'ftight
It would call for a refuelling stop on the way in to the target- and another on the way ou
t
In the case of Chimoio. the choppers could refuel at an administrative base inside Rhodesia to get to the target. but they would need somewhere close at hand where they could go to refuel and rearm to enable them to carry out strikes on the camp ... and to top up for the journey home. Getting helicopters to Tembue. which was twice the distance from the border. called for an even more complicated manoeuvre.
There was only one possible solution. They would have to take over a piece of Mozambican territory and establish a forward administrative base inside enemy countryside for however long the operation lasted.
They would only need one such base for the Chimoio raid but because of the vast distance involved. they would have to set up two when they attacked Tembue.
It was a daring idea and nothing like it had ever been done before, But again. would ComOps go for if?
Brian Robinson and his team naturally wanted to get the best results from both camps. too. Ideally. they needed to hit them simultaneously. but the hard facts of life
were that Rhodesia simply did not have sufficient aircraft to do that
It meant the Rhodesians ran the risk of arriving at the second target to find the enemy forewarned and the camp vacated. The team was then faced with another problem - which camp to hit first to get the maximum kills.
• • •
Eventually. they were satisfied with their plan and invited the hierarchy to visit SAS
HQ
to listen to a presentation of their proposed mission.· With the magnificent models spread out before them. Scotty McCormack gave an intelligence briefing on the two biggest terror bases in Mozambique. Then Brian Robinson and Mick Graham presented the army case and Norman Walsh. the air force's.
They had to sell the entire concept to the ComOps t
e
am - the attack itself. the necessity for it. the advantages to be gained what would happen if they did not attack it. and the admin base idea.The hierarchy listened in fascinated silence as the proposed plan unfolded and clearance was sought for the raid. And they didn't like it one little bit
They didn't believe the security forces could get the huge numbers of kills Brian Robinson and his team were saying they could with the limited amount of air weaponry available. As for the amazing suggestion that they establish admin bases inside enemy territory ... well they were not sold on that at all.
The Tembue plan calling for two bases to be set up in Mozambique. was totally out
of the question. The camp was simply too far away to even be considered as a target.
What worried ComOps was that the external admin bases would have to be set up almost as far from the border as the targets themselves. In the event of the helicopters being discovered as they rearmed and refuelled they would be sitting ducks. While the Rhodesians would protect the vulnerable aircraft. all the enemy needed to do would be to put a few mortar bombs in among the choppers and there would be
chaos.
If the planes were destroyed, it would be impossible to get the troops out of the 173
target and they would face a very long trek home witb all the attendant problems. Brian Rollinson, Norman Walsh and their team were not keen on this aspect either. but considered it a calculated risk that had to be taken.
As in all major missions, too, the aggressor nation had to apply a percentage air craft loss. While nations like America could suffer a loss without being seriously affected, Rhodesia with her limited air force, sanctions, and shortage of foreign currency to replace the aircraft could not
Rhodesia simply could not afford to lose a single aircraft And to lose as many as ten. would be catastrophic. They would never he able to replace them and the Rhode sian Air Force would become virtually non-operational
As it was. considering the enormous scale of the proposed operation. the Rhode sians would he working with minimal numllers of aircraft It was a ludicrous situation and everyone knew it
But what terrified the hierarchy most of all was world opinion. For if an aircraft was shot down in enemy territory, it would be blatantly ollvious to the world who the aggressors were- not. that the world would not know anyway. World reaction would be far from favourable. Rhodesia. already under intense pressure from all sides. would be well and truly roasted.
No doubt. too. the rest of the world would claim refugee camps were attacked. just as they had done on the Nyanzonia camp attacked by Selous Scouts a year before hand. The ammunition belts on many of the bodies had been conveniently ignored lly those who screamed "refugees".
When the idea was first mooted. it was the era of Kissinger and the Geneva Con ference. Could Rhodesia he seen to he acting so ovenly when they had agreed to peace talks'!
Finally. the ComOps hierarchy said that the Chimoio target was a possibility. hut
turned the Tembue plan down flat Brian Rollinson and his team would have to go back to the drawing board and have a rethink about that phase.
The first presentation had been given in November. 1976. A year had passed- and still the operation had not been given the go-ahead.
After the first presentation the whole idea had gone dead for a while. In the mean
time. the camps were being photographed once a week and mushrooming at an alarming rate. Every single ZANLA captured inside Rhodesia was telling SB that he had either been at Chimoio or Tembue. Ships were docking along the east coast and trained ZANLA were being offioaded en route to the camp ... planeloads of men were arriving in Beira from Dar-es-Salaam ... and trainloads of ZAN LA were pass ing through Chimoio on their way into Rhodesia.
