Episode 63 – 4 Recce and the Rhodesian SAS target Beira fuel depot and port in a series of raids

Welcome back to the South African Border Wars with me, your host, Des Latham. This is episode 63. We pick up the Seaborn Operation story in early 1979 and much of this episode is based on the book Iain Fist from the Seabah, ex-Recky, Doe, Stain, and his Navy colleague, Arne, Sodorland. By 1979, the writing was on the wall for redigia, if not before. The shockwave that had rattled Salisbury in 1975, as Portugal pulled out of Mozambique, weakened the state after all, all it had was South Africa as an ally, and the nationalist government in Pretoria wanted in Smith's government to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Bush War. That was so South Africa's state-tongued attempts with the rest of Africa would be given a shot in the arm. The reality was post-colonial African governments wanted nothing to do with Pretoria, the apartheid government, except for some art liars, such as Xamia. Its president Kenneth Gawunder had held secret talks with the apartheid government, along with other countries such as Botswana and Tanzania. Up to 1975, 80% of redigia's foreign trade had been exported and imported via Mozambique. Now they had to send and receive all goods via Durban. A leftist Mozambique was a haven for redigian gorillas in a barrier to trade. Needless to say, an upcoming attack on the fuel depot in Beira was very much part of Salisbury's attempted undermining Frelimo government in Maputa. The SID of involvement was a critical balancing act and obviously top secret. While Pretoria publicly met and negotiated and privately met and negotiated with some frontline states behind the scenes, they were hard at work blowing up Mozambique's infrastructure. South Africa contributed to around 40% of Mozambique's GDP in the 70s mainly through the income of more than 115,000 migrant workers and from harbour and railway taxes levied on South African trade travelling through Maputa. So the next mission plan was designed to destabilize Mozambique's infrastructure while ensuring SID of involvement never came to light. Because it was important to keep the SID of Link's secret, the opposition movement Renamo would be credited with the attack. A civil war had broken out after independence and Renamo was receiving support from the redigians and the South Africans. Operation Dairy was duly said to take post in March 1979, a combined opt with the SAS as the rating force and for Recky the insertion and extraction team. It was hoped that by blowing up the fuel depot in Bayra, it would halt suppliers to Zanla and Fulemo in central Mozambique. The teams would be transported to Bayra on board two strikecraft, which would then provide support during the operation, which was to take around three days. The fuel depot was well protected by security guards and soldiers and had a trench system dug all the way around. There was also a 37mm anti-aircraft battery stationed less than a kilometre away on high ground and a large informal settlement or squatter camp had grown a few hundred metres east of the fuel storage area. Because there was no moon before midnight on the 22nd of March, that was deemed the perfect time to insert raiders unseen. The following night was also our deal, while the 24th offered the last chance for the raiders to get in and out without a moon lighting up their position. SAS Squadron Commander Captain Bob McKenzie was appointed mission commander and as part of the preparation he flew over the target area on board a camera. It was important to understand just how well lit the area was and he discovered that most of the last pointed inwards on the containers themselves, that meant attackers could creep up to the perimeter fence in the dark. It just so happened that Zanla forces had blown up Salisbury fuel depot in December 1978, so it was a bit of tit for tat. In fact, the SAS were going to use Zanla's technique of creeping up to the tanks and opening fire from outside the fence with RPG sevens and tracer rounds hoping to settle for conflagration just as had happened at Salisbury. As part of the planning McKenzie headed off to Salisbury's damaged oil depot and questioned the manager about which tanks would ignite the easiest, which had petrol or diesel or tar. The stand-off attackers would then pick out similar tanks in Beira from photographs, supplied by another overflight by Canberra, and McKenzie's men began to prepare. After specialist training in March 1979, the SAS headed back to Durban on the 20th of March, where they were picked up by Strikecraft, SAS Jim Fushir and Commander Yann Rattif and P1563 under Commander Andrew Renny. Commander Woodburn was obsolete a commandant kinghorn, the boat group commander. It was midnight on the 20th of March when these two Strikecraft slipped out of Durban Harbor, with the SAS and four wrecky teams aboard. Backing them up would be a tell-star flown by Redition Air Force, and two SAS air force pumors ready for emergency extraction if required. The 20 SAS operators were broken into three teams and moved towards their targets on the night of the 22nd March. One team under Captain McKenzie landed north of Beira Harbor at 2100 hours and began slogging towards the fuel depot through marshy ground that made it heavy going. It took them three hours, then there was