'Green Leader', Rhodesian Canberra Cockpit Tape
 

I thought this was a pretty rare find, and very interesting, to boot!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4d_1185465338

Sensational find. My first boss was a Nav on Canberra's with the Rhodesian Air Force, not sure if he was involved in this raid but these boys certainly sound like they did the business!

Have a recording of my mates Dad on a Canberra raid in Vietnam with the RAAF, makes good listening too but back in my home country unfortunately so can't put it up here. Will dig it out on my next trip back.

Good link here to the Rhodesian Air Force:

http://www.rhodesianforces.org/RhodesianAirForce.htm

RRAF
 

There is a collection of aviation videos about the Rhodesian Campaign on Youtube - including the 'Green Leader' recording using Google Earth (?); links are via

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p1NRLFso6Q

AA

"Green Leader" is still with us. Now flying for an airline or recently retired IIRC.

Fox3

I would love to hear that. Please do post it if you get the chance when you are next home!

SRT

That's good to hear. :ok:

what an ultimatum! Wouldn't have wanted to be a zambian pilot ordered to take off!

An extraordinary real event. Unfortunately the Green Leader and other gallant, daring military raids from the Rhodesian campaign go unknown. It is disgusting that our (non Rhodesian) countries hung them out to dry and now finally a democratic election against Mugabe succeeds, despite his bribery and intervention, we still standby as spectators.
A military campaign that many Staff Colleges could learn from. :(

not up to speed on african air arms these days, what is the current state of the zimbabwe air force?. an interesting comparison maybe??

The Burmese people could do with a raid like this!

I remember when I went there with the Albert for the elections, Rolls Royce were very interested in how the Rhodesian Air Force had kept their Avon engines working despite the sanctions. Not surprising really, a lot of their engineers had trained at Halton! We did have an ex apps reunion while we were there. What a beautiful country it was, especially from 150' AGL at 270 kts.

Happy days

Is "Green leader" still around?

Class!!!

Last I heard (not so long ago) he was still flying for a cargo outfit so, yes, he is still around.

This was 'Operation Gatling' in October 1978 - the attacks on Zipra forces undergoing training near Lusaka in Zambia . Green Section was the Canberra formation (hence Green Leader) and there was also Red, White and Blue Sections (Hunters) plus the Alouette III 'K-Car' helicopter gunships (20 mm cannons!). The Canberras were using a locally-made spherical bomb called the 'Alpha' (locally-made bombs were usually allocated alphabetical names) of which there were 300 in the bomb bay of each aircraft.

I seem to recall that an Alpha bomb was about the size of a large volleyball, with a double-walled steel body. Between the double walls there were small rubber balls that gave the bomb a 'bouncing' capability. Inside the inner wall or shell was the explosive. When dropped, at very low level, the Alpha bombs looked like a swarm of bees coming out of the Canberra bomb bay. They fell behind the rapidly disappearing Canberra in a huge swathe, bounced off the ground, which set off the fuse, and then exploded at about 15 feet agl. Because the first bombs out the bay were first to hit the ground, the explosions 'moved' forward across the target area in a fast and expanding wall of smoke, sound and shrapnel (imagine hundreds of large, loud sequenced firecrackers and you'll get the idea of the noise). Very effective anti-personnel weapon, and pretty good at defoliating when dropped amongst trees!

The Hunters in this raid were using the 1000lb Golf bomb and the 'Frantan' ('frangible tank' - polite term for napalm ..... hey, war is ****).

The longest 'Green Leader' recording that I have heard covers about 20-25 minutes, most of it the lead up to the raid. The recording linked-to here is, of course, the 'interesting' bit.

Not that well known operation MK,set up by an ex-Rhodie by any chance??

I'm not saying. :oh:

Is "Green Leader" still flying ??
 

There is a rumour that he flies freight and that he gets great pleasure in using his distinctive voice as he says "Aaah good afternoon Lusaka tower this is ...."
:D:D:D

Alpha Bombs
 

Mr Bernoulli's accurate description of the Alpha and its use brought back some interesting memories and also served to remind me why one of the unwritten rules of Military Life is "Never volunteer!"

Just after the first operational use of the weapon a quality problem reared its head and a significant percentage were failing to explode. But I didn't know abut this when the CO strolled in one day and asked "Who knows what an Alpha looks like?" Since I had a mate who worked for the engineering company who had developed and manufactured them (and who had regaled me with stories of dropping prototypes from a high tower and recording the results with camera and stopwatch), I knew exactly what they looked like. So I engaged mouth before putting brain in gear and said "I do".

So, shortly thereafter, I found myself stepping out of an Alouette at the scene of the latest 'Contact' to find and retrieve some unexploded Alphas. I was given three RLI (Rhodesia Light Infantry) 'Troopies' as an escort (or to stop me running away!).

We found two bombs in fairly short order and radioed in an suitable RV location for uplift. An Alouette arrived about 30 mins later and we started to board. "Aren't those Alphas" says the driver; so I explained our task. "You're not putting those ****ing things in my A/C" So I explained again that we were tasked with the important job of getting these 'samples' back for analysis. "Not in my A/C your not!!" says he, followed by a pull on the Collective. The A\C then returned briefly and dropped a map case containing a chart on which was marked a RV point on a road about 7km away. It was a long walk, the more so since I noticed that my 'Escort' was definitely keeping its distance since the discussion by the helicopter. There were certainly no offers to help me with the load. (BTW Alfas are slightly smaller than Mr B describes; being just over 6in in diameter.)

I was met (by a trailer full of sandbags) at the RV and would like to think the incident helped, in a small way,make the Alfa into the success it was; it was even taken up by the SAAF and used with great success by their Canberras. But remember NEVER VOLUNTEER!

I was chatting with an ex-Rhodesian Air Force Canberra navigator the other day. I asked him to check a TAS calculation; he told me that he was quite familiar with the good old Dalton whizz-wheel as "There was this computer thing in the Canberra with a whole load of pipes and cables - but it never really worked so we had to use the circular slide rule for working out our bombing calcs."

"Was that accurate enough?" I asked.

"Ag, well - put it this way. The 'customers' never complained!" was his reply.

KiloB,

My apologies for getting the size of the Alpha wrong - long time since I saw any, and I thought they were a bit bigger. Ah well, the memory is going .......... but I do recall that they were painted a vivid orangey red colour!

The South African Air Force

;)

Fascinating. Were they carried in small bomb containers? I can't imagine them simply tumbling out through the gap between opening bomb doors. Were the safety pins removed before flight or pulled on release by a lanyard to the bomb carrier?

http://www.saairforce.co.za/seed/pub...f91e_large.jpg