Moatize hangar
EVER SINCE BUSH COVER STARTED receding in July the success rate of Fireforce actions had been mounting. It was in one of these in late November 1978 that a CT was captured by RLI troopies of the Mtoko Fireforce. Those who nabbed him did not know that ZANLA’s High Command had made a big error in sending their high-ranking Secretary for the Tete Province on a staff visit to the Takawira Sector in Rhodesia.
SB was delighted to have this man alive considering that most of the CTs in the contact had been killed. Included in the wealth of information gleaned from him, SB learned of huge ZANLA weapons and explosives holdings in an aircraft hangar at the Moatize Airfield near Tete town. The information was passed to the SAS who came to the conclusion this was a job best suited to Air Force.
Five Hunters piloted by Squadron Leader Vic Wightman, Ginger Baldwin, Jim Stagman, Tony Oakley and Dave Bourhill were tasked to take this and other targets out in a single sortie. Though ZANLA’s primary weapons holdings constituted the main target, a long ZANLA barrack building in Tete town was assigned for attention by Golf bombs after which vehicles and AA gun sites were to be destroyed.
On 8 December, four Golf bombs flattened the barrack block completely. Firing at the hangar had to be conducted from long range to avoid the chaos that tons of explosives detonating spontaneously would spew into the path of an attacking jet. It was the second pilot to fire at this target who had the satisfaction of seeing it mushroom in a truly massive explosion that necessitated a maximum ‘G’ turn to avoid flying through the cone of rising debris. When they had taken out assigned targets and had run out of ammunition, the aircraft climbed to 30,000. There the pilots looked back with satisfaction at the vertical pillar of smoke and dust rising more than 10,000 feet above Moatize Airfield where the hangar’s shattered girders and cladding lay widely scattered.
Following this, the SAS moved in to blow up the Mecito bridge to ensure that ZANLA would not easily replenish their lost stocks or continue to move men to Tete by rail. This they timed to occur as a train passed over it on 15 December. Only five days later, with the railway line now out of action, ZANLA attempted to move ammunition up to Tete along their alternate route which was the main road running northwards from Chimoio along the low ground fairly close to the Rhodesian border. News of this impending movement was intercepted on the FRELIMO radio network.
An SAS ambush party struck the lead vehicles, forcing following ones to high-tail back the way they had come. Two pairs of Hunters flown by Vic Wightman, Jim Stagman, Ginger Baldwin and Brian Gordon destroyed the vehicles found hidden in an orchard by Cocky Benecke who had called for and directed their strikes. Following these, Cocky conducted a post-strike recce and confirmed that six vehicles, including a petrol bowser, had been destroyed, thus accounting for the entire resupply column.
Chapter 9
Posting to COMOPS
IN LATE NOVEMBER 1978, I was promoted to the rank group captain and replaced Norman Walsh as Director of Operations at COMOPS Headquarters. Of all the postings I might have been given, this was the only one I dreaded. Almost every man in the field thoroughly disliked this command unit and I did not relish the idea of serving under Bertie Barnard, now a major-general and still Director-General of Operations at COMOPS.
Lieutenant-General Peter Walls and his deputy, Air Marshal Mick McLaren, called me to their respective offices to welcome me but neither one gave me any specific direction other than to say I must start off by familiarising myself with COMOPS routines. At the time, General Barnard was away on long leave.
Unfortunately Wing Commander Dag Jones had also been posted out of COMOPS, leaving his replacement Squadron Leader Terence Murphy and me as new boys. We anchored on SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson who helped us settle in. Major Peter Burford, son of my old boss when I was an apprentice in Umtali back in 1956, was very helpful in running us through COMOPS procedures.
The tempo of external operations was increasing and occupied much of our attention, though Terence and I were little more than observers during lead-up planning for the Mulungushi and Mboroma actions. My first authoritative input came with the Moatize hangar strike. However, whenever time permitted Terence Murphy and I focused our attention on the internal scene.
For some months a force of auxiliaries (armed militiamen) had been building up as a counter to ZANLA and to provide protection for civilians in the rural areas. The black politicians, Bishop Muzorewa and Reverend Sithole both claimed that they had huge support amongst ZANLA personnel who would willingly come over in support of the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government. Their claims proved to be little more than wishful thinking, because only a handful of genuine CTs responded to their much-publicised calls to ‘come in from the bush’.
In an attempt to save face, both Muzorewa and Sithole gathered in many out-of-work loafers and crooks, claiming them to be ZANLA men. They fooled nobody but had succeeded in persuading COMOPS to arrange for the rabble to be given rudimentary training in arms. The task initially fell to Ron Reid-Daly’s Selous Scouts who were horrified by the whole affair. Nevertheless they commenced training hundreds of undisciplined ruffians using old farmsteads as training bases.
Many dangerous situations were faced by the men assigned to training the auxiliaries, known as Pfumo re Vanhu (Spear of the People), because of a belligerent attitude induced in them by the few genuine CTs in their midst and by the black politicians who were, as always, vying for power. On one occasion a life-threatening situation developed necessitating the full Fireforce action that destroyed one fully armed group of the Sithole faction.
By the time I entered COMOPS, there were Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliary forces in many of the collective villages and responsibility for training new auxiliaries had passed to Army and Police units, releasing Selous Scouts for to their rightful duties.
Some groups worked well whereas others treated the tribesmen in the same manner as CT thugs. On the whole, however, Pfumo re Vanhu succeeded in achieving many of their objectives. Only when our war was over did we learn of the very real threat they had posed to ZANLA.
Squadron Leader Terence Murphy, an ex-British Marine helicopter pilot, came to COMOPS fresh from Fireforce operations. With no specific task given to us, he and I conducted a joint study of internal operations and this led us to focusing on the auxiliaries.
Knowing the force levels already deployed and those in the pipeline, we worked out what we considered to be the optimum distribution of Pfumo re Vanhu forces to create maximum disruption and hindrance to ZANLA. Having done this, we put our thoughts and plans to an assembly of Army officers and SB men. Also attending was Squadron Leader Jock McGregor. All agreed there was good sense and merit in our proposals. We had only just done this when General Barnard returned from leave.