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My five years of operational time with SOAF (Sultanate of Oman Air Force) were spent doing alternating detachments between Salalah in the south and Muscat up north. I finally transferred permanently onto the Viscount in 1973. I was to serve as a pilot with SOAF for ten years until 1978 and after that as a civil pilot for Gulf Air until 1982, over fourteen years in Oman. The early days in SOAF were interesting in that our only aircraft were the Dakota, Beaver and Piston Provost.
Salalah itself was an old
waypoint for Imperial Airways. SOAF originally occupied some of the Imperial
Airways buildings on the edge of the airfield, a little arched structure,
in front of which, buried under the barbed wire, was a concrete plinth
in the shape of the old Imperial Airways and later BOAC 'Speedbird' insignia.
This harked back to an era of open cockpit long distance flights by converted
Vickers Vimy bombers to and from African and India destinations.
In addition to the rocky
nature of the ground with its good cover it also entered an area of fairly
dense bush. This was sustained by the intrusion of the annual monsoon and
that provided not only good cover for the enemy but the life giving water
they needed to maintain their food supply in the form of goats and the
grazing that the rain provided. The monsoon was a feature of this southern
part of Oman and the rains watered a fertile crescent around Salalah and
the hills to the north but ceased abruptly just a few miles inland, going
from bush country to arid desert within a very few yards.
Salalah |
Salalah |
The hangar at Salalah |
Unpacking bombs |
Local help |
The yearly battle for control of that vital road link that carried the much needed heavy supplies between Muscat and Salalah was necessitated by this annual monsoon that lasted from June to September. During the monsoon period it was no longer feasible to defend the road and the low cloud and rain precluded close air support for the troops on the ground. They were harried incessantly by the Adoo, enemy groups, who could approach their positions with ease under cover of the weather and set up ambush points very close to the road. The Adoos' .50 heavy machine guns played havoc with the road convoys. Their ability to melt into the surrounding hills at the first sign of retaliation and to link up with further groups waiting in the wings made pursuit and engagement an extremely hazardous undertaking. I have many entries in my flying logbook indicating the intensity of some of the engagements when attempting to open the road or to extend the open season. "Scramble to Ambush Corner" figures fairly frequently, plus many such support attacks to various call signs that were under siege. It therefore became necessary to abandon the road at the onset of the monsoon and retire behind a defensive ring of 'Hedgehog' gun positions that encircled the relatively safe enclave around the airfield and the town of Salalah. This enclave was situated on the flat, coastal, horseshoe-shaped plain. Raysut stood at the western end of this plain and Marbat at the eastern end. Despite the defences the Adoo made almost nightly incursions to mine the surrounding tracks and blow up the Falaj, the water system, that supplied fresh water to the garrison.
The Adoo would descend into the lower foothills surrounding Salalah under cover of darkness, fire off half a dozen Katyusha rockets and retire once again into the hills. Fortunately for the garrison it was at the limit of the rockets' range and not too many fell within the enclosure but it was still deemed wise to have a wall of sand-filled rocket boxes surrounding your bed.
A couple of incidents help to illustrate that, despite the range, the odd rocket did get into the compound. One of the chaps had a little motorbike that he used, just to run up and down between the mess and the crew room. One afternoon some rockets were fired unexpectedly into the camp and our chap, who was at the Officers' Mess, sprinted to his motorbike and drove toward the crew room just as fast as he could go. Imagine his surprise to find that a rocket had struck the dirt road just ahead of him and created a hole into which he pitched, head over handlebars. He turned up at the crew room a little later scraped and bruised but otherwise non the worse for wear. The little motorbike did not fare quite so well and got pretty bent up, and it was later scrapped because of a lack of spare parts.
I had a very lucky escape, personally, some time later in the course of events. I had left Salalah in the afternoon en route to Muscat as part of a normal rotation and that evening was in the Officers' Mess bar at Muscat when word came in that several of us were to board a Skyvan and get down to Salalah as soon as possible. I had hardly unpacked and had to hastily gather up some more clothes, re-pack and get myself back down to the airfield for a night flight back south. As was usual at Salalah, when the day’s flying was done, most of us would gather on the patio outside the Officers' Mess for a few cold beers and a chat about the day’s action. On this particular evening the guys were lounging around in the armchairs as usual enjoying the cool night air when a rocket landed not six feet away. As luck would have it, the missile landed just the other side of a couple of metal, earth-filled troughs, which we had planted with flowers just to brighten the place up. The troughs took most of the blast but we still had six pilots wounded, a couple of them quite seriously. Peter Hulme had about an inch of bone removed from his shin which left his foot just dangling by the flesh. He would require many months of rehabilitation and bone grafts and had a permanent limp from that time forward, for which he needed a walking stick. It did however further his career in SOAF somewhat, for though he no longer flew, he received the Sultan’s Medal and a rapid promotion, which was a minor compensation for the injury he sustained. Vin Nadin had a foot wound and the others had varying degrees of injury but fortunately nothing life threatening, but had the missile landed just one foot closer to the Mess it would have wiped out at least half of the SOAF pilots. Had I not been headed north that day for a routine changeover, I would most certainly have been sitting on the patio with the rest of the lads.
