Here are a few photos from my checkered aviation career. I flew Africa off and on from 1987 up through the beginning of 1998 in Ethiopia and what is now Eritrea, including operations in Angola, Cabinda, Kenya, Sudan, Egypt, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, and Djibouti. Our Hercs could have also been seen in Senegal, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Ivory Coast and Zaire. And that's just Africa.

These are a few shots that I have digitized from that period.


The above is one of our Southern Air Transport Hercs launching from the old dirt strip at Lokichokio, Kenya, heading for a food relief airdrop in the southern Sudan, probably Malindi or Maridi.

Flying the Herc off dirt was a piece of cake. All you need is three thousand feet of unobstructed road, taxi strip, or hard packed veldt, and you have an airport. We often landed on strips in the Sudan that were literally torn from the bush by villagers using pangas and their hands. They would dig up the thorn and mopane and fill in the holes with dirt dug up elsewhere by hand, carried in small quanities with old food bags that had been dropped in, and then packed down hard by hundreds of human feet. The energy and effort expended by those hunger-weakened Dinka tribesmen never ceased to amaze and humble me.



This is a photo of one of our Hercs, N520SJ, that was attacked by the treacherous Sudanese Army at Wao, Sudan. The aircraft was under contract with the International Committee of the Red Cross, bringing food to the starving. Apparently, when the Red Cross refused to pay an exorbitant bribe demanded by the base commander, he had an anti-tank mine planted in the departure end of one of the runways and then insisted upon the aircraft taking off on that particular runway. When the nosewheels contacted the mine, it blew. No one was killed, but the Captain suffered an injured spine, the Flight Engineer suffered a compound fracture of the right thigh, as his seat was positioned directly above the nosewheels, and the First Officer, a female, suffered a fractured heel. The aircraft immediately caught fire and the FO would have been killed, as she was trapped in the aircraft, but the loadmaster rushed back into the burning cockpit and dragged her out. She suffered minor burns, as well. The Sudanese gave morphine to the other crewmembers but refused her an injection because she was a woman. It took eight hours for a UN King Air to arrive and evacuate the five crewmembers to Nairobi hospital.

As a vivid example of the incredible toughness and tenacity of the Herc, all engine controls, both electrical and mechanical, were severed in the explosion, preventing the Captain from shutting the engines down prior to evacuation. The engines, however, continued to run for four hours until their fuel was exhausted, as the fire went out by itself.

The engines and other servicable parts and pieces were never recovered, at least not by us. Those Allisons went for a million bucks a copy in those days and the props cost a couple hundred grand each, not to mention all the other servicable parts that remained. I would imagine that the Sudanese air force ended up with a few unexpected spares, if they weren't too stupid to figure out how to successfully steal them.



This is a shot of a bush engine change, likely in the Sudan, somewhere in rebel-held territory. We generally got along well with both sides, with the notable exception posted above, because we were feeding everybody in government-held and rebel-held territories alike.

Our mechanics, all British contract guys, (engineers, to you Europeans and Middle Easterners), were the best. They worked and partied as hard as any group of people that I have ever met. Those guys permanently endeared me to the British. They did almost impossible tasks with extremely limited facilities and few special tools, changing propellers, engines, and fixing various aircraft systems under the most demanding field conditions imaginable. They kept us flying in some of Africa's most miserable civil wars and failed states, time and time again. I could write a book about those guys and how much we respected them. Ted Putwain, Steve Channing, Mick Shaw, Paul Collinson...I can't recall all their names anymore, and several have since gone west, but they have a home in my home, anytime.



A more recognizable shot of the thumbnail above. I'll get this picture posting down soon enough. Anyway...



This is a shot of N908SJ parked on the ramp at Benguela, Angola, during the civil war. As you can tell, it was a contract aircraft for the ICRC. We flew Angola for years, at no slight risk. UNITA was equipped with Stinger missles, compliments of some three-letter agency that I won't mention, and they were used against Hercs to great effectiveness. None of our aircraft were ever hit, because we flew HIGH, but some of Trans America's were shot down as well as Transafrik's, and I lost a friend and former collegue to two missles fired at the same airplane. Not a very cost effective way to murder an aircrew, but, after all, this *is* Africa and normal rules do not apply.

