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Old 08-18-2012, 03:18   #1
Guymullins
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Quite a nice photograph of a combat jump.

This was taken in 1978 during an assault on a fortified enemy base in Angola. We were under fairly heavy fire while descending so you can see I have unfastened my belly band so as to have my rifle immediately to hand on landing. The white cloud is in fact smoke from a bomb run made 3 minutes before P Hour.
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Old 08-18-2012, 08:26   #2
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What the Hell was your budy doing taking Photos on a Combat Jump?

Nice Photo.........
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Old 08-18-2012, 08:36   #3
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What the Hell was your budy doing taking Photos on a Combat Jump?

Nice Photo.........
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Old 08-18-2012, 08:36   #4
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What the Hell was your budy doing taking Photos on a Combat Jump?

Nice Photo.........
My thought as well. I have one blurred snapshot of my unit in contact taken by a friend and my first question to him when he showed it to me was: "Why weren't you shooting?"
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Old 08-18-2012, 08:40   #5
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Old 08-18-2012, 09:44   #6
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Nice photo!

Hairy situation, eh?
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Old 08-18-2012, 09:52   #7
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Originally Posted by Guymullins View Post
This was taken in 1978 during an assault on a fortified enemy base in Angola. We were under fairly heavy fire while descending so you can see I have unfastened my belly band so as to have my rifle immediately to hand on landing. The white cloud is in fact smoke from a bomb run made 3 minutes before P Hour.
Guy,

Would you mind giving more background history on the jump / mission. This is a great photo and as a Mid 70s Africa military history reader I would be fascinated to hear your account.
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Old 08-18-2012, 12:01   #8
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What the Hell was your budy doing taking Photos on a Combat Jump?

Nice Photo.........
SF, I was also taking pictures and a movie at the same time. One needs something to show the kids what Dad did in the war, or not?
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Old 08-18-2012, 12:21   #9
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Guy,

Would you mind giving more background history on the jump / mission. This is a great photo and as a Mid 70s Africa military history reader I would be fascinated to hear your account.
MK, the full account of this operation is in my book which is available from Amazon, either for Kindle or a printed copy (I suggest the printed copy so you can see the colour pictures in full colour) or you can buy the OC of the operations's book Eagle Strike from Bushwarrior.com.
My book is called The Battle for Cassinga by Mike McWilliams and the Colonels is Eagle Strike by Jan Breytenbach. If you dont feel like buying either one, the book Skymen, by Bob Kershaw has a chapter on the raid.
If you still dont want to read those, here is a very brief summary.
The base Cassinga was 250 km into enemy territory in Angola. It was SWAPOs main transit and training camp for terrorists infiltrating into South West Africa in the south. We only had the facilities to drop 367 paratroopers onto the camp, so we executed a box drop around the camp at the time of their morning parade. Although the camp housed around 5000 troops, we hoped that the element of surprise and a brief bombing run would enable us to prevail. For various reasons, the attack group was dropped half on one side of a river and half on the other, delaying the attack by at least an hour and a half. This meant that the fight which we had hoped would take about two hours lasted most of the day. The enemy was well entrenched and used AA guns both at us in the air and in a ground role. Eventually we prevailed and helicopters came to extract us. We only had enough choppers to take half of us out and then refuel and return for the other half. While we were at half strength, waiting for the second lift, an armoured column of Cubans arrived form a nearby base to help SWAPO. We blew up the lead tank with a mine we had laid for this eventuality, but had to destroy the other twenty odd vehicles with RPG fire and some help from a Buccaneer, who was out of ammo. We inflicted Cubas biggest single days loss of men in the war on that day and were finally extracted by chopper thereafter. Scorecard showed about 1500 SWAPO dead, 150 Cubans dead and 3 of our Paratroopers KIA and one MIA in the croc infested river.

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Old 08-18-2012, 12:36   #10
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MK, the full account of this operation is in my book which is available from Amazon, either for Kindle or a printed copy (I suggest the printed copy so you can see the colour pictures in full colour) or you can buy the OC of the operations's book Eagle Strike from Bushwarrior.com.
My book is called The Battle for Cassinga by Mike McWilliams and the Colonels is Eagle Strike by Jan Breytenbach. If you dont feel like buying either one, the book Skymen, by Bob Kershaw has a chapter on the raid.
If you still dont want to read those, here is a very brief summary.
The base Cassinga was 250 km into enemy territory in Angola. It was SWAPOs main transit and training camp for terrorists infiltrating into South West Africa in the south. We only had the facilities to drop 367 paratroopers onto the camp, so we executed a box drop around the camp at the time of their morning parade. Although the camp housed around 5000 troops, we hoped that the element of surprise and a brief bombing run would enable us to prevail. For various reasons, the attack group was dropped half on one side of a river and half on the other, delaying the attack by at least an hour and a half. This meant that the fight which we had hoped would take about two hours lasted most of the day. The enemy was well entrenched and used AA guns both at us in the air and in a ground role. Eventually we prevailed and helicopters came to extract us. We only had enough choppers to take half of us out and then refuel and return for the other half. While we were at half strength, waiting for the second lift, an armoured column of Cubans arrived form a nearby base to help SWAPO. We blew up the lead tank with a mine we had laid for this eventuality, but had to destroy the other twenty odd vehicles with RPG fire and some help from a Buccaneer, who was out of ammo. We inflicted Cubas biggest single days loss of men in the war on that day and were finally extracted by chopper thereafter. Scorecard showed about 1500 SWAPO dead, 150 Cubans dead and 3 of our Paratroopers KIA and one MIA in the croc infested river.
I'll get all three of those books.
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Old 08-18-2012, 13:26   #11
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I'll get all three of those books.
Dusty,
If you have Kindle, Skymen is an excellent history of paratrooping around the world and very good. Here is a picture taken at the launch of my book at Queen Victorias Rifles in London last December. Me with author of Skymen Bob Kershaw, who kindly attended.
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Old 08-18-2012, 14:21   #12
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Dusty,
If you have Kindle,
To quote Larry the Cableguy... "Now, that's some funny shit right there."
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Old 08-18-2012, 14:36   #13
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... and one MIA in the croc infested river.
Good Lord, given a choice I think I would rather be KIA than turned into croc crap...

For the life of me, I can't figure how folks live around them.
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Old 08-18-2012, 15:12   #14
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Good Lord, given a choice I think I would rather be KIA than turned into croc crap...

For the life of me, I can't figure how folks live around them.
They often dont.
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Old 08-18-2012, 16:07   #15
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To quote Larry the Cableguy... "Now, that's some funny shit right there."
lol He was playing it safe, Bro.
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