And now for something different - a firebase (or at least the Portuguese equivalent
). In this case, we are talking about Zala, where my father was posted. This was taken in late 1966 and depicts the start of an operation of the Companhia de Caçadores 1581:
The helis are lifting off from the end of the runaway - it was usually used by the T-6 Texans (used as bombers) and by the Dornier Do-27 (small cargo/transport plane). There were never airplanes/helis permanently stationed in Zala, they usually were deployed from either Nambuangongo or Luanda.
Behind the trucks, you can see the artillery pits but at the time they only had heavy mortars there. The white building isn't a hospital, but a church. The firebase was built around it (and around some abandoned plantations from the start of the war). Those parallel "trenches" on the ground were dirt benches - they used the front of the church as a cinema screen
While talking with my father, we searched the net for more pictures and found some interesting ones:
Zala in 1969
http://www.prof2000.pt/users/secjeste/arkidigi/zala01.htmAnd here's Zala in 74/75 (these photos are from a blog, not from my father). Some improvements were made:
http://zala.fotosblogue.com/An aerial view (from the same blog as above):
And something strange happened. We found the "official" blog of the Batalhão de Caçadores that relieved my father's Battalion in Zala, in July 1967
http://zala-batca1919.blogspot.pt/2009/06/biografia-do-batalhao-cacadores-1919.htmlLots of (small) pictures to see there. It's a pity that my father's Battalion doesn't have something similar.
One thing that my father wants to get straight: regular troops - "Caçadores" - were also deployed by chopters. In fact, they did lots of missions where they were heli-transported. The Alouette III wasn't only used by the Comandos and the Pára-Quedistas, like it says on the Wikipedia and lots of other places.
My father hated flying in them for various reasons:
- it was cramped, they squeezed 4 guys on the back seats plus one on the floor, with his back against the pilot, while another was seated at the side of the pilot. In the case of casualties, the guy on the floor would go on another heli and the stretcher would take his place. The seated soldiers had to try not to step on the injured soldier while attending to him. It could also take a extra stretcher but then it would only take 2 soldiers and the pilot.
- it was noisy as hell
My father never jumped from one - he saw some guys doing it but most of them ended with broken legs - they never had any specific training like the Comandos/Páras. Most of the times the Alouette III would land and them they would disembark.
As far as I can tell, most of the soldiers seemed to have a love/hate relationship with them, at least in Angola. They were considered useful in the gunship/medevac role but they had a big problem - when it started to get dark, they stopped flying. My father said we never saw a heli after 5PM and they ended loosing soldiers that could have been saved if evacuated to Luanda.
On a personal note, I usually go to an anual scale modelling show in a Air Base near my city. 2 years ago, they had an Open Base Day on that same date and me and my brother took the time to visit all the airplanes/helis on display. We ended up talking with the crew of an Alouette III with the SAR role. They noticed that I was looking at a little plate bolted at the back of the flight compartment, that said that the airframe of the heli was from...1968
Basicaly they said that yes, the helis are really old...but the engines are relatively new (reconditioned at OGMA) and some of the avionics are also new. How do they conserve the helis like that? - Everything is oiled up after a flight, even a short one. And after X-hours (can't remember the exact time) the engines would be taken out of the helicopter, dismantled and oiled up
. Here's the official site for that Alouette Squadron:
http://www.emfa.pt/www/po/esquadra/esq552It was one of the first to receive the helis from France, in 1963.
To finish this post a question:
My father swears he saw Puma helis in 1968...but they weren't Portuguese. They were all painted black and their crews were South-African. They even had a codename for them - primos (cousins). Does anyone know if this is true? My mother had a co-worker's husband who was a Pára in Angola in 1971 that says the same thing - there were South-African Puma helis supporting our troops.
I've got these books, about the SA involvement, in my "To Read" pile:
http://www.wook.pt/ficha/alcora/a/id/15020472http://www.wook.pt/ficha/a-mao-sul-africana/a/id/15560636but more info would be appreciated
27 May 2011, 12:07:45 AM