It was the job of the Piston Provost pilots to provide top cover for any troop movements and patrol the foothills, on the look out for any activity by the enemy that warranted some attention. Our patrols regularly came under fire and would call for assistance at a moment's notice and as a result we had several pilots on cockpit standby or on crew room readiness throughout the day. There was not much we could do at night other than keep our heads down.
A call for assistance would come in and we would scramble to a map reference where with any luck a 'tango', a luminescent red cloth 'T' would be visible indicating the direction of the enemy positions in relation to our own troops. Radio contact would be established and our soldiers would pinpoint a cave or ravine within which the Adoo had taken cover or had a fire position. We would go in with rockets, bombs and machine guns to try and dislodge the enemy or cause them to retire and give our guys some breathing space. We rarely saw the enemy from the air, as they were usually well hidden in caves but we always knew that they were there since our own troops often gave a running commentary regarding the return fire or lack of it after a successful strike. The odd bullet hole in the aircraft was a sure sign that you had their attention. The first time that one of our own radio operators left the mike open whilst next to a machine gun that opened fire scared the pants off me. It sounded through the headset like I had just received a full burst of machine gun fire into the cockpit. I did not know what to think for a second or two, however, there was no damage and no pain so I settled down to resume the attack.
Firing at a ground target
from the air is somewhat impersonal, the pilot is concentrating on his
gunsight in an endeavour to deliver his ordnance accurately, but he is
acutely aware that every gun of every enemy soldier is aimed at him personally
and blazing away for all they are worth. He is the target of choice right
at that moment, particularly as he has to have a steady flight path in
order to deliver rockets or bombs with any accuracy. Any skidding or turning
will result in a wildly thrown bomb as the 'g' forces act upon it. Steadiness
of aim and smooth operation of the controls is the key to an accurate delivery
and that is where the aircraft is most vulnerable, particularly at the
point of release when the aircraft is in close contact with the ground
and well within range of any return fire. On the pullout the plane can
be jinked about and thrown around to avoid anyone drawing a bead on it.
Beaver |
Beaver |
Beaver |
Habrut |
Defa |
Hadramut |
I do recall on one occasion seeing one of the enemy sprint across a bit of open ground and take cover behind a large tree. He was no doubt out of the line of sight of our troops, probably protected by a ground contour, so it was quite by chance that I happened to be looking right at him when he got up and ran. I let the radio man know what I had seen but they could only see the topmost branches of the tree from their position. I continued around and fired a couple of rockets at the base of the tree, a bit expensive for just one Adoo but he might have been getting in a position to fire upon our troops as they came over the skyline. I uprooted the tree and was told later by the patrol leader that I had also thoroughly uprooted the Adoo soldier who was setting up a machine gun position. They brought back the pictures to prove it.