set up north-west of the target. They heard dogs barking and privately agreed the plan to attack from outside the perimeter wasn't deed the best. These animals would have worked up the entire town if they were trying to break in. They took a breather and took stock and then began the attack. First, Captain Colin Willison's team set up explosives on a pipeline, while Captain Peter Cole did the same at a nearby power parlour. Then everyone moved into firing positions west of the storage tanks because there was no wall there, only offense. It was McKenzie who set everything off as he fired an RPG 7 into the nearest tank, then everyone fired off their RPGs or tracer and armour piercing rounds. The tanks exploded bursting into flame. Suddenly, all the attackers were silhouetted by the blaze, and the 37mm anti-aircraft gun, protecting the depot, opened fire, first firing into the air, then swirling to fire horizontally. But at least eight tanks were already blazing, and then McKenzie gave the order for the raiders to head back to the boats. Phrylluma guards emerged and opened fire, and a renamo guide with them was shot dead as well as an essayist commander wounded in the hand. The anti-aircraft battery took aim at the essayist, missing and hitting the informal settlement, and in the chaos of the battle, a number of civilians were killed in the crossfire. The essayist had to move as quickly as possible back to the zodiacs, hearing the parlons and pipeline being blown up by their explosives as they did so. They arrived back at the beach at 0-330, attended to the wounded essayist raider, then pushed the zodiacs offshore and turned to leave. Meanwhile, an American registered ship of the likes line was radioing Bayer as saying, "This is the Sheldon likes, what the f*** is going on?" They will feature again in this episode. The return journey was uneventful except for stri-craft, P1563, which had engine trouble caused by idling with its exhaust underwater, to muffle the sound, so could only cruise at reduced speed back to orbit. Eventually, they arrived back safely and debriefed. Six storage tanks of Mozambique's PetraMac company had been destroyed, and the tanks belonging to Celtics, Mobile and Shell were damaged, about 4 million litres of fuel had burned away. This was deemed a big success, but came with an irony, a South African firefighting team that had helped the redisions extinguish their fuel fire in December after the Zanla attack, now headed off to Bayer, where they helped put out the storage fire, which of course had been caused by their own countrymen. It took two days to complete this action. The firefighting team was headed by Rodney Camp, and he was quoted later saying that Mobile had lost 20% of the fuel in its tanks, and would take around $16 million to fix the facility, and would only be fixed in around 12 months. Ranamo claimed responsibility, so at this stage, the Mozambique still did not know that the South African Defence Force and the Redision SAS were jointly behind the mission. It wasn't long before another more audacious mission was planned, and this time the SAS and SAS bit off a little more than they could chew. Operation Boxer was to be the penultimate seaborn operation involving the SAS and 4 Recky before some barberry independence were signed and sealed. Set for September 1979, the idea was to damage Bayer Harbor and close it to commercial shipping, while also releasing Ranamo prisoners held in a facility in the town. The main targets were also two dredges and a dry dock. These were important to keep Bayer's silted channels open. The port is not a natural harbor and needs constant dredging, while the dry dock destruction meant there would be no place to fix the dredges. The other targets were a telephone exchange centre in the town's CBD, and a warehouse supposedly stuck with zunna weapons, and of course they were targeting a local jail. Ranamo fighters were locked away there and the idea was to kill the guards and release all the prisoners. The strike craft deployed was the P1561 under Commander Tony Cole and the P1562 commanded by Massey Hicks while Lieutenant Commander on the ship. Sutterland was appointed as Acting OC, so that he could build experience in these sorts of raids. Sunday the 16th of September was initially airmarked as Attack Day, because there would be fewer civilians on the streets, although Fulima was known to patrol Barra night and day. Ten SAS operators commanded by Captain Willis would hit the main targets in the CBD, the telephone exchange and the prison. A team of five would target the warehouse at the dock. Two divers would mine the barges and the dry dock. The Redition Air Force was tasked with support, providing a Dakota Telstar comms link along with two Cessna C337 links aircraft, which would circle to provide coverage when the Dakota refueled, as well as four bell cheetah choppers, which would provide emergency extraction support. A second-parad Dakota was also set up to drop reserves of any of the choppers had technical issues. The Redition Air Force also lined up four Hawker Hunter attack jets just in case. After training at Langeban, the raiding teams boarded the P-1561 and 1562's Tri-Craft and Durban on the 14th of September, turning into an increasingly fresh northeasterly wind and heavy sea as they headed towards Barra. This was going