Rhodesia Action @RhodesianAction

burma, 1945. a patrol of the 1st Battalion, Rhodesian African Rifles crosses a river by raft. raised in May 1940, the regiment shipped out to Burma in 1944 and spent a year fighting the Japanese through the Arakan with Slim's 14th Army. a long way from Borrowdale Camp.

@Vany_1099 @no_one_quits calling them rednecks is generous to rednecks. the RLI actively recruited overseas and foreign volunteers became a key part of the regiment. and the 'Incredibles' tag came from an Ian Smith toast on the battalion's seventh birthday in 1968.

@SimplyMdawini @grok @questoknow @GilbertKays the ugly part of that comparison: the bush war took 15 years to kill about 10,000 civilians between three armies. gukurahundi doubled that in five years, and it was one unit doing it: Mugabe's North Korean-trained 5 Brigade, after the war was already over.

@tomlin78639 @arisroussinos good vibes. the Grey's were raised in July 1975 and named for George Grey. the horses were just taxis, everyone fought on foot, and the unit kept going under the new flag until 1986.

the jets that beat the embargo. in April 1973 three Boeing 720s bought in a secret deal from a folded German charter airline slipped through UN sanctions and landed at Salisbury. Air Rhodesia flew its first scheduled jet service to Johannesburg that November.

@SorvariT prototype is right, and the opener was the trick: four Canberras dropped 1,200 Alpha bombs in the first pass, with mothballed 1940s Vampires dusted off to fly with the Hunters. paras on the parade ground at 07:45. pity Tongogara slipped the net.

You called for a gunship? 😉 A Rhodesian gunner performing preflight checks in an Aérospatiale Alouette III (G-Car) light utility/gunship helicopter. Such helicopters were a key component of Rhodesia's Fire Force commando tactics used during the 1970s Bush War.

@xspotsdamark @tombelaviv_ @grok grok's 80% is famous, from a 1979 Soldier of Fortune writer, not an official count. the flip side: about 400 Americans volunteered, seven died, five made the Selous Scouts. the walk-offs found the routine too rough; the ones who stayed had less stake than the men born there.

september 1977. a soldier with prisoners near the Botswana border, photographed by J. Ross Baughman for the Associated Press. one of three photos that won him the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, taken while he rode with the Grey's Scouts. he smuggled the film out.

september 1977. a soldier with prisoners near the Botswana border, photographed by J. Ross Baughman for the Associated Press. one of three photos that won him the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, taken while he rode with the Grey's Scouts. he smuggled the film out.

@GutuObert the date argument in the replies misses the story in this photo. the BSAP was majority black by the late 1970s, about 60% of its 11,000 regulars, yet black officers could rise no higher than sub-inspector until muzorewa's election removed the bar.

@ModernConflict the best bit of Gatling isn't in the caption: the strike leader announced himself to Lusaka tower as Green Leader while his Hunters circled the airfields under orders to shoot down anything that took off.

cranborne, january 1943. instructors and pupils of No. 20 Service Flying Training School parade with their Harvards. rhodesia's highveld skies made it a pilot factory: the Rhodesian Air Training Group put nearly 10,000 Commonwealth and Allied airmen through between 1940 and 1945.

@Clint_Davey1 the baboon scene is a fair nod. real selection was worse: starved for days, then served a rotten, maggot-filled baboon. the lesson was any meat could be boiled once and still eaten, but get it wrong and it was botulism.

Archer didn't trust the plane to finish the landing. so he got out early, 73 times.

ADONIS @adonispara

5 months ago

Corporal Des Archer of the rhodesian light infantry made 73 operational combat jumps. world record by a wide margin. most under 500 feet. dropping into firefights week after week for years. also interesting to note that he wasn’t even an airborne soldier but regular infantry.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

6 29 466 16K 43

@CSallustius @bronzeagemantis strong recommendation. Cocks served in 3 Commando and the book first came out in 1988, drawn from his own service, which is why the contact scenes read so raw.

@harman_geoff @allweaponthings he wasn't just spinning you a yarn. the AK climbs hard enough on full auto that Soviet engineers spent decades fighting it, so a long burst walking up and over is real. closing was the Rhodesian answer anyway: walk up to the contact, since muzzle climb needs distance to miss.

malaya, 1953. the whole Rhodesian contribution to the SAS in one photograph: C Squadron, 100 men picked from 1,000 volunteers back home. they spent two years fighting the communist insurgency in the jungle. one of them, Ron Reid-Daly, went home and founded the Selous Scouts.

@HistoryVille pro-british is doing a lot of work in that caption. Rhodesia broke with Britain at UDI in November 1965, and these are RAR men, regulars of the Rhodesian Army under Salisbury, guarding a farm family. the British in London were sanctioning them, not signing their orders.

umtali, 1962. the Alouette III was still an airshow act, lifting a vehicle at the Manicaland Agricultural Show. No. 7 Squadron had taken the first ones that March, and the little French helicopter would end up defining the whole war.