You'll notice the red crosses painted on the aircraft. It always made me nervous when they insisted on painting one up front. As long as only one was painted on the tail, it served as the only aiming point and the bullets would pass behind the aircraft, most Angolan rebels never having hunted ducks. But if they aimed at the front one, you'd likely get hit in the tail, and there was a lot of really neat stuff back there necessary for flight.

More Hercs were destroyed in Angola by hostile action than in Viet Nam.

We flew both contracts for NGO's such as the aforementioned Red Cross, and also for commercial enterprises, supplying the diamond mines with bread and beer. I even flew a Porsche roadster out to Dundo one time. Don't know where the owner thought he was going to drive it, since UNITA had mined everything in sight.

Benguela, by the way, is one of the world's most pestilential shitholes, surpassed by several others in Africa, though, notably among them, Luanda. I was based in both places. All you had to do to occupy your time was drink cheap Russian vodka and listen to the BBC on the shortwave. Going for a walk was fruitless, as there was nothing to see but human misery and destruction. The only good things about Benguela were the weather and the runway.

Lubito was close by, Red Cross HQ, rumored to be populated by members of the gentler sex employed by the Red Cross, but we never saw any. I guess the Red Cross figured it was safer for all concerned to keep the cowboys on the reservation, and they were likely correct.

I can only wish that I had seen Angola before the rampant destruction that occured there during the decades-long civil war. All reports have it thriving with game. I know that all the towns I got to see from the air in daylight appeared to have once been beautiful, before the roofs of all the buildings were blown off or chopped up for firewood and all the windows shot out.

Angola was the most incredible hellhole, with one exception, Somalia, that I've ever experienced.

It was fun, very challenging flying, though, and I got to see Africa in ways that very few ever have or ever will. I wouldn't trade my African experiences for anything.

Stunning pictures and a great story - thanks!

High praise, coming from you. Thanks.

I'll get some more Africa stuff digitized and posted, particualarly some stuff from Kenya, Somalia, and Angola.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
High praise, coming from you. Thanks.

I'll get some more Africa stuff digitized and posted, particualarly some stuff from Kenya, Somalia, and Angola.

Please, please - more, please.
I enjoy this immensely. And BTW, when you speak of how terrible things were in Angola, did you ever go into Djoubti? Of all the places I have ever been, this and Karachi were undoubtedly the very worse. Comparisons?

I really enjoyed Djibouti, although I was there for two weeks in July. It was so hot at 2 PM that I had trouble walking across the ramp to the FS station, without drinking a liter of water.

We initially stayed at the Ali Sabieh Hotel downtown, which had tiny rooms, extremely effective AC's, and a pizza parlour downstairs that had the coldest beer in the country, the fantastic Belgian Stella Artois on draft, at decent prices.

The company moved us to the Sheraton in a week or so, which was a lot warmer, (and so was the beer, at five bucks a mug), and more boring, although the Air France stews around the pool made for good eye candy. The food, though, was great and the rooms were like any other Sheraton you've ever stayed in. I liked the little Arab hotel better and we used to return there for more pizza and beer.

I was flying trips into Makele, Ethiopia just after the end of the civil war, (not the recent conflicts), landing on the taxi strip, as the runway had been bombed out and cratered by Ethiopian Migs when the Tigres overran the airport.

We met a couple of American kids at the Ali Sabieh who had four complete sets of SCUBA equipment, ten tanks, and a compressor. They were there trying to get a tropical fish collection permit, to no avail. They had gotten stuck in Yemen for a couple of weeks, trying to do the same thing.

Anyway, they showed us some videos of the diving offshore and we told them about Ethiopia. We shared some beers for several evenings and my FE and I decided to invite them to go to Makele with us. They readily agreed, so the next day, we strapped them into the Herc and blasted off. When we popped out of the overcast and I lined up on the taxi strip, which, like the runway, was dirt, one kid yelled, "We're gonna land on that??" I told him no sweat. Bobby had installed him in the engineer's seat and was standing behind my seat, so the kid got a perfect view of the approach and landing, which was a piece of cake, because the strip was at least five thousand feet long.

He took video of the trip, which, of course, I have never seen since.

A couple of days later, they invited us to go diving with them. They had rented a boat, if you could call it that, and we met them at the dock and took off. We hit a huge patch reef about a mile offshore and got wet.

The visibility was at least 150, and the fish had obviously never seen people before. We saw some of the most beautiful sights on that reef that I've ever seen anywhere, going as deep as 65 feet and up to the surface. The variety of the most beautiful tropical fish that you can imagine and wide variety of corals were still the highlights of the most incredible dive I have ever made. We were very likely diving a virgin reef, and I'll never forget it.

