Dingo Firestorm
Published by Zebra Press
an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd
Reg. No. 1966/003153/07
Wembley Square, First Floor, Solan Road, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001
PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
First published 2012
Publication © Zebra Press 2012
Text © Ian Pringle 2012
Maps by MapStudio
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.
PUBLISHER:
Marlene Fryer
MANAGING EDITOR:
Robert Plummer
EDITOR:
Mark Ronan
PROOFREADER:
Lisa Compton
COVER DESIGNER:
Michiel Botha
TEXT DESIGNER:
Jacques Kaiser
TYPESETTER:
Monique van den Berg
INDEXER:
Sanet le Roux
ISBN 978 1 77022 428 5 (print)
ISBN 978 1 77022 429 2 (ePub)
ISBN 978 1 77022 430 8 (PDF)
Over 50 000 unique African images available to purchase from our image bank at
www.imagesofafrica.co.za
This book is dedicated to the memory of Lieutenant General Peter Walls MBE and Air Marshal Norman Walsh OLM, BCR, ESM.
Contents
Helicopter routes to Chimoio and Tembue
The attack on New Farm, Chimoio
3 The Silver Queen sows a seed
4 ZANU starts the Second Chimurenga
9 Phase 2: The hit-and-run war begins
11 Détente and the Carnation Revolution
19 The Year of the Fire Snake: 1977
22 Walls between the SAS and RLI
36 Rubbernecking and the sweep
40 Lightning over the Saudi desert
46 The mystery of the empty parade square
Author’s note
Deploying virtually an entire air force (61 aircraft) over hostile foreign territory and dropping 184 troops to face an enemy numbering in the thousands in two bold attacks are what in essence make Operation Dingo such a remarkable story. It needed sound intelligence, excellent planning and bold decision-making to pull this operation off. The story that follows is, to the best of my knowledge, a fair and accurate account of what happened. It is primarily a story about people. To tell their story, I have interviewed a selection of key people involved in Dingo. I have also used a variety of sources, both published and unpublished, to bring authenticity to the story. Most of the text within quotation marks is what I have been told; the rest I have drawn from the battle log, autobiographies and previous accounts of the operation. In some cases, such as aircraft radio patter, I have assumed that standard radio language took place. Underpinning the story are the standard operating procedures used by the Rhodesian forces, which were well tried and tested, albeit on a smaller scale before Dingo.
Memories fade over time and, in some cases, I encountered discrepancies between what I was told, often very lucidly, and what has been written before. Although I have tried to seek consensus, sometimes this proved futile and, in most cases, I have gone with the accounts of those I interviewed and who were there during this operation. No doubt there will still be controversial and disputed elements in this book, something that is inevitable when looking back at an event that took place over three decades ago.
The other issue is the operations orders (ops orders). Like all good plans, they were modified, tweaked and improved, so what actually happened differed in a number of cases from the written plan. An accurate written summary of the operation, however, is provided by the high quality of the air-strike log; this is supplemented by radio messages and telexes. Very helpful too was the Operation Dingo debriefing, which helped me clear up a few grey areas. And the invaluable Super 8 movie footage I was able to view – the only filmed account of
parts of Operation Dingo – has given me a vivid, virtually first-hand insight into certain aspects of the operation.
I was able to pilot a Hawker Hunter (from Thunder City in Cape Town) and simulate the attack profile that Rich Brand used to commence the Dingo attack, to give me a better feel for recording that tense moment. Granted, the adrenalin factor, precision, ground fire and weapons were missing, but it served a story-telling purpose. I apologise to residents in the Kommetjie area for disturbing their peace as I repeatedly rolled off my perch and dived at an imaginary target on the beach.
Being a helicopter pilot has also helped me describe parts of the story about those amazing Alouette pilots of the Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF). The parachuting details of the operation have been reinforced by my own skydiving experience.
There is an aerial bias to the book for which I do not apologise – every combatant in Operation Dingo got there and back by air.
Place names, rivers, towns, and the like are presented in this book as they were at the time of the operation.
The Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) headquarters complex in the Chimoio district of Mozambique was known as New Farm, but it was often simply called Chimoio, and these terms are used interchangeably. The town of Chimoio, formerly Vila Pery, is 17 kilometres south of New Farm; I refer to this as Chimoio Town to differentiate it.
The terms ‘ZANU’ (Zimbabwe African National Union), the political party, and its military wing, ‘ZANLA’, are used interchangeably according to the context: once the war started, the organisation’s political and military identities very much merged.
Acknowledgements
Writing
Dingo Firestorm
has been possible only because of many people’s generous support. When the idea came into my head to write this story, my first port of call was Peter Petter-Bowyer (PB), who agreed to help me without hesitation. PB, a former pilot, innovator and senior officer in the RhAF, and author of
Winds of Destruction
, has proved to be the key that opened many doors for me. His direct involvement in Operation Dingo, his book and our interviews have formed an invaluable foundation on which my story has been built. PB has corrected my interpretation of events a few times. I am deeply grateful to him for his enormous contribution and for repeating, without a word of complaint, our first interview, which I accidentally erased.
To make the story more interesting, I needed to speak to the man who opened the battle, the person who fired the first shots of Dingo. The chances of this happening were slim, as I was told repeatedly that former squadron leader Rich Brand, a highly successful businessman and aircraft builder, was unlikely to agree to be interviewed. PB gave me Rich’s email address, and advised me to introduce myself first through my flying credentials. I am sure PB put in a good word for me because Rich readily agreed to chat to me from his home in Las Vegas. (His wife, Susan, even commented that he had never spoken on the phone to anyone for more than a minute.) For this reason, I am all the more grateful to Rich for generously interrupting his busy schedule to spend many hours telling me his story and explaining the finer details about how to really fly a Hawker Hunter.