Operation Dingo

Author: J. r. t. Wood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781912866816
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Startling in its innovation and daringly suicidal, Operation Dingo was not only the Fireforce concept writ large but the prototype for all the major Rhodesian airborne attacks on the external bases of Rhodesian African nationalist insurgents in the neighbouring territories of Mozambique and Zambia until such operations ceased in late 1979.Fireforce as a military concept is a 'vertical envelopment' of the enemy (first practised by SAS paratroopers in Mozambique in 1973), with the 20mm cannon 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 on board directing his ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette III troop-carrying gunships and latterly Bell 'Hueys' in 1979) and parachuted from DC-3 Dakotas. In support would be propeller-driven ground-attack aircraft and on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker Hunter and Vampire jets.On 23 November 1977, the Rhodesian Air Force and 184 SAS and RLI paratroopers attacked 10,000 ZANLA cadres based at 'New Farm', Chimoio, 90 kilometres inside Mozambique. Two days later, the same force attacked 4,000 guerrillas at Tembué, another ZANLA base, over 200 kilometres inside Mozambique, north of Tete on the Zambezi River. Estimates of ZANLA losses vary wildly; however, a figure exceeding 6,000 casualties is realistic. The Rhodesians suffered two dead, eight wounded and lost one aircraft. It would produce the biggest SAS-led external battle of the Rhodesian bush war.

Dingo Firestorm

Author: Ian Pringle
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 1770224297
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
On 23 November 1977, an armada of helicopters and aeroplanes took off from Rhodesian airbases and crossed the border into Mozambique. Their objective: to attack the headquarters of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, where thousands of enemy forces were concentrated. Codenamed Operation Dingo, the raid was planned to coincide with a meeting of Robert Mugabe and his war council at the targeted HQ. It would be the biggest conflict of the Rhodesian Bush War. In this fascinating account, Ian Pringle describes the political and military backdrop leading up to the operation, and he tells the story of the battle through the eyes of key personalities who planned, led and participated in it. Using his own experience as a jet and helicopter pilot and skydiver, he recreates the battle in detail, explaining the performance of men and machines in the unfolding drama of events. Dingo Firestorm is a fresh, gripping recreation of a major battle in southern African military history.

Rhodesian Air Force Operations

Author: Preller Geldenhuys
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0994115415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
This book records the operations of the Rhodesian Air Force. It includes a log of over 1100 airstrikes carried out as well as maps where most of these strikes have been meticulously plotted. The maps are in full colour. Numerous photographs illustrate the text. The author has produced a comprehensive account of the Air Force role in the war in Rhodesia - Zimbabwe. The work includes one of the most detailed summaries of Rhodesian military operations to have been published, and in this respect serves as an excellent work or reference to those historians and collectors of militaria. It is a book that fills in much detail.A comprehensive index is included. To the very end the Air Force kept up its valiant task of securing the airspace for the troops, the BSAP, the farmers and industry. All in all this is a highly readable, extremely detailed account of the Air Force's part in the war against terrorism

Bush War Rhodesia 1966-1980

Author: Peter Baxter
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1909982377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 74

Book Description
It has been over three decades since the Union Jack was lowered on the colony of Rhodesia, but the bitter and divisive civil war that preceded it has continued to endure as a textbook counterinsurgency campaign fought between a mobile, motivated and highly trained Rhodesian security establishment and two constituted liberations movements motivated, resourced and inspired by the ideals of communist revolution in the third world. A complicated historical process of occupation and colonization set the tone as early as the late 1890s for what would at some point be an inevitable struggle for domination of this small, landlocked nation set in the southern tropics of Africa. The story of the Rhodesian War, or the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle, is not only an epic of superb military achievement, and revolutionary zeal and fervor, but is the tale of the incompatibility of the races in southern Africa, a clash of politics and ideals and, perhaps more importantly, the ongoing ramifications of the past upon the present, and the social and political scars that a war of such emotional underpinnings as the Rhodesian conflict has had on the modern psyche of Zimbabwe. The Rhodesian War was fought with finely tuned intelligence-gathering and -analysis techniques combined with a fluid and mobile armed response. The practitioners of both have justifiably been celebrated in countless histories, memoirs and campaign analyses, but what has never been attempted has been a concise, balanced and explanatory overview of the war, the military mechanisms and the social and political foundations that defined the crisis. This book does all of that. The Rhodesian War is explained in digestible detail and in a manner that will allow enthusiasts of the elements of that struggle - the iconic exploits of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the SAS, the Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian African Rifles, the Rhodesia Regiment, among other well-known fighting units - to embrace the wider picture in order to place the various episodes in context