to slow them down. Most of the SAS and Reckys became extremely seasick almost immediately, with the ships being battered by the wind and the seas and had to slow to 14 knots. It was then that a huge wave broke over P-1562, shattering the screen of the optical director just behind the bridge and flooding the wheelhouse. The lead look-out escaped possible fatal injuries at that moment. He just dropped his head on his hands as he was extremely sick and the shattered flexiglass flew past his prone form. Even Commander Massey Hicks collapsed, it wasn't seasickness, he had measles. They decided to press on nevertheless and Lieutenant Commander Sodorant took command. It took 24 hours of forcing their way through the powerful Indian Ocean to eventually reach Punta de Uru, the border with Mozambique. The raid had been postponed by a day. That meant they'd be attacking Barra on a Monday night instead of a Sunday night. And this was going to have implications for the raiding teams as you'll hear. It was now that a light relief moment took place, with one of the SAS special force fighters complaining that the toilet seats should have a latch to hold them up in heavy seas. It had hit him on the back of his head as he knelt in front of the toilet, throwing up. So it was late afternoon on the 17th of September when the strike craft eventually made it to the approach to Makuti Channel, ten nautical miles offshore and lined up with Barra harbour. There were two other vessels spotted on radar nearby, a smaller boat just off the entrance to the channel and a second larger ship north of the Anchorage. Just before 7pm the strike craft made contact with the smaller boat, it was a pilot vessel that challenged the Essay Navy craft. The strike craft had just switched on their lights. It was to confuse the burst of beacons into thinking they were fishing boats. The South Africans ignored the flashing because there was no radio transmission. Fishing boats often ignored the light signals and the commanders were hoping they'd be identified as fishing boats. P-1561 turns slowly to the south, loitering in position. After a few more minutes, the pilot boats stopped signaling and sailed away. P-1562 switched off her lights and slipped in behind a larger ship that spotted, using it as protection against land-based radar. They launched her zodiacs in the dark. Eventually all four zodiacs were ready and headed off as the strike craft picked up a third larger ship approaching from the northeast. After a few more minutes, they realized it was the old friend. The US flagged freighter Lach's line which had been inadvertently involved in the previous attack on Bayra fuel depot. Zodiacs 1 and 2 coastline by Captain Otto and Sergeant DW Smith carried five SAS raiders each and they were headed for the telephone exchange and jail. Sergeant Brutus led both three with its two attack divers, Corporal Gavin Christy and Burti Portquita, with Corporal Fred Wilkie on standby. The fourth Zodiac was headed up by warrant officer Ken Bruin and carried five more SAS raiders who were going to attack the warehouse in the port. As they approached the coast, they split into two pairs and the two zodiacs of SAS raiders landed on a beach near Bayra from where they clamoured through the difficult muddy mangrove to lay up. It was what happened to boats three and four that was going to change this mission significantly. By 21 hours oh five, they were 400 meters off the dock entrance and the two divers dropped into the water, with two 20 kilogram leech limped mines that were going to use to blow off the dry dock gate. It was only when they approached the doors they realised that these were not operated with a single mechanism and were hinged at the bottom. The usual construction was a side gate, now they had to dive deeper and the oxygen 57 rebreather aquilungs were designed. These were being used because they didn't leave a bubble trail but were only rated to eight meters. At least the impoketor were going to nine. Their troubles were just starting because they then discovered thick manned over the bottom hinges which they had to remove. At this point a guard suddenly approached the dry dock and was watched by the wreckies on the boats. When you got close one of the raiders shot him with a silenced weapon. Crew on nearby fishing boats didn't hear the shot and seemed to be going about their business as usual. The divers had decided to use both mines together when one of the mine pins broke off. They then set the timers for six hours and headed back to the waiting zodiac, pulling themselves along the buddy line. That was at 21 hours 47. The mines should only detonate next day at about 3am they thought. But it was not to be. Three minutes later at 21 hours 50 the charges detonated sending a blast wave from the dry dock out towards the divers who were still underwater. Luckily they were protected from the main blast by the end of the dry dock but the shock waves still threw them around underwater and both had the air drums perforated. Still they managed to surface and call the zodiac by radio. By now all hell had broken loose in the port, guards began firing on both boats. The divers had to duck back underwater and swam out to their emergency rendezvous point where they were picked up half an hour later. Meanwhile Captain Willis and his SAS team had arrived