Operation DingoRhodesian Raid on Chimoio and Tembué, 1977

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Weight 0.500 kg
Dimensions 29.7 × 21.0 × 0.4 cm
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ISBN9781907677366 Barcode9781907677366
Overview
Fireforce ‘Writ Large’—Airborne Assault in Mozambique 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 ‘Writ Large’—Airborne Assault in Mozambique

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 C-47 Dakotas. In support would be a 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.

Dr J.R.T Wood

Dr Richard Wood, BA (Hons) (Rhodes), PhD (Edinburgh), FRHistS was a Commonwealth scholar and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Research Fellow at the University of Rhodesia and a Professor of History at the University of Durban-Westville. He is the foremost historian and researcher on the Rhodesia in the decades following World War II and, with exclusive access to the hitherto closed papers of Ian Smith, has written three definitive publications: The Welensky Papers, So Far and No Further! and A Matter of Weeks Rather than Months.

He has published The War Diaries of André Dennison (1989) and Counter-Strike from the Sky (2009), numerous articles, conference papers and chapters in books. He has a lifelong interest in matters military, rugby and fly-fishing. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa with his wife Carole.

Additional information

Weight 0.500 kg
Dimensions 29.7 × 21.0 × 0.4 cm
Format

Pages

Size

Publisher30 Degrees South Publishers Publication Date01/11/2011

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