On the extreme western border of Dhofar where it meets the Yemen border there was a fort overlooking a narrow stony wadi. This was Habrut, and the centre line of the wadi marked the border. On the opposite side of the wadi and facing the Sultan’s fort stood another fort belonging to the Yemen. The two countries were not officially at war and an uneasy truce prevailed. Most of the heavy equipment was delivered to the Sultan's fort via a narrow and rocky track from the oasis at Mudhai some miles to the east but it was SOAF’s job to ferry in fresh food and mail by air on a fairly regular basis. The landing strip was literally squeezed in below the cliffs on the Oman side of the wadi (dry stream bed) and great care had to be taken not to infringe on Yemen air space since it drew a hail of small arms fire from the Yemeni fort. I always felt uneasy on the ground here and kept a wary eye on the Yemen fort, which loomed over the landing strip on the far side of this narrow cleft. One day our fort obtained a much larger Omani flag that it proudly hoisted to the flagpole atop one of the towers. Within a week, a much larger Yemeni flag appeared over the opposite fort, whereupon our fort commander ordered an even larger flag in response. This cross border rivalry continued for some time until one day our Beaver, on arriving at Habrut, reported over the radio that he could not locate our fort. Thinking that perhaps his navigation had been a bit inaccurate and remembering that all navigation in this area was done strictly by stopwatch, map and eyeball, a fighter plane with a pilot very familiar with the area was launched to try and locate the Beaver and direct him to the fort. The Provost arrived in the area only to find that he also could not locate the fort, however, he did find the Yemeni fort and a survey of the area where our fort should have stood revealed a pile of rubble. Our fort had been completely leveled, and nothing was left either of it or the inhabitants. I cannot recall the outcome of this incident, but no doubt the Yemenis denied all knowledge of or implication in the destruction and put it down to rebel action. I cannot even recall if any of our soldiers ever turned up at Mudhai or Midway. It was only a small garrison and composed entirely of Arab and Baluch soldiers and since it stood in an area outside the normal Adoo range of action it was not considered to be in much danger. It is possible that a larger force of Adoo had gathered together and in safety on the Yemen side of the border and probably with the connivance of the Yemeni’s and had launched an overwhelming attack upon our small garrison.
Mention of Mudhai opens up a memory of the place. It was a small oasis right out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert and sparse scrub. It was in a pit that resembled a rock quarry, though perfectly natural. Out of one wall of the pit flowed a stream of fresh water, the Jaish (army) had forced a galvanized pipe into the fissure from which the water flowed and it poured out of this pipe in a continuous stream. It supported a few green shrubs but then sank back into the desert floor a few yards away and disappeared again. When we first arrived there the floor of the pit was covered with geodes, white crystalline rock balls that stood on short stalks, and when broken open they revealed an interior of blue or violet crystals, amethyst I believe. Most of us had one or two of these broken open geodes in our rooms as decoration and one or two of the more enterprising souls packed some up and sent them to gem collectors who paid good prices for them. Needless to say, the geodes soon became a rarity in that location.
Mudhai was also the place where another good friend met his maker in a completely avoidable accident, at a somewhat later date. Del Moore had been doing an impromptu low flying display in a BAC167 for one of our long range patrols who were watering at Mudhai for a couple of days before pressing on south to the Adoo hinterland. The soldiers were naturally in the rocky pit that had the water source and Del attempted a low pass over them, but unfortunately he misjudged the lip of the pit and glanced off it as he descended into the hollow. The aircraft was severely damaged on contact with the rock lip at high speed and proceeded across the hollow and hit the vertical rock wall on the far side at its base. The BAC167 exploded together with its rocket and ammunition load and disintegrated entirely. It took many hours for the wreckage to burn out and cool off sufficiently for the troops, with no fire fighting equipment, to extract what remained of Del. I am not sure where his remains are buried.
The performance of the Piston
Provost was marginal given the heat and the altitudes at which we were
operating. Even with full boost on a hot day the weight of the bombs, rockets
and ammunition taxed the thing to its limits and any gain in altitude required
everything it had got. It had a couple of .303 machine guns and it’s only
real firepower came from its ability to mount eight twenty-five-pound bombs
and four Sura rockets but carrying that lot required full boost most of
the time airborne and a beady eye on the cylinder head temperature. I suppose
that in it’s time and in the right place it had served a purpose but in
the conditions prevailing at Salalah in a hot summer it left a great deal
to be desired. It flew nicely enough and did not have any remarkable vices
and just tooling around without external stores was pleasant; the hood
could be left open and it flew slowly enough to enjoy the passing countryside
at low level but any movement of the throttle produced a noticeable difference
in the noise level but remarkably little difference in the performance.