The American Club was cool, too. You could drop in, say hello, and they'd fix you up with good hamburgers and cold Bud. They had a small pool, too, and it was clean.

Now, I understand that the place is overrun with Americans. In those days, about the only whites you saw were a few tourists who were dumb enough to visit Djibouti in July, us, the Air France crews, and the Foreign Legion troops.

I loved the place. Some of the most fun I ever had in Africa.

I can go on for hours about Angola, one of the world's foremost shitholes.

The harbour in Luanda is beautiful. Don't know if you've been to Copa Cabana in Rio, but the sidewalks along the beach are all made of hand-laid mosaic tiles. Seems to be a Portuguese tradition or style. Beautiful work.

Luanda harbour has a similiar walkway around the harbour on the city side. Well, there are some bus benches left over from when Angola was a functioning country and the Portuguese still ran the place. When I was there, it was common to look out of one's hotel room in the Presidente Meridien Hotel, a chain owned by Air France, and see some Angolan with his pants around his knees, squatting on the bus bench, taking a dump right onto those beautiful mosaic tiles. Did anyone come around to clean it up? Are you kidding? I had pictures of this, but all those pics were destroyed when I lost my house and its contents in hurricane Andrew in 1992. And people bitch about the dog crap on Paris's city streets. They should visit Luanda.

Bet you never saw anything like that in Djibouti. The Arabs would have emasculated the offender.

And the amputees. You will never see so many amputees, except maybe in Cambodia, where I've never been. Most of the ones that I saw are likely dead now, but there's a new crop of amputees a-borning every day in Angola.

The number of land mines planted in the country are legion, their exact numbers and locations known only to God and their victims. Before her death, Princess Diana was leading the charge to clear the Angolan mine fields, but I don't know if any real progresss has ever been made, other than having women and kids step on them and detonate them.

I had never imagined that so many one- or no-legged people existed in one place. No prosthetics. Just whatever they can use as a crutch, or a sheet of cardboard, if they are lucky, for the ones with both legs gone to slide down the road with. Freaking pitiful.

Pampered hunters never see my Africa. Everybody gets hand-carried from the airport to the hotel, led through customs, a driver to take you where you want to go, hand-carried to the airport, hand-flown to the camp, and back out the same way until they help you clear your rifle out of whatever country you're in. But I have seen a different Africa, and it has permanently affected me. Starving children, people dying of cholera epidemics in refugee camps, thousands of people in the camps dying of starvation, villagers in the bush unable to plant food crops because some bastard has sown their shambas with land mines, a man shot down with a burst of AK fire in the back a few yards behind my aircraft by an Angolan soldier while running away from the airplane undergoing uploading, with a stolen mattress on his head...all this almost tore my heart out and I experienced it for years. That I am now occasionally able to return there to enjoy a hunt and ignore what I know to be going on a few hundred or a few thousand miles away I suppose says something about the ability of the human mind to recover.

I love hunting Africa, the great natural beauty, the variety of game, the thrill of the hunt, the great people that you meet on these trips...all are unequaled, and my recent Buff hunt in Tanzania was a highlight of my life.

Africa, though, is a continent wracked by violence. Thankfully, many of the post-colonial wars have died down or are gone completely due to the demise of the Soviets and the lack of concern about Africa from the west, other than to pour millions into the place, much of which is promptly stolen and squirrled away by those in power. Endemic corruption is a permanent situation in Africa, just like lions will always hunt Buffalo. You just deal with it and get on with things.

But Somalia is about to blow once again...

Fred

Here's a shot of one of the guys making a low pass at Lokichokio, Kenya. Youll notice from his exhaust plumes that he just pulled up a bit to avoid hitting the photographer. This was customary when a crew had finished a tour and was rotating out for home.

Used to drive the UN contingent nuts. Just wasn't their cup of tea. One guy, one of our favorite mad men, Capt. Ray Browning, went across the UN camp one day at 280 knots at about twenty feet and flew off into the afternoon and returned about thirty minutes later. That one got some attention. He went over so low and fast that nobody got his number, but there was a lot of yelling and grinding of teeth over at the Club Med that evening.

