Special operations

[Dr Jekyll]

Special Operations is the rather misleading title of a booklet I saw in the magazine rack in WH Smith.

It's actually about some post 1945 small conflicts and almost conflicts involving air power and is very interesting. I hadn't realised for example, how close the UK and Southern Rhodesia came to a shooting war after UDI.

Another section is about an extraordinary fight in the Congo in 1998. At one point, Zimbabwe air force Hawks operating from the military apron at Kinshasa airport were carrying out air strikes on rebel forces occupying the Western end of - Kinshasa airport. They would take off to the East, do a 180 to attack the rebels then land at the Eastern end to rearm just 3KM away from the battlefield, typical sortie length 10 minutes.

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[Tony1963]

A guy I’m working with, in his mid 60s, left the RAF and went to fight for Rhodesia In the late 70s against the terrorists. Talk about interesting! He was a techie on helicopters, but that meant manning the guns as well as fixing the avionics. Has worked all over the world since those heady days.

[SVX]

My F-i-L is ex Rhodesian Military - he talks about being on Ops deployed from Aérospatiale Alouettes and CAS from Hawker Hunters - never heard of the Hawk in service in that theatre... Interesting.

[aeropilot]

SVX said:

My F-i-L is ex Rhodesian Military - he talks about being on Ops deployed from Aérospatiale Alouettes and CAS from Hawker Hunters - never heard of the Hawk in service in that theatre... Interesting.

A dozen or so Hawk Mk.60's were delivered to the Zimbabwe Air Force in the mid 1980's.