Counter-Strike from the SkyThe Rhodesian All-Arms Fireforce in the War in the Bush197480 Dr JR Wood

Counter-Strike from the Sky The RhodesianAll-Arms Fireforce in the War in the Bush 19741980 By Wood, Dr

On 11 November 1965, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith unilaterallydeclared his country independent of Britain. International sanctions wereimmediately instituted against the minority white regime as Robert MugabesZANLA and Joshua Nkomos ZIPRA armies commenced their armed struggle, theChimurenga, the war of liberation. As Communist-trained guerrillas floodedthe country, the beleaguered Rhodesians, hard-pressed for manpower and militaryresources, were forced to devise new and innovative methods to combat theinsurgency. Fireforce was their answer

Fireforce as a military concept dates from 1974 when the Rhodesian AirForce (RhAF) acquired the French MG151 20mm cannon from the Portuguese. Coupledwith this, the traditional counter-insurgency tactics (against Mugabes ZANLAand Nkomos ZIPRA) of follow-ups, tracking and ambushing simply werentproducing satisfactory results. Visionary RhAF and Rhodesian Light Infantry(RLI) officers thus expanded on the idea of a vertical envelopment of the enemy(first practised by SAS paratroopers in Mozambique in 1973), with the 20mmcannon being the principle weapon of attack, mounted in an Alouette III K-Car(Killer car), flown by the air force commander, with the army commander onboard directing his ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette IIItroop-carrying gunships and latterly Bell Hueys in 1979) and parachuted fromDC-3 Dakotas. In support would be a propeller-driven ground-attack aircraftarmed with front guns, pods of napalm, white phosphorus rockets and a varietyof Rhodesian-designed bombs; on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker Hunterand Vampire jets.

By the winter of 1976, the ZANLA High Command and, to a lesser degree,ZIPRA had begun saturating the border regions of Rhodesia with their insurgentforces. In the Operation Thrasher area alone, on the eastern frontier withMozambique, Special Branch estimates of enemy strength numbered over 3,000ZANLA guerrillas. Facing them were the territorial soldiers of the 4thBattalion, Rhodesia Regiment, a company of Rhodesian African Rifles, a commandoof Rhodesian Light Infantry, a troop of Selous Scouts and a battery ofantiquated 25 poundersall in all, perhaps, no more than 500 men on the ground.

To deal with the threat, the Fireforce based at Grand Reef, near theborder town of Umtali, could muster four Alouette gunships, one Lynxpropeller-driven ground-attack aircraft and 12 airmobile troops as thefirst-wave reaction force. Dakota DC-3 ParaDaks in 1977 and Bell Hueys in1979 boosted the Fireforce capacity considerably; however the odds worsened forthe beleaguered Rhodesians during the final years of hostilities.

In spite of the overwhelming number of enemy pitted against them,Rhodesian Fireforces accounted for thousands of enemy guerrillas, with a killratio exceeding 80 : 1. At the end of the war, ZANLA generals admitted theirarmy could not have survived another year in the fieldin no small part due tothe ruthless efficiency of the Fireforces, described by Charles D. Melson, theChief Historian of the U.S. Marine Corps, as the ultimate killing machine.

Included in the book is a minute-by-minute account of OperationDingoFireforce writ large with the airborne assault in Mozambique. On 23November 1977, the Rhodesian Air Force and 184 SAS and RLI paratroopersattacked 10,000 ZANLA cadres based at New Farm, Chimoio, 90 kilometres insideMozambique. Two days later, the same force attacked 4,000 guerrillas at Tembué,another ZANLA base, over 200 kilometres inside Mozambique, north of Tete on theZambezi River. Estimates of ZANLA losses vary wildly; however, a figureexceeding 6,000 casualties is realistic. The Rhodesians suffered two dead,eight wounded and lost one aircraft. Operation Dingo, essentially a massiveFireforce operation, became the prototype for all major Rhodesian cross-borderraids.