at their layup position on the city side of the mangroves and changed into Fulimo uniforms. At 21 hours 45 they walked into the city pretending to be a patrol while two operators were left behind to secure the route out. The raiders were armed to the mixture of weapons, AK-47s and American 180 submachine guns fitted with silences and they also had RPG-7s. The 180 machine guns were 0.22 LR weapons but had 177 round magazines and could fire at around 1,500 rounds a minute and magazine would empty in 7 seconds and destroy any target in its way. It was 2,300 hours when they made it into Bayer City Center trying to appear as calm as possible, walking at a leisurely patrol speed. They had no idea what had happened in the port. They discovered that Monday night in Barrow is busy and worse, they emerged from the shadows at precisely the moment they'd reveled as we leaving the cinema. The blackface cream they'd applied and the uniforms weren't going to help someone walked up to them but the SAAs decided to head to the telephone exchange anyway. There the raiders discovered their intelligence had been wrong, there were many more guards than the two they expected, and worse there was a big convenience store near the back gates they were hoping to use, people were hanging around the store. The SAAs teams slipped into an alleyway to wait for things to die down. A night watchman spotted them and ran to the Fulimo guards at the telephone exchange and warned them. There was trouble coming, 15 minutes later a proper Fulimo patrol approached and turned into the alleyway. Captain Willis and Lieutenant Mike Rich carrying the silenced machine guns walked right up to the patrol and shot the leader and his two eyes see they dropped dead. The Fulimo patrol stopped but the members didn't immediately fire back and the SAAs used the moment to climb over a nearby wall with drawing back to their layup position. Another Fulimo patrol emerged and in the ensuing gunfight one of the soldiers was killed along with two civilians. One of the raiders then ran into a shop on the way back to the mangroves and threw a handful of renombo pamphlets inside as the shop owners stared, but this SAAs raider then made the mistake of shouting "yeah" in English. That went unreported but it was a slip up. Luckily it appeared no one noticed or didn't say anything, but the plans had changed. Back at the docks the warehouse attack had been cancelled while the SAAs could no longer attack the telephone exchange and the jail. The teams hurried along as they crossed the salt marsh and made another mistake. One of the operator commanders had put his SAA 79 radio on the ground as he assisted his men over a pipeline while they were being followed and somehow he left this radio behind. This was a critical error. Along with a radio, you'd also lift codes and procedures on a radio. a sheet, which is going to lead to a big change in their next operation. Frilimo found the radio, thought it had been booby trapped and blew it up, a team added back to their recovery position and the exhausted members were withdrawn. Being wreckies however, the divers, back at the port, didn't want to give up. At 22 hours 38, they approached one of the barges, their metola, and stuck four leech limbic mines, about two metres below the waterline. It took around 20 minutes to do this, then they were done and the divers and Zerdiac headed to the smaller Dreadger, the Pungo. Two more mines were placed, which took another 20 minutes. Then the four Zerdiacs were all team members present, teamed up and made their way to the channel then out towards the strike craft, waiting five kilometres away. It was just before one thirty in the morning when they were picked up. The weather had eased and the boats increased speed to thirty knots, back to Durban. Unfortunately, that didn't last long. P1562 picked up a turbo problem in its diesel engine and slowed to sixteen knots and it was at the slow pace that the SIS and wreckies returned to Durban where they arrived at dusk on the 19th of September. Back in Bayra at 3am, metola blew up and sunk immediately on the slope of a Dreadge channel leaving it partially exposed and listing. The crew of the Pungo popped up on deck to watch and moments later their barge blew up sinking as well. Its belief no crew were injured but the Mozambique government's pride and economy was hit. This attack was symbolic. Renomo once more was blamed and the two sabotage barges would be plainly visible just above the surface, an embarrassing reminder of that attack. With the number of Dreadges reduced from three to just one, Bayra port authorities were forced to reduce the tonnage of vessels they could service at the key side. There would be one more operation into Mozambique and this one would target Robert Mogabi once again. Operation Trample was ordered because the Lancaster House agreement was now in full force and Robert Mogabi was clearly likely to win the next election. This was not in the South Africans nor the Redision's special forces favour so they wanted him out of the way. It was a raid then planned for January 1980. We'll return to that story in episode 64. If you have any comments you can head over to my website abwarpodcast.com there's a link to send emails if you want to chat or you can direct message me on twitter @desley. Until next, goodbye. [Music]