When proceeding to South Africa on holiday with my family in 1976, the convoy commander adjudged me to be driving the slowest vehicle because I had our large Turner Swallow caravan in tow. Because of this I was instructed to be the pace-setter behind two armed Land Rovers. At the rear of 150-odd civilian vehicles were another two armed Land Rovers and another two that roved up and down the three-kilometre convoy length for the three hour-twenty minute drive to Beit Bridge. No pee—breaks were allowed!
The convoy system became a way of life for locals and visitors alike and there were few difficulties or incidents on the roadway. This was because CTs preferred to attack at night to give themselves ample opportunity to move well away before sunrise. Close by on the railway line, things were not so comfortable because it was impossible to confine all rail traffic to daylight hours and flexible response to attacks was not possible for trains in motion.
The greatest threat to rail traffic came from track sabotage, though surprisingly few incidents of this nature went undetected before a train reached any point of damage. Ambushes proved to be more troublesome until ex-Air Force 20mm Hispano cannons were mounted on special wagons—three per train. These armed railway wagons switched from northbound to southbound trains when gun crews were changed over.
Most of the gunners were coloured soldiers, nicknamed ‘goffles’. They did a good job of silencing or limiting CT ambushes, providing they opened fire the moment an ambush was sprung. Sometimes, however, these soldiers were not as wide-awake as they should have been. Following two particularly damaging attacks, it was established that the goffles had picked up prostitutes to provide them ‘comfort’ on their usually uneventful and boring rides. But female distractions resulted in the CTs having sufficient time to lay down damaging fire before cannons responded. In consequence, the armed rail wagons changed name from Cannon Wagons to ‘Nanny Wagons’.
British Conservative government
ON 3 MAY 1979, THE BRITISH public voted the Conservative Party into power and Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female prime minister. Having been so badly let down by a communistically inclined Labour Government, there was good reason for Rhodesian morale to be uplifted. Margaret Thatcher’s statements concerning the need to forget the past and judge the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian situation in the light of the present situation reinforced our hopes in her. She even intimated that Zimbabwe-Rhodesia had done enough for the Conservatives to grant the country recognition and remove sanctions. This all came as a breath of fresh air giving hope that communist ZANU and ZAPU would not be coming to power. Unfortunately history proves that we were wrong. We had yet to learn that the Conservatives were bigger ‘snakes in the grass’ than their predecessors who, it has to be said, did not speak with forked tongues.
Flechette success
IN EARLY MAY I RECEIVED an urgent message from the Duty Officer at JOC Thrasher to say that a TF callsign of 4RR was asking for an immediate jet-strike. The callsign was in an OP on a prominent mountain ridge overlooking a known CT entry route that ran from the Revue Dam area in Mozambique into the Burma Valley, Rhodesia. This callsign had noticed high levels of activity in four villages with many women moving to and from a section of bush lying between the villages carrying bowls and dishes on their heads. The callsign commander told JOC Thrasher he was 100-per cent certain that a large group of ZANLA CTs were being fed and, since he was FAC trained, he could talk jets directly onto the target.
It so happened that a pair of Hunters had just been scrambled for an internal target. I cannot recall who was leading but know for certain that the wingman was Ginger Baldwin. My gut feeling was that the Mozambican target deserved priority, so I requested Air HQ Ops to divert the Hunters to the Burma Valley area. The pilots were unprepared for this change and did not have large-scale maps of the target location. Fortunately Burma Valley was very well known so it was easy enough to give the TF callsign position as the third border peak on the south side of the valley.
When the Hunter section made contact with the callsign, they received a very crisp and concise description of the target, so much so that they were able to visually identify the exact section of bush thirty seconds (slant-range about four nautical miles) from target. As the lead Hunter commenced its attack, the TF callsign was instructed to pass correction on leader’s strike to the second Hunter. When the first 30mm cannon shells exploded, the TF called the correction, “Drop 50—Right 20.” Ginger Baldwin then fired his cannons on the correction and received the call, “On target!” whereupon he released two flechette dispensers at the end of his cannon run.
Back in COMOPS I was perplexed to learn that flechettes had been dropped in Mozambique—something we were not supposed to do by our self-imposed ruling. However, because Ginger Baldwin had set out for an internal target with flechettes, and because Air HQ imposed no restriction for the external scene, he did not hesitate to use them.
Although this happened to be a genuine mistake it resulted in Rhodesia’s singlemost devastating air action against ZANLA. But I only learned this after the war had ended. From ZANLA’s top brass I learned that they feared the ‘Racist South African nail bombs’ more than the other South African weapons. They were in fact talking about Flechette, Alpha, Golf, and Mini—golf systems. Since we had not used flechettes externally, other than one pair of dispensers dropped at Tembue and the pair delivered by Ginger Baldwin, I thought ZANLA was talking about flechette successes inside Rhodesia. “No,” they said. “We know about some comrades nailed inside Zimbabwe, but it was the death of our twenty-six top commanders at Revue that made us fear these weapons most.”
The whole situation came about because of ZANLA’s growing concern over the Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliaries who had become a serious hindrance to their operations in most sectors. Josiah Tongogara decided there was only one way to find out exactly what was happening. He sent twenty-six senior commanders to Rhodesia to investigate the matter and return with detailed reports and recommendations—but none of them even made it into the country!
As the TF callsign had said, Mozambican villagers were feeding these commanders preparatory to their night entry into the Burma Valley. Once through this valley they intended to disperse to undertake independent analyses of the widespread auxiliary threat.
They did not count on Ginger Baldwin’s 9,000 flechettes, which eliminated every one of their numbers together with the unfortunate Mozambican women who were feeding them. The description given of this strike intrigued me. The body of the leader bore twenty-six flechette wounds and the least number of hits seen on any commander’s body was six. What shook the ZANLA HQ team investigating this incident was the fact that every single feeding pot and plate had been holed by not less than one dart.
If only we had known about this success six months earlier we might have used more flechettes externally; but not a single radio FRELIMO intercept exposed ZANLA’s grievous loss!