One of the really neat things about flying the Sudan in those days was that there were only jungle rules. You could do whatever you could get away with, and we got away with a lot. It was real freedom flying in some parts of Africa. No matter how bad things got, we always managed to raise some hell in some stiff-necked quarter or another. The UN bigwigs hated us, but we didn't give a shit because we knew they knew that they couldn't operate without us. And they always had lousy intel.

It's good to see you can have fun in the "heavies". Like that character that rolled the first 707.

quote:

The engines and other servicable parts and pieces were never recovered, at least not by us. Those Allisons went for a million bucks a copy in those days and the props cost a couple hundred grand each, not to mention all the other servicable parts that remained. I would imagine that the Sudanese air force ended up with a few unexpected spares, if they weren't too stupid to figure out how to successfully steal them.

"Those Allisons went for a million bucks" Were those Allisons the 501D22A variants? That is the one I'm most familar with. When you speak of 'durable' you can say the Allison turbo wrote the book on the subject. We flew five of the C130's in the role of the L100 variant - civilan paint and little else different. The only difference was that we had two of the A/F time fleet leaders in the world when we retired them. Some of these aircraft flew unbeliveble hours daily, even had 'Tee-Trays' to offload, arrange and reload them on the tarmac, often did a load change without shutting down. That didn't happen very often with a civilian aircraft.
BTW, still looking for more of your interesting photos.

Yep, that's the engine. A great engine, if their ever was one. They operated in the dusty environment of northern Kenya and Ethiopia a lot longer than everyone thought they would.

I may be a bit high on the cost of the props, but they are expensive. I seem to recall they were Ham Standard 54H60's. Damned things would kill you, though.

We did a lot of hot up and downloads, particularly in Angola. Nobody wanted to be stuck in Kuito or Dundo, so we would leave them running.

I truly loved the Herc. Although I flew the 747 for two years, if you look around my living room, about the only airplane pictures you'll see are of Hercs.

I've been looking through some pictures that I can take over to WalMart and have loaded onto a CD. Just haven't had time to do it yet, but I promised Wendell Reich personally that I'd do it, so I will.

Just had to drive ten hours round trip to Miami yesterday to pick up my trophies from last year's hunt, so I have skull mounts and a couple of shoulder mounts scattered all over the house. I'll get the pics done in a couple of weeks.

I lost a bunch in Hurricane Andrew when my house went, but I still have some of Africa and a bunch of ariels from Antarctica, but I doubt if I should post the Antarctic shots on this forum. All that ice is about as un-African as you can get.

Thanks for great stories and pictures of a wonderful aircraft. I sure miss my flying days. Nothing as exciting as yours, but fun in its own way.

Jetdrvr,

I flew with a bunch of ex SAT guys over at ATI in the 90's. It seems that in about 1995 SAT was going to pot and bunch of the SAT guys came over to ATI. Which of course, also later went to pot which ALL airlines do eventually. I'm on my third airline and my second major as we speak.

Did you know Art Zoterelli? He was a Herc driver over at SAT.

Thanks for the pictures and the stories.

Sorry I took so long to answer. I got hacked and spied and had to wipe my drive, which means that I've lost all the pics I posted here, plus about a thousand others.

I knew Art very well. His father is mentioned in Ernest K Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" and Art grew up at Gann's knee. He flew Hercs, 8's and 747's at SAT and was very well respected. I trained with him in the 747 sim.

Art is a first rate pilot and first rate individual. I knew a few other guys over at ATI as well, just don't remember their names at the moment. I think, though, that a former SAT FE, Robbie Robinson, flew for ATI, also. It's been a while.

SAT crumbled in 1998. Nobody believes me when I tell African stories about SAT's exploits. Already got run off one forum for doing that.

There are still a couple of SAT guys working in Africa. One owns a maintenance facility in Entebbe and is currently bolting the tail back onto an old SAT Herc at Lokichokio, Kenya. Many went to work with both SAFAIR and Trans Afrik after the SAT disintegration. I think SAFAIR dumped all their American pilots. One I know and often correspond with now owns a motel in Arkansas. He was the second Captain in history to ever command a Herc on a flight from Capetown to Antarctica.

SAT was a remarkable airline and operated all over the world from Alaska to Antarctica and around the long way. Best times of my life, other than my recent Buffalo hunt.

And I like your signature line. I had precisely that happen to me in RSA in 2005. If there's ever a next time, I'll ignore it and just shoot.

This photo of a Hercules taking off from Lokichokio, Kenya was photographed and recently sent to me from my friend, Joe Holt, who is currently working on the previously-mentioned Herc in Loki. Great shot. Enjoy.

