Green Leader: Operation Gatling, The Rhodesian Military's Response to the Viscount Tragedy by Ian Pringle

Author:Ian Pringle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century
ISBN: 9781911096788
Publisher: Helion and Company
Published: 2016-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

The briefing at Fylde

The pilots, meteorology, operations and technical officers, and the officer commanding of Fylde sat on canvas folding chairs alongside folding tables. The pilots had been given the appropriate maps and listened intently to Janeke’s briefing.

‘Gentlemen, tomorrow we will fly Air Task Number 1523, which is three sequential attacks on major ZIPRA bases in Zambia under the operation code name Gatling. The first target is here, ten nautical miles [19 km] north of Lusaka,’ he said, pointing out Freedom Camp, which was labelled as phase one on his large map.

There was a murmur as his audience absorbed just how close this target was to the centre of the Zambian capital. ‘This complex houses the ZIPRA high command and communication centre and is estimated to contain 4 558 terrs [terrorists]. This target is too close to Lusaka for the deployment of troops, so it will be attacked by air only using Hunters, Canberras and K-cars.’

Squadron Leader Steve Kesby and his Vampire pilots of No. 2 Squadron were naturally disappointed to be excluded from the first attack. Janeke went on to give a broad outline of the attacks on Mkushi and the CGT complexes and then continued by giving the detail and precise timings of the air effort required for each target, including the weapons to be delivered. The Vampire boys were happier now; at least they would be involved in the attacks on Mkushi and the CGT complexes.

When Tol Janeke briefed the Hunter pilots in detail about the Freedom Camp attack, grid photographs of the target were handed to the six pilots of the blue and white sections so that they could follow the specific target locations. Each RhAF squadron was allocated colour codes to easily distinguish its aircraft when flying in attack formations and to simplify communications. The No. 1 (Hunter) Squadron was allocated the colours blue, red and white, and the No. 5 (Canberra) squadron used green when flying together:

Blue section, you will route via Kariba to make it look to the Zambians like a routine border patrol, and then you will drop to low level and meet up with 5 Squadron at Mana Pools at precisely 8.17 a.m., formate on the four Cans [Canberras] until your acceleration point, when you will move into line astern to launch the attack. Blue 1, you will open the attack by dropping your bombs from a high dive on the centre of the parade square at precisely 8.30 a.m., which should cause panic and disorientation among the terrs and mark the target for the Cans.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.