USS MOUNT WHITNEY, IN DURBAN HARBOR
Craig and his staff examined the map of Natal. Ladysmith was an old town, with a history of past battles. It lay along National Route 3, the route picked by Craig and his forces as the best path of advance through the mountains.
Best was a relative term, though. They had lost lives and time fighting through those passes. At times, Craig had wondered if they would lose the campaign here. Taking Ladysmith could change all that.
Ladysmith lay beyond the mountains, in the low foothills on the western side. Beyond the town, the country changed to the veld, open country perfect for mobile warfare,
It was also the supply center for the South African forces in the area and occupied an excellent blocking position. The South Africans had kept it well garrisoned, with a strong airdefense network.
Part of that network was an air surveillance radar. Parked on any of the hills surrounding the town, it gave early warning of any enemy approach.
Jet fighters had attacked it several times, with little effect. Like many modern tactical radars, it was mobile and could move quickly from place to place. It couldn’t radiate on the move, but each attacker would find it in a different place. Now, it appeared the South Africans were running a bluff.
Taking Ladysmith would change the Drakensberg Mountains from a South
African fortress into a prison.
Craig had already started planning the assault on Ladysmith, but that had been from the south, up the highway. He’d thought of it as their graduation exercise, the last battle before the breakout. Now, if they could take the town by storm, it would cut a week off the campaign and maybe win the race for Pretoria.
Normally, sending helicopters into an established airdefense network was military idiocy. The air defenses that could engage a jet fighter made short work of the “slow movers.” If that radar was down, though, a fastmoving assault force could appear and attack before the defenders knew they were there.
Craig turned to the divisional commanders assembled before him.
“Greg, how much of your 101st is unloaded?”
“One brigade and one aviation battalion, sir. Elements of the second brigade are being off-loaded now.” The demolitions in Durban’s harbor still allowed only a few ships to unload at once. Engineers were working to clear the obstructions, but progress was measured by the week, not the day.
The 101st Air Assault division used helicopters to move its men, which paradoxically made it hard to move from place to place. Aircraft were light, but took up a lot of room, and thus required many ships to carry them. The division’s Aviation Group could lift an entire brigade at once.
Even the forces already landed had a lot of men and immense firepower.
The combined formation, about a third of the 101 st’s strength, could deploy over ninety troop-carrying helicopters carrying twenty-five hundred men. The vulnerable troop carriers would be screened by Kiowa scout and Apache attack helicopters.
Craig couldn’t wait for the other two brigades and didn’t think it would be necessary, if they moved fast. The South Africans were moving units out of Ladysmith, sending them north. Those troops were probably headed for Pretoria and the Cubans. More importantly, it told him what the enemy was thinking. The other side expected him to be bogged down in the mountains for some time to come. They were wrong.
“Greg, I want you to land at Ladysmith tomorrow at dawn.” The general’s surprise and concern were mirrored on his face.
“Take everything you can scrape together, but don’t wait an extra minute for gear from the ships.”
The general nodded, and Craig said, “Do it however you have to, but take and hold Ladysmith until the ground forces can link up.”
The 101st’s commander, a lean, tanned soldier, saluted and said, “In that case, sir, I hope you’ll excuse me. We’ve got a busy night ahead of us.”
Craig returned the salute.
“Thanks, Greg. We’re trading your steep for lives and time. Make it count.”
JANUARY 2-OUTSIDE DURBAN
The 101 st Air Assault division was based just to the north of the city.
Space was at a premium along the coastal plain, but a helicopter didn’t need a lot of room to take off.
Part of a two-lane asphalt road had been turned into a runway, while fields and shacks on either side had been bulldozed flat to make way for rows of sand and green helicopters. The Africans displaced by this had wisely been housed in some of the prefab accommodations brought along for the division.
“Camp Zulu” was growing rapidly, with the engineers busily making plans for water and electrical utilities, security fences, and the other things that kept a military community running. They were very distressed when they were told to drop everything and help load stores onto the division’s sole operational brigade.
Mechanics had worked all night under harsh floodlights, assembling and inspecting helicopters, repairing what was wrong, and scrounging for parts that were still “on the water. “
Many helicopters, having been declared unfixable in the short time allowed, had been “canned” or cannibalized, their functional parts removed and installed to make some other
aircraft flyable. A single helicopter could make three or more other aircraft functional by donating an engine to one, a part of the instrument panel to another, and so on. There would be time to restore the gutted hulk later.
The confusion at the airfield was only amplified when Marine helicopters, some of them also needing maintenance, arrived to reinforce the 101st’s machines. Marine pilots were quickly taken aside and in one-on-one briefings, taught Army procedures by their opposite numbers.
Even as the brigade’s transport and attack helicopters were frantically readied, the division, brigade, and battalion commanders quickly built the necessary elements into the attack plan. Even with a straightforward movement to objective and an assault, a hundred details, on which lives depended, had to be decided, checked, and then passed down the line.
Maj. Gen. Greg Garrick, the division commander, had finished the basic attack plan while riding in a helicopter from the Mount Whitney back to his base. The brigade commander, Col. Tom Stewart, had been waiting with the rest of the division staff. By midnight they had fleshed out
Garrick’s plan into a brigade assault, coordinating it with naval and
Marine air support, a logistics plan, communications and intelligence procedures, air defense plans, chemical warfare plans, down to the locations for helicopters to land once they had delivered their loads.
This detail-oriented procedure was complicated by a sketchy intelligence picture, and a changing list of the forces available. Halfway through the planning session, the maintenance officer came in with the news that enough helicopters were available to lift a fourth battalion. This was good news, but many plans had to be reworked.
The battalion commanders were summoned at midnight and in a two-hour brief, filled in on their roles in the operation. Planning had been so hurried that no name for the assault had been picked, and someone had suggested Next-Day Air. Garrick had finally agreed to Air Express.
The battalion commanders took their orders, expanded and implemented them for their own situations, and summoned the company commanders at three. The company commanders briefed their platoon leaders at four, and the squad leaders were finally given their orders at four-thirty.
At five the lead helicopters took off.
The noise and confusion inside the base drew the attention of the local citizenry, who stood outside the hastily erected fences and watched the lights and machinery and listened to the sounds of jet engines. The display of resources and technology was almost overwhelming, and frightening to many. What would these foreign conquerors want?