Dawn Standby |
Ralph in Provost |
Piston Provost |
Provosts |
Flying the Provost was only half the task, the other half, and perhaps more important in some ways, were the re-supply, casevac and recce duties that were carried out in the Beaver. This was a fine little short take off and landing, single engine, high-wing monoplane. An absolute delight to fly and dead reliable. I admired the ability of this little aeroplane to get me in and out of almost anywhere and we used it to the limit of it’s abilities. In Dhofar we were bush pilots par excellence. Short rocky strips at six thousand feet altitude and with mountain turbulence pushing and pulling in every direction were the bread and butter for a Beaver. It was demanding and exciting flying and very satisfactory to achieve without incident. Loaded to the 'gunwales' with much needed water and ammunition and approaching with the stall warning bleeping and all the while being told that someone was taking pot shots at you from the surrounding hills, probably out of range, made for an interesting life. The standard approach for Defa was to come overhead at about seven thousand feet and then do a tight spiraling descent trying to remain within the defence perimeter and, with the stall warning going, drop it onto the very end of the strip. Even the wildest imagination could hardly call it a runway, it was merely a patch of rock on top of a hill from which the larger stones had been removed. It came under fire quite frequently but I always comforted myself by theorizing that I was probably out of the direct line of fire of an enemy and he was probably out of range also and it would take an exceptionally lucky bullet to find me. It was normally possible to know when you were under fire, as every one around the plane dived for cover in the trenches and sandbag emplacements alongside the parking area. We mostly kept the engine(s) running and with the headset on and the noise of the engine it was not possible to hear the whine and ricochet of the spent bullets anyway. What I could not see or hear I did not worry about. I always smoked a pipe when flying the Beaver, Caribou or Skyvan and I would endeavour to appear nonchalant as I sat there smoking and waiting to be unloaded and loaded. I know for a fact that this caused much amusement to the Baluch and Arab soldiers and I was known among them as 'the peep'. My theory about being out of the line of fire was made nonsense when the Adoo nailed a Caribou right in the middle of the runway. It was dismantled, dragged away and later formed the basis for the Officers' Mess if I recall correctly. If I am ever remembered for anything it will probably be the pipe, which I still smoke to this day. The NAAFI at Salalah had an excellent line of Kenya Meerschaum pipes, their bright yellow exteriors gradually took on a beautiful walnut colour with use, and I wish I could still get them.
The great problem with defending
a position in Dhofar revolved around the need for a constant supply of
water and ammunition. It had to be shipped in continuously whether the
place was under siege or not and the limited amount that the Beaver could
carry in ex petrol cans or "Burmails"(50-gallon drums) was a cause for
concern and was to lead eventually to the purchase of Skyvan and Caribou
aircraft with a far greater carrying capacity. Defa was but one of the
outposts that was to grow as the war progressed and urgently needed servicing
and supplying. But that was in the future, for the moment in 1967 and 1968
it was all we could do to defend ourselves against an increasingly hostile
and better supplied Adoo.
Helicopters |
SOAF would patrol the inland hills whilst Jeremy Raybould, commander of the Sultan’s Navy cruised up and down the coast with the entire Navy, which consisted of one armed Dhow based mostly at Raysuit. This base was sometimes out of land contact with Salalah due to mining of the roads but at a push, Jeremy could always retreat to the safety of the sea, and the Adoo had nothing to challenge the navy with. |
Although the terrain was hostile to us it was equally hostile to the Adoo. They had some knowledge as to where water could be obtained during the monsoon but as the hot season began to approach their ability to harass the Sultan’s troops diminished somewhat. We could use air re-supply but they relied solely on camels and donkeys and their navigable routes through the hills at the base of the escarpment that dipped down to the sea could be mapped out and intercepted. Even from the air, continuous use of the trails made them more visible.
From time-to-time it was required to use the Beaver for fairly low level ‘recce’ trips to survey and map these trails and look out for Adoo activity. It usually meant taking a couple of army observers along for the ride equipped with maps and binoculars. Naturally, these trips were carried out during the day when the Adoo were under cover, as they rarely moved during the daylight hours, for obvious reasons. Now I do not know whether it is possible to ‘see’ a bullet in flight but I swear to this day that I was able to see when I was under fire. I would become aware of ‘streaks‘ in the air around the Beaver, nothing that I could actually focus upon but at the periphery of my vision. At this point I would say that I thought we were under fire and begin to weave around a bit, much to the annoyance of the observers who could see nothing in the rocky terrain below and thought it was just my imagination. Perhaps it was just my heightened sense of awareness at our proximity to the ground over hostile territory, but nevertheless, as we flew on the ‘streaks’ would cease and I could relax again. It was my opinion that the bullets in flight created condensation trails in the damp atmosphere that I could see out of the corner of my eye. On the return trip and in the same area this sense of being shot at would manifest itself once again. Since there was no sign of movement on the ground, the Adoo being well under cover among the rocks and shrubbery, and since I never got hit, maybe due to my evasive manoeuvres, the whole thing was dismissed as being a bit fanciful though I have a feeling that if more notice had been taken of this oddity we might have been able to pinpoint just where the enemy were holed up for the day. I am not sure if any other of the pilots ever experienced this phenomenon but I have always been noted for my exceptional eyesight since my earliest days as a squadron pilot. I have always been the first to spot the ‘bandits’ during air-to-air exercises, and at great distances.
