Jabber,
Yes you are right it was a night forced landing, the pilot had no idea what the state of the terrain surface was like, apart from the surface "looked flat enough" but they had no option, with two Griffons shut down on one wing and a set of huge props that wouldn't feather the drag was bringing them down in ever decreasing circles so they had to land, I seem to remember they elected to land with the gear up so as to slide hopefully to a halt, however at the point of touchdown they saw small rocky hummocks of desert type material which slewed them sideways when they hit, that impact broke the back of the Shackleton and ripped one engine from the wing and started to force said engine underthe A/c, the slide was very ruogh and thats how many of them recieved their slight injuries, Ex SAAF "Potty" Potgieter(hope that spelt right) recieved a nasty bump to his forehead but after all went silent they all wer able to evac the A/c in good time, running well away for fuel was leaking from a myriad of broken and sheared pipes.
The reason I know so much about this is these people came to visit me to hopefully purchase many spares from me for their remianing Shacks , after we had done a nice deal and shaken on the deal it seemed the S African Gov depts would not release money to pay for such an excersise due to Nelson Mandella wanting all available funds to re-house most of the disposesed in S Africa.
Somewher I have a copy of their route map at the point of the first Pan call, if I can find it I will post it along with the top picture.
Peter R-B