The photo is copyright Joe Holt, used by permission.

Thanks for the reply.

Art and I went through ground school together at ATI we became friends. Unfortunately I've fallen out of contact with him.

When I got hired at ATI there were like 18 guys in my class and most of them were SAT guys. I am fully aware of the stuff that was going on in Africa.

Which site tossed you?

My goal when I was a young man was to do exactly the type of flying you guys did at SAT. I got to do some variations of it but never the full meal deal like you guys did with SAT.

Thanks for the pictures and the stories.

Are you still flying for a living?

I got tossed off the African Hunters Forum because nobody believed I flew through four African civil wars, and also because I have strong views on not supporting dictatorial African States. A couple of guys who also post on this forum were instrumental in really pissing me off, so I left. Life is too short, particularly at my age.

I have nothing to prove. I proved it long ago to those that count, and the lives we saved during our missions into disturbed areas are the only reward I ever will want for my efforts. I certainly do not need the approval of individuals who drop in and out of a place for a couple of weeks per year and then assume they are authorities. Africa and its death and destruction caused me a lot of problems for several years. Only recently have I returned to hunt there, and my last hunt, which will likely be my last African adventure, helped tremendously in excising my African demons.

I gave up flying in 1998. I retired early, simply because I burned out flying the 747. The Herc was rewarding, adventurous flying. The 747 was take off, climb out, plug in coordinates for ten hours and jump ten time zones, descend, land, and go to the hotel. Additionally SAT was in its death throes and management was eating its young. So we had a mutual disagreement and I departed.

I had two more job offers, one as an 8 capt. and the other as a 747 captain, but I had had enough after 39 years. I'm now 64, wearing two hearing aids and sporting a case of COPD. Plus, I've been blind in my right eye since 1966. I am aviation-unemployable and don't care. I don't miss flying. The only thing I that I do miss are the good times we had in Africa and Papua New Guinea and such places, and those are gone forever. So are many of those that I shared them with.

Jet,

I hear you partner. I am flying a B-777 for a living now.

Glad to hear that you got back in the saddle with your African hunt.

The average schmo doesn´t have a clue as to what goes on in this great big world. It´s pretty tough to get the big picture from behind a desk at the corporate office.

I don´t even go into where I´ve been and what I´ve done and seen around the world as it is incomprehensible to the average 9 to 5 ´er.

I am writing this message from Uruguay, I was in Brasil yeaterday and I´ll be in Colombia and Guatamala tommorrow, Mexico the next day.

I am in awe of you guys, you have my deepest respect.

jetdrvr,

It is ironic how many times we could have crossed paths. I lived in Djibouti from 1985 to 1990, did a lot of diving off Moucha, Maskali and in the Goubet. I made several trips to Ethiopia during that period and to Eritrea (Massawa and Asmara) right after the civil war there. Since I still travel frequently in East Africa I have changed planes in Loki a couple of times on my way to Juba, although now things are calmed down and there are direct flights from Nairobi to Juba. Just last month I was in Djibouti once again after a trip to Juba. You are correct, there are many Americans now in Djibouti but you wouldn't know it in town. I guess they are all confined to the bases for security reasons. Djibouti now has a couple of luxury hotels and a new one called the Kempinski. I stayed at the Hotel Plein Ciel just because I like being right next to bars in town. In fact while there I met with AR member ROMAG who is stationed there. It's nice to see that others get around as well.

I have a friend who was in the railroad business, sort of, and spent some time in Angola and Zaire/Belgian Congo during the late 1960s. His pictures of Katanga in Zaire and the Benguela Railroad from there to the Angolan port of Lobito(?) are incredible! The Belgians and Portuguese seem to have left their former African colonies in worse shape, or at least less well prepared, for self-rule than either the English or the French.

It is too bad that there isn't, and probably never will be, a pan-African infrastructure construction program to build a comprehensive, modern, network of roads, railroads, electric power generation and distribution grids for the good of the people. Besides the positive outcome, such a project would employ hundreds of thousands of people and pump billions of $$ into the African economy.

Are there any competent political leaders in all of sub-Saharan Africa?

Jeff

260, you might be surprised at how much has been spent in infrastructure development in Africa over the last 30 years. There are in fact numerous projects for infrastructure improvements on the African continent. There are even continent wide initiatives through NEPAD (New Initiative on African Development) and the firm I work for participates in many of them. Billions have been spent on infrastructure with money from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Development Fund and USAID to mention just a few of the biggest donors and lenders.

