Counter-Strike from the Sky : The Rhodesian All-Arms Fireforce in the War in the Bush 1974-1980

Fireforce as a military concept dates from 1974 when the Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF) acquired the French MG151 20mm cannon from the Portuguese. Coupled with this, the traditional counter-insurgency tactics of follow-ups, tracking and ambushing against Mugabe's ZANLA and Nkomo's ZIPRA, simply weren't producing satisfactory results. Visionary RhAF and Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) officers thus expanded on the idea of 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 armed with front guns, pods of napalm, white phosphorus rockets and a variety of Rhodesian-designed bombs; on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker Hunter and Vampire jets. Wood's prose, graphics and illustrations successfully bring the reader into the intense world of Fireforce operations in this thoroughly researched historical work on everything related to the subject. About the author Richard Wood, BA (Hons) (Rhodes), PhD (Edinburgh), FRHistS, was born in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He was educated at St George's College, Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, and Edinburgh University, Scotland. He has a lifelong interest in matters military, rugby and fly-fishing. He lives in Durban, South Africa with his wife Carole.