Startling in its innovation and daringly suicidal, Operation Dingo was
not only the Fireforce concept writ large but the prototype for all the
major Rhodesian airborne attacks on the external bases of Rhodesian
African nationalist insurgents in the neighboring territories of
Mozambique and Zambia until such operations ceased in late 1979.
Fireforce as a military concept is a 'vertical envelopment' of the enemy
(first practiced 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 DC-3 Dakotas. In support would be propeller-driven
ground-attack aircraft and on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker
Hunter and Vampire jets.
On 23 November 1977, the Rhodesian Air Force and 184 SAS and RLI
paratroopers attacked 10,000 ZANLA cadres based at 'New Farm', Chimoio,
90 kilometres inside Mozambique. Two days later, the same force attacked
4,000 guerrillas at Tembué, another ZANLA base, over 200 kilometres
inside Mozambique, north of Tete on the Zambezi River. Estimates of
ZANLA losses vary wildly; however, a figure exceeding 6,000 casualties
is realistic. The Rhodesians suffered two dead, eight wounded and lost
one aircraft. It would produce the biggest SAS-led external battle of
the Rhodesian bush war.