But roads that were built 15 years ago are already turning back to dirt because of a lack of maintenance and are now being rebuilt. Civil wars stop projects cold. Misuse of funds creates donor-fatigue and leads to conditions precedent clauses for disbursement. The refusal to give/lend because of inefficient institutions requires that countries first clean up their acts and many are dramatically slow about it, or don't do it all. The problem is not a lack of will on the part of the donors nor a lack of money.

Other than Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan, I've never been impressed by any black African leader. I don't know if Mandela did anything worthwhile in SA, but he was good at sound bites. It seems to me that Kofi Annan used his position at the UN as a license to steal from the "Oil For Food" program between 1993 and 2003. Wasn't Annan's Son 1 of the primary thieves?

With 2/3 of all people with AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa doesn't need leaders like Thabo Mbeki, in SA, and Yahya Jammah, in Gambia.

Well, if folks won't use condoms for birth control or protection against STDs, I guess that Mother Nature will control over-population via starvation and pestilence, just like she always has.

Jeff

I spent a lot of years at no slight risk, trying to help the bush African in several countries, survive. That's not a self-serving statement, so please don't interpret it that way.

Unless and until tribalism and corrupt rulers change their ways, infrastructure and all of Africa will continue to suffer.

I certainly don't have an easy answer.

We did what we could, drank ourselves occasionally insensible from outright frustration, and went home.

I like to think, and a friend of mine and I who flew there for years agree, that we did some good, at least for the poor people out in the bush who were starving due to both intentional and unintentiional circumstances.

I love Africa, but I despise those like Mugabe, in particular and Mbeki as well, who typically use their positions to line their own pockets with aid money. Donor fatigue is a definite problem, as many good hearted people, such as hundreds of Canadian wheat farmers who donated to the Sudanese thing, watch their efforts go for naught.

I did learn on another forum, to my delight, though, that one may now visit Juba, Sudan and find comfortable lodging for sixty bucks a night, with a view of the Nile. When I was flying into Juba during the late 80's and early 90's, it was approach at FL 180, go flaps fifty, 45 degree left bank, and spiral down overhead to avoid SAMs. Same way out. In those days, a salt shaker full to the brim was selling, so I was told by Agence France Presse reporter we flew out, for a hundred bucks U.S. Maybe we did some good, after all. But there is, after all, Darfur, and the Western "democracies" only pay lip service to that slaughter. Nobody much cares about bush Africans, truth told.

And surestrike, I can truly relate. Heck of a note, but Uruguay is the only South American country that I never visited. Used to do Brasil and Paraguay, Chile and Colombia a lot. Always found Paraguay, the only country in the world that is an organized Continuing Criminal Enterprise, very interesting. Very strange place, to say the least.

And Wink, the coldest beer in Djibouti when I was there was the pizza joint in the Ali Sabieh hotel. Also had the coldest air conditioners in the country. Only trouble was, the rooms were handkerchief-sized, and I was doubled up with my flight engineer, so we moved to the Sheraton just to spread out. I'll never forget that little Arab hotel, though. The AC frosted my moustache. And you know how July in Djibouti feels. I really liked the place.

260remguy, try not to put too much blame on the Portuguese and the Belgians for leaving the place a shambles. As in Mozambique, they got slaughtered by the "freedom fighters." (You might research Col. Mike Hoare's eastern Congo campaigns during the 60's, supported by Cuban pilots flying American aircraft- gee, wonder who those guys were- and supported by some Swift boats that materialized, to interdict arms smuggling into the Congo across Lake Tanganyika). Those countries were functioning entities under colonial control, and when they left, civil war and communist insurrection occurred, destroying much of what was built. There were some beautiful cities in Angola, until the Africans shot them up, bombed them flat, or burned the building roofs for firewood, when they weren't busy shooting themselves in their collective feet.

There are now stories circulating about American special ops involvement in eastern Congo and wholesale slaughter taking place among various refugee groups. Rwanda is very much in play. As you are probably aware, both Angola and the Congo are bursting with mineral wealth. The fight over that wealth has been going on almost constantly since the end of colonialism, although I just read about a free election in Angola, which, if it comes off, will be a bloody miracle.

Africa is all about looting and shooting, sponsored by or in the interests of transnationals, and the hell with the bush African. Same old sickening story.