Eventually. almost a year after the camps had first been picked up lly aerial photography, the figures at Chimoio stood at between 9 000 and II 000. making it the largest concentration of enemy ever to be in one camp at that stage of the war.
By comparison. the figures at Tembue training camp in north-east Mozambique were small. But the4 000 enemy there could do an awful lot of damage if they crossed into Rhodesia.
It had become extremely frustrating to SB officers and security forces in the know to see the problem growing - and knowing that nothing was going to be done about it
Eventually, the possibility of attacking the camps was resurrected and Brian Robinson, his troop commanders and Air Force Group Captain Norman Walsh began an intensive phase of trying to convince ComOps that the time had come to
·attack the two camps. As before. they emphasised the same old argument ... that the only way to stem the now was to turn off the tap.
As for the enemy. they had become even more confident that they were never going to be attacked by the Rhodesians.
Finally. SAS intelligence officer Scotty McCormack was called upon to give another presentation to the Co mOps team. It was his 12th presentation- the 12th time he had tried to sell the idea.
By now Scotty knew the two camps like the back of his hand. and without a single note before him. he stood up and gave a detailed briefing. stressing the precise points he knew the hierarchy wanted to hear. Cataloguing the military facts of life. Scotty emphasised how the camps had grown. and how. if left unchecked. they would continue to grow.
He explained the advantages to be gained in striking offensively: told how ZAN LA would want to push as many people into Rhodesia as possible before the seasonal heavy rains began and before the infiltration routes got too bad.
The hierarchy needed no reminding that at that time of the year the bush became an enemy. too. For the rains provided ZAN LA with plentiful water and lush vegeta tion cover. and seriously hampered security force operations.
They needed no telling of the terror that could be caused by vast numbers of infiltrating ZAN LA The enemy were learning more than their Chimurenga songs of liberation at the two camps. The number of people on the rifle ranges alone proved that.
Incursions were on the increase and attacks had been mainly directed towards black civilians in the rural area. Two hundred civilians had been murdered in the previous two months.
Then the two chief architects of the plan. Brian Robinson and Norman Walsh. pre sented their case for the Army and Air Force. The hierarchy went away to consider all they had heard and weigh up all the pros. cons and ramifications of such a raid.
They would have had to consider the same aspects as the year before- the possible aircraft loss: what the world would say about such an overt mission ... the biggest c·ross-border offensive of the war to date. On the other hand. the situation in the coun try was critical. Could they sit back and allow such bases to exist. particularly the two biggest camps in Mozambique. responsible for all ZANLA incursions and dras tically affecting the conduct of the internal war!
The people at the top had never stopped believing either that the Rhodesi;m problem could be solved politically. But the Geneva Conference had failed to bring a
ceasefire and the war was more intense now than it had been when the idea of striking the two camps was first put to the national planners.
To the astonishment of Brian Robinson and Norman Walsh. their endless bull dozing had paid off. The green light was given and the operation was to be called Dingo. with Chimoio given the codename Zulu- I. and Tembue. Zulu-2. The time had come to stem the tide. to deliver a telling blow to the ZANLA war machine - to eliminate the enemy. gather intelligence and disrupt the enemy's logistics.
The detailed and very complex planning for the two-pronged thrust into Mozam bique began immediately. Busiest of all at that stage were the people in aerial photographic who sat for days scanning photographs of Mozambique to find suit able sites for the three external admin areas.
The ad min areas- one for the Chimoio raid. two for the Tembuc phase- had to be 10-15 minutes flyi}lg time from the target; in the most isolated areas possible: some where that could take all the helicopters: and in places where those security forces defending the aircraft during the camp attacks could parachute into.
There had to be high ground nearby where they could position sentries ... and well away from access tracks. Nor had the ad min areas to be anywhere near a position the enemy could take advantage of to mortar the planes.
It was a tall order. but eventually three suitable sites were found.
The admin base for the Chimoio raid was to be eighty kilometres (fifty miles) inside hostile territory and only ten kilometres (six miles) from the target The ad min bases for Tembue. 225 kilometres ( 140 miles) from the border. were to be set up on a huge flat-topped mountain south ofCabora Bassa. nicknamed The Train; with the second base sited ten kilometres from the target
Roth Chimoio and Tembue were formidable targets. and with a minimum of9 000 ZAN LA at Chimoio and 4 000 at Tembue. the 185 Rhodesian ground troops who were to attack the two camps would be sorely outnumbered.
Of the 9 000 to II 000 at Chimoio. 4 000 were known to be fully trained opera tional and armed. It is standard military doctrine that during the attack phase. the attacking force must have a three to one superiority. Rhodesians. short on manpower as they were. were not going to pay any attention to that
Only surprise. the well-used principle of war. could help. Repeated visits by The Blues would help to even up the odds. however. Nevertheless. the planners were work ing on a thirty percent casualty rate.
