Rhodesia Action

Rhodesia, 1965-1979. Period photos and Bush War history, daily. Fireforce, Selous Scouts, RLI, RAR, and the Rhodesian Air Force.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

the k-car. one Alouette III in the Fireforce carried a 20mm cannon firing from the port door, with the Fireforce commander aboard directing the fight from 800 feet. the g-cars dropped the sticks, and the k-car stayed overhead until it was over.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

At Lancaster House, Douglas Bader, the legless RAF ace, visited Smith and agreed on how to settle Rhodesia. Leaving, he asked Smith to walk him to his car, parked at the main entrance, so nobody doubted which side he supported.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@InfantryMobile Only My Friends Call Me Crouks, then. Fitting title for a man who did his Scouts time in the Reconnaissance Troop, running cross-border recce into Mozambique before going back to the RLI. The rank-and-file view, not an officer's memoir.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

The photos tell half the story. Black and white troopers side by side, in the same unit, on the same operation. That was the Scouts.

[Bud Gibson @TheReconCast]

On 9 August 1976, just 84 members of Rhodesia's elite Selous Scouts crossed into Mozambique and attacked the Nyadzonya camp, where intelligence estimates suggested approximately 5,000 people were gathered. Disguised in FRELIMO uniforms and using vehicles painted in FRELIMO colours, they infiltrated the camp before opening fire.
Rhodesian military accounts claimed that more than 1,000 people were killed. The attacking force reportedly returned without losing a single soldier, although casualty accounts differ, but the consequences went far beyond the battlefield. South Africa's apartheid government, under Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, was furious over the operation.
Pretoria subsequently withdrew military personnel, restricted supplies and increased pressure on lan Smith's Rhodesian government to accept Black majority rule....
.... Operation Eland remains one of the most controversial and devastating cross-border raids of the Rhodesian Bush War.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@Postmanden1 @50YearsAgoLive Ha, closer than you think. Rhodesia started building the Uzi under licence in 1976, the same year as this photo, from Israeli parts and later its own components. So the one in his hands may well be a home-grown Rhuzi.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

In 1976 the school run, the supply run and the patrol were often the same journey. Ordinary life had adapted to the war without ever quite admitting it.

[1976 Live @50YearsAgoLive]

A local farmer in Rhodesia shows how he protects himself in his gun equipped Land Rover.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

11 May 1979: a fifteen-year-old schoolboy received the Conspicuous Gallantry Decoration, one of the top civilian awards. Smith records he took on a gang of terrorists alone, wounded two, and kept fighting as they retreated.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@InfantryMobile Croukamp is worth reading on that, he spent four and a half years in the Scouts and was the first man awarded the Bronze Cross, in 1970. Which of his books has that story in it, The Bush War in Rhodesia or Only My Friends Call Me Crouks?

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

Government House, Bulawayo, 1979: Rhodes's house on Lobengula's old kraal, with the tree where the two men talked, and Thabas Induna on the horizon. The Smiths stocked the unused 300 acres with pedigree Africander cattle, and the veld fires stopped.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@adonispara Archer was 1 Commando, and all 73 of those jumps came between 1977 and the end of the war. What still surprises me is the pace, an RLI man could make three operational jumps in a single day, each before a different contact.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@RetroCoast The date was chosen with intent: Smith signed the declaration at 11am on 11 November, Armistice Day, during the two minutes' silence for the fallen of the two world wars. Sixty-one years on, that timing still frames how the day is remembered.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@TheReconCast Those firsthand accounts are gold, and the SOG and Force Recon men would have had a sharp eye for it. Did any of your Rhodesian interviewees serve on Eland? The detail that always gets me is that a turned ZANLA commander, Morrison Nyathi, talked the column past the camp gate.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@DonShift3 That use-it-or-lose-it point is the key, and the discipline behind it is what stands out. The Small Wars Journal account stresses it was not random spraying, but a deliberate, methodical routine aimed at maximum effect for the least ammunition.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

The Rhodesian answer to an enemy you could hear but not see: shoot the cover and let the cover answer back.

[Clint Warren-Davey @Clint_Davey1]

Rhodesian troops in the Bush War used a kind of reconaissance by fire known as "Drake shooting".

Instead of waiting for the enemy to reveal themselves, troops would proactively shoot into likely hiding spots: bases of trees, rocks, thickets or anthills.

The goal was to kill concealed insurgents without first needing a clear visual on them.

They didn't waste ammo. Riflemen fired "double taps" or controlled semi-auto shots up to 12 inches off the ground.

This targeted legs and feet or ricocheted debris upward into the enemy's face and body.

If the enemy flinched, moved, or returned fire, it instantly revealed their position for accurate follow-up shots.

This was a very effective counter-insurgent tactic for the terrain they were fighting in.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

RLI training, range work, and the Alouettes that made Fireforce work. The regiment was raised on 1 February 1961 at Brady Barracks, Bulawayo, and by the mid-70s its men were the ones the helicopters dropped into contact.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

21 April 1979: Smith records a 63 percent turnout in the first election under the Internal Settlement, despite guerrilla threats against voters. Muzorewa's UANC won a majority, and he became the country's first black prime minister.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@narlygraham The audacity was in the detail. The column was led in by turned ZANLA commander Morrison Nyathi, who talked the party past the gate guards, and two of the Unimogs carried 20mm Hispano cannon stripped from old aircraft.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

The photo gives it away: blackened faces, FRELIMO uniforms, and a convoy that drove straight through the camp gates at Nyadzonia before anyone realized.

[ADONIS @adonispara]

In 1976, 84 Rhodesian soldiers raided a camp of 5,000 in mozambique and came back without losing a single man. operation Eland. one of the most asymmetric raids of the 20th century and barely taught anywhere outside military circles.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

12 February 1979: a second Air Rhodesia Viscount, the Umniati, was shot down out of Kariba. All 59 aboard were killed. Unlike the first shootdown five months earlier, there were no survivors at all.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@LiDARDao The horse in the photo was really just the transport. Grey's Scouts used them to patrol the Zambia and Mozambique borders and track insurgents, then fought on foot when they found them.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

@Clint_Davey1 The Lynx gets a mention, but the fourth helicopter did the directing: the K-Car, an Alouette gunship with a 20mm cannon, carried the Fire Force commander, who ran the whole contact from 800 feet up.

[Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction]

Formed in 1973, disbanded in 1980. The whole story fits inside seven years, which is the part people forget. A unit that small was never supposed to account for that much of a war.

[ADONIS @adonispara]

The Selous Scouts had peak strength of 1,000 men. they accounted for 68% of all enemy fighters killed or captured inside Rhodesia. their own losses across the entire 7 year war was 36 people. arguably one of the most efficient unit in modern military history.