Bush War Rhodesia

Author: Peter Baxter
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1910294861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 74

Green Leader

Author: Ian Pringle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909982932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
On 3 September 1978, a Russian-supplied heat-seeking missile shot down an Air Rhodesia Viscount civilian airliner shortly after it took off from the lakeside holiday resort of Kariba in the Zambezi Valley. Miraculously, 18 people, including small children, survived the crash only for most of them to be gunned down in cold blood shortly after the crash by terrorists loyal to the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) leader Joshua Nkomo. Just days before the plane was shot down, the Rhodesian leader, Ian Smith, had met secretly with Nkomo for discussions, brokered by Britain, Zambia and Nigeria. However, this event dramatically changed the political landscape and wrecked a plan by the British government to mould an alliance between Smith and the Ndebele leader Nkomo, and smoothed the path for the Shona leader Robert Mugabe to become the first leader of Zimbabwe. In this fascinating two-part account, Ian Pringle (author of Dingo Firestorm), describes the Viscount tragedy and the military response. He uses exclusive interviews with two survivors of the crash and the massacre, and with the first person to arrive at the horrendous crash scene (commanding officer of the Rhodesian SAS Regiment), as well as accounts from other key witnesses, to recreate the tragic event. He describes the white-hot anger felt by the small white community in Rhodesia, who howled for revenge and demanded martial law and total war. The Rhodesian military responded with Operation Gatling, a risky three-phased revenge attack on Nkomo's guerilla bases and infrastructure in Zambia. The prime target was Nkomo's military headquarters on the outskirts of Lusaka, the Zambian capital. The author uses a cockpit voice recording from the lead Canberra bomber, and exclusive interviews with the lead navigator and pilots involved in the raid to tell a fascinating, authentic and gripping story of the audacious attack, which became known as the Green Leader Raid. On the same day as Green Leader, two more bases in Zambia were attacked using air power and elite paratroops and helitroops in a well-honed tactic known as vertical envelopment. Pringle uses his own experience as a jet and helicopter pilot, and skydiver, as well as top-secret documents and interviews with key personnel involved in Operation Gatling to recreate a gripping account of Rhodesia's first large-scale attacks on Zambia. He describes the aftermath, another tragedy and a reprisal attack in Angola, which brought southern Africa to the very brink of a full-scale regional war. Green Leader is an exciting recreation of a calamitous time in southern African history."

The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe

Author: Blessing-Miles Tendi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108472893
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Book Description
An essential biographical record of General Solomon Mujuru, one of the most controversial figures within the history of African liberation politics.

Operation Miracle

Author: "Prop" Preller Geldenhuys
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780473298906
Category : Zimbabwe
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description

The Rhodesian War

Author: Paul L. Moorcraft
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811707253
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
- The vicious conflict (1964-79) that brought Robert Mugabe to power in Zimbabwe - Expert coverage of the war, its historical context, and its aftermath - Descriptions of guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency operations, and actions by units like Grey's Scouts Amid the colonial upheaval of the 1960s, Britain urged its colony in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) to grant its black residents a greater role in governing the territory. The white-minority government refused and soon declared its independence, a move bitterly opposed by the black majority. The result was the Rhodesian Bush War, which pitted the government against black nationalist groups, one of which was led by Robert Mugabe. Marked by unspeakable atrocities, the war ended in favor of the nationalists.

Flying for Freedom

Author: Alois Siska
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1844686388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
Alois Siska was born in Czechoslovakia and learnt to fly. He escaped to the UK after the German invasion and joined the R.A.F. He describes his experiences flying Wellington bombers. In December 1943 he was shot down and he and surviving members of the crew were adrift in the North Sea for 7 days in appalling conditions. Picked up by the Germans he underwent surgery to his badly wounded legs and became a POW. He suffered at the hands of the Gestapo and was held in numerous camps including Colditz. His injuries were so extensive that he was put under the care of Archibald McIndoe. Siska chose to return to his native country to join their air force but fell foul of the Communist authorities. His persecution is described in the closing chapters. His rank was restored only in 1991 on the collapse of the Communist regime. Despite his injuries he remained active until 2003 when he died just short of his 90th birthday. He was as an active member of the Czech Ex-R.A.F. Association, the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund in his country, and the Sue Ryder Homes for which he raised considerable funds. His death was marked with a fly-past of the Czech Air Force and he was posthumously awarded the highest military decoration—The Order of the White Lion.