Using every aircraft Rhodesia possessed. they could get no more than 200 troops to the targets at any one time.
And as the whole aim was to achieve maximum surprise. it could not be done in more than one wave. It was futile to take in one wave of troops. then go and collect another wave. For by the time the second wave got there. the enemy who had survived the initial attack would have already fled.
Both raids were to be basically similar and were to prove classic examples of verti cal envelopments.
Chimoio- the bigger of the two camps- was to be attacked first and the 97 SAS and 48 RLI parachutists were to land on two sides ofChimoio ... while forty helicopter borne RLI troops were put down on the third. It was envisaged that the fourth side would be theoretically boxed in by the fire from the K-cars ..
Timings would be critical. with the paratroopers arriving in Chimoio exactly two minutes behind the initial air strike.
The idea was that the anti-aircraft defences would be too busy shooting at the strike aircraft to pay any attention to the Dakotas bearing the SAS and RLI paras. The helicopter-borne troops would be put down near the camp shortly afterwards ... and exactly eight minutes later the K-cars would swoop in to close off the cordon.
The ground troops would kill any enemy fleeing the strafing of the aircraft sweep forward flushing out others hiding in the bush. then advance on the main complex itself. Aircraft meanwhile would continue to pound the camp for as long as
necessary.
To the troops involved. it seemed a straight-forward enough plan. But for the SAS Officer Commanding Major Brian Robinson and Air Force Group Captain Norman Walsh. Operation Dingo was a planner's nightmare.
For the plan to succeed. it was absolutely critical they achieve total surprise. Having at long last got the go-ahead to mount the strikes. the two planners were haunted by the possibility of arriving at the targets to find the enemy were on to them and the camps vacated.
Yet how could an armada of noisy aircraft arrive over the target without giving the game away'!
If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. it would send the sounds of the advancing helicopter gooships straight towards the camps. It would give the enemy. whom they hoped to catch unawares. a good ten minutes early warning ... long enough to scatter or take cover. and sufficient time to man their anti-aircraft guns in readiness to take on the vulnerable Dakotas flying over the camp at 500 feet.
So what could he done to maintain their security? How could they outsmart ZANLA. whom they planned to attack at their regular 08h00 muster parade when they were at their most vulnerable and concentrated?
Then Norman Walsh hit on an idea. He felt that if the assembled enemy were to hear a jet scream over the camp ten or I 5 minutes
before
the first strike went in. they would break ranks and dive for the safety of their trenches. thinking the Rhodesians were about to attack them.When nothing happened. they would take up their positions on the parade square again. Planes were seldom heard in the area and they would probably think it was a stray airliner. It would give them a false sense of security for the time the noise from the
real
enemy aircraft was heard overhead.The Rhodesian planners were banking on the enemy reasoning that as nothing had befallen them the first time around. they would not bother to run for cover a second time. And that would seal their fate.
The scheme had the virtue of never having been tried before. But would it work? Civilian pilot Captain Jack Malloch, owner of a sanctions-busting airline who was always ready to help out with any security force plan. readily agreed to lend his DC-8 jet and a pilot for the task. which had to be worked out with split-second timing so that ZANLA were back on parade at precisely the time the Rhodesian jet.� appeared overhead.
Then another worry. The two planners could not dismiss the awesome prospect that the weather might be against them and they would get to the point of no return to find Chimoio in cloud. The strikes were timed for late November and there was a very real possibility of rains and cloud.
If-after the noise from the aircraft had alerted the camp to their presence- they then had to turn around ·and go all the way home without the attack going in, they knew that would be that; they would never get the go-ahead to mount the operation again.
In addition to their other worries. Brian Robinson - who was to command the ground troops - and Norman Walsh - to command the air effort - would carry a further psychological load.
The hierarchy had imposed a strict limit on their time across the border, and as they were still concerned about world reaction. they wanted the entire operation over and every man and machine back in Rhodesia in three or four days.
The two planners would then have the extremely difficult job of organising the extraction phase. Everybody who had parachuted in or had been choppered to the target and all those held in reserve in the forward admin area had to be brought out again.
They had to hear in mind that they were swinging from an easterly target to a
northerly one within 48 hours. which from a logistical manpower and airpower point of view was an enormous problem.
The mission which was to set a number of operational precedents. would be the first time a senior army and air force officer were to command a major external battle from a helicopter. As far as the planners could see, it would be stupid not to use a
helicopter to command the battle. A commander needed to read and feel the battle. 177
and it was difficult to do that if he was not near tho:: target Previous experience had shown that unless air and ground forces could get a quick response to requests. the