about SWAPO cadres operating in their deployment area. As the potential of the unit became more apparent, Koevoet was expanded to become a sizeable force with the acquisition of a number of ‘tame insurgents’, all the while maintaining its quick reaction capability.

  Each call sign was manned by a mixture of policemen, consisting of a white team leader, white section leaders and approximately 40 black policemen. Most of the leadership group had originally worked as policemen in South Africa and were on extended tours of duty. The black component was almost entirely tribal Ovambo and the majority were trackers, some with outstanding follow-up ability under the most difficult semi-desert conditions. They could determine from a single spoor, the numbers of people involved, whether they were moving light or heavy, and follow it while on the run.

  A typical Koevoet operational team would be equipped with four Casspir IFVs and a Blesbok logistic supply vehicle. All undercarriages were protected against landmines and the cabs were specially developed for Southern African bush conditions. Each vehicle carried its own armament and, depending on the ‘negotiating skills’ of its crew, those weapons might range from a 7.62mm light machine gun to a 20mm aircraft cannon adapted for vehicle use.

  When information on an insurgent group was received, a team would deploy and, from intelligence gained from chatting to villagers in the suspect area, the squad, by a process of analysis and common sense, would try to establish where the insurgents might be hiding. That was when the unit’s trackers came into their own; they would follow the tracks in the sand while jogging ahead of the Casspirs.

  As soon as the guerrillas—invariably SWAPO insurgents, occasionally with a sprinkling of South African ANC or Angolan militants—were made aware that the unit was on their tracks, they would attempt to escape by moving swiftly to a safer area. Once the spoor or tracks of an insurgent group were found, the operational lifespan of the enemy unit would invariably be reduced to hours.

  Tracking and attack patterns were similar each time a contact became likely. From the start, there would be regular radio comms with headquarters who, in turn, would advise the air force of developments. If a contact was likely, a pair of Alouette gunships might move towards a forward base and be placed on standby. That, basically, was the role of Neall Ellis and his chopper strike teams.

  After the trackers reckoned they were 30 minutes or less behind an enemy group, the gunship crews would be alerted and the helicopters would move in for the final action, initially standing off a short distance from the ground team involved in the follow-up. By then, the helicopters would be in touch with the Koevoet commander and await his order to move in for the kill. In the final stages they would report:

  ‘Gunships overhead.’

  ‘Roger gunships … The terrs have bombshelled and we’re following up on the tracks of a pair of them.’

  ‘Roger Zulu Sierra … Number two, take the wide orbit and range up to four clicks ahead.’

  The Alouettes, usually with Neall Ellis or Arthur Walker at the controls, would fly a set pattern during the initial stage of the search. This was basically two over-lapping, left-hand orbits, ranging ahead of the tracker teams as well as the vehicles on the ground. There was good reason for the left-hand orbit: the helicopter’s cannon was mounted with its barrel pointing out of the left-hand door. It also ensured that the cannon was pointing downwards, w
hich allowed for a quick reaction time should a threat materialize.

  The lead gunship would fly a narrow kidney-shaped orbit, ranging up to 3km ahead of the Casspirs, and approximately 200ft above the trees. Number Two’s orbit was considerably wider and usually flown between 600ft and 800ft above the ground. It would range from 2km up to 5km from the IFVs. While the narrower orbit was primarily to detect any evidence of a potential ambush, the more distant search was to prevent the enemy from bombshelling and speeding away from the follow-up.

  One of the problems facing the air crews was the fairly constant threat of an air collision, especially once the shooting had started and attention was distracted elsewhere. As Nellis commented, ‘it was always something that we had to be aware of during a follow-up operation … we had to watch very carefully for it … there were some close shaves in the early days’.

  To prevent a collision, the two helicopters had to maintain height separation, with Number Two in the formation responsible for planning his orbit in such a way that he would keep clear of his leader’s flight path.

  ‘Gunships … this is Zulu Sierra. The fuckers are around here somewhere … we’ve found several spots in the bush where this bunch seems to have laid up … appears they are now taking cover under the trees … trackers estimate the group is 10 minutes ahead.’

  ‘Roger Zulu Sierra … Number 2 … tighten up your orbit and come in a little closer … and you are clear to use flushing fire.’

  The indication that the insurgents were taking cover in a copse of trees meant that they were now within the orbits of the two helicopters and, in all likelihood, had sighted the aircraft. The pilots and the men on the ground were aware that, with time, SWAPO insurgents had become adept at taking effective measures to avoid visual detection from the air. Thus, when an aircraft overflew their position, they would hide behind some of the heavier tree trunks, keeping the tree between them and the search team above. As soon as the threat had passed, even temporarily, the insurgents would dart across to the next tree and repeat the tactic, sometimes dozens of times over. Another ploy would be to crawl into a thick bush and remain prostrate for as long as possible until the aircraft was no longer in sight. To counter this tactic while in orbit, the gunner on board the chopper would continue searching towards the rear of the helicopter. If weight allowed, a member of the ground team would be picked up to provide an extra set of eyes for the search.