(Stepping off soapbox, taking two deep breaths, and vowing to stick to aviation topics furthermore.)

Elkman...

Thank you. We're just guys exercising our chosen profession. If you'd told me in 1968 that I would wander the world and experience it in a very unique way with some of the finest aviators who ever started an engine, I would have laughed out loud. One never knows where a wanderer will go. If I could do it all over again, there are only a few things that I would change. I would start hunting Africa when I was younger and bringing in the bucks.

Dealing with retirement is killing me when the Somalis couldn't, though. Don't think I can handle this much longer. There's no adreneline rush watching Fox News. "The sound of distant thunder..." and all that.

Jetdrvr, they weren't 'Switees' - they were there, allright, but another type of boat. I'd sure like to sit and chew the fat with you for awhile but have no desire to post up what I'd like to talk about, certainly not here in a public forum.
I will say, for anyone interested in the subject, the average Portuguese in Angola, or Portuguese West Africa as it was known then, had a lifestyle that could never ever be duplicated in Portugal - and they knew this. They also knew what awaited them if they returned to Portugal, much the same as the 'pied noirs' from North Africa found when they returned to France.
The US of A, both of them, were vitally interested in what went down and made many attempts to insure the 'right' folks won. In an attempt to prevent cross-border operations by SWAPO forces, the South African military and the South African Defense Forces, cleared a strip of land in Angola extending nearly half the length of the border or some 800km.
Remember the old B4 bags? I've seen those things full of money put in-country by 'company' types, money that was to be used to influence and bribe the selected powers in the country.
You referenced 1968 in your post and I assure you, it was going down before that by at least several years - based on what I know, it started in Mozambique and spread, at least for the former Portuguese colonies. But that is enough for now.
Best regards and keep up the good posts.

I took a trip down to Ongiva, Angola from Benguela one fine day, with a load of food for the hungry during one of the "truces" between MPLA and UNITA. We had a bit of a problem locating the correct strip, as one Omega unit put us over one airport and the number two Omega put us over another one. (Didn't have GPS then, as the company wasn't forced to install them, yet).

The correct airport turned out to sport a good paved runway, but the terminal building was a wreck, with the roof blown off and the walls, those standing, blown full of holes from South African cannon fire. Seems the South African Air Force dropped by one morning and left a calling card.

I used to skydive with several South Africans, among them a former SA paratrooper and a former SA commando who had both fought in Angola and had personally taken over the portion of the country you spoke of. They had some stories to tell. They also fought in what is now Namibia.

I'm aware of the plight of the Mozambiqan Portuguese. A real tragedy, common to Africa. The new owners seem to be attempting to get things started up, but they will never equal what once was.

You're right about the boats. They weren't classic Swifties. Mad Mike in his book, Congo Mercenary, calls them P.T. boats, but they carried no torpedoes. They were supplied by friends of Mobutu to interdict the flow of arms coming across Lake Tanganyika, and they worked very well. They were also used as invasion boats, carrying mercs up and down the lakeshore to interdict communist forces.

The airplanes involved, as I seem to recall, were B-26's and T-28's, flown by Cuban mercenary pilots, paid by the Belgians? Well, maybe.

And I'd enjoy kicking a few stories around with you, somewhere, to quote Jimmy Buffet, other than here.

Ciao.

Wink,

I was based in Asmera during December and January, 87/88, flying to Axum, Makele, Massawa, and a couple of other spots I don't recall at the moment. I was also later based in Addis at the Hilton, God love it, (they had passable ice cream and some of the hottest food I've ever eaten).

I always thought it idiosyncratic that the monument to capitalism, the Hilton, was situated at the top of the hill, and a twenty-foot-high statue of Vladimir Lenin was situated at the bottom of the hill... And they distilled some really nasty stuff they euphemistically called brandy. It'd take the paint off a Bentley. The beer wasn't bad, though, and the coffee was some of the best in the world. And the women were absolutely beautiful, the ones hanging around the hotel. Not the ones carrying wood on their heads, walking down the mountain from the church.

The thing that impressed me the most about Addis was the soldier we had guarding the front door. He was equipped with the ubiquitous AK, a Makarov, full magazine pouches, a couple of Chinese grenades, and couldn't have been a day over twelve. You could tell by his demeanor that he would happily shoot anyone his boss told him to shoot. He was my first experience with African child soldiers.