As time went on, greater recruitment for the Sultan’s Army, better and more effective aeroplanes and some help from the BATT men and SAS led to a more forceful effort to occupy the hills overlooking Salalah and to increase their area of influence around Defa on a year round basis. Hopefully, by cutting the Adoo forces, in the eastern part of the Jebel off from the western groups they would gradually cease to be a threat as their supply lines dried up. Then by pinching the western groups between the desert and the sea and creating a moving line to push them back toward the Yemen border we could hope to eliminate them entirely. This was the plan but there was a lot of fighting to be done and a lot of ground to be covered and we had heard that in addition to the assistance from the Yemen, there was also a Chinese and East German influence coming to bear. How much truth there was to this rumour I don’t know, if it was there I imagine it to have been more as advisors than combatants. Certainly, Russian-made rockets had been available to the Adoo from the beginning and Strella ground-to-air missiles made an appearance toward the end of the conflict, but these could easily have been supplied by Yemen, an acknowledged Marxist state and recipient of Russian largesse.
As a result of the greater
activity and need on our part, some new aircraft were obtained. The Beaver
was replaced by Skyvan and Caribou STOL (Short Take Off and landing) cargo
carriers and the venerable old Piston Provost attack aircraft was replaced
by Jet Provost called a BAC167. The BAC167 was still a lightly armed trainer
in most respects and still had just two .303 machine guns but it could
carry and deliver an increased bomb and rocket load. It’s performance was
a great improvement on the Piston Provost and allowed for a much more rapid
response time, especially if a contact were made a few miles away from
base as in western Dhofar.
Skyvan |
Skyvan |
Manston |
Vin Nadin RAF |
Ralph at the controls |
Arzat |
The carrying capacity of
the Skyvan and much larger Caribou made them far superior to the Beaver
as a re-supply vehicle. They were both exceedingly fine aircraft to fly
and we could still use the old Beaver landing strips with hardly any modification.
The Skyvan was the most widely used of the two aircraft, we had more of
them and with its very reliable turbo prop engines that basically require
less maintenance than the piston engines of the Caribou, it was the vehicle
of choice when re-supplying the remote positions. It’s large rear cargo
door and large flat floor allowed for very rapid removal of the cargo and
easy access for stretchers in the case of casualty evacuation. It was possible
to taxi over a stake in the ground, hook up a rope loop that was attached
to the cargo netting and then moving the aircraft forward slowly drag all
the cargo out in one pass. We carried water, six or seven 50-gallon drums
at a time, and they could very quickly be rolled out of the back. It was
so much more efficient and time saving than having to manhandle heavy water
containers from the confined cargo area of a Beaver one item at a time.
BAC 167 |
BAC 167 & Piston Provost |
The Caribous were initially used to haul cargo between Muscat and Salalah until Viscount turbo prop aircraft were introduced and could make the run with more cargo in half the time. After that the Caribous became a part of the re-supply force operating out of Salalah. For their size they were amazing aircraft and with their long deflection landing struts could be dropped out of the sky almost like a parachute and stopped within very few yards. I have many a time been looking through the roof window panels at the touch down point on a very steep spiraling approach. One great advantage was that we could now deliver Jeeps and Land Rovers to some of the more remote outposts and this made life infinitely more comfortable for them. We would like to have had donkeys to do some of the back breaking work of moving ammunition boxes and water containers. Where they were used extensively in other areas and would many times be stained in camouflage colours, to avoid detection. In places like Defa their fodder and water use limited their deployment, as the only way in was by air and it was an uneconomic proposition to have a herd of donkeys using fodder and water that would have to be re-supplied on a regular basis.
Another use for the Skyvan was that of a bomber. In order to deny the Adoo the use of the grassland to fatten their goats, which were the basis of their meat supply, we invented a crude form of Napalm. Time expired aviation fuel in fifty-gallon drums was thickened to a jelly like consistency by dissolving the polystyrene packing used in the rocket boxes and a phosphor grenade or something similar was attached to the filler orifice with a lanyard attached to the pin of the grenade. These fifty-gallon drums of the mixture were then stood in the back of the Skyvan and pushed out over selected target areas. As they were pushed out of the rear cargo door the lanyard would be jerked, the pin pulled and the grenade activated. With a seven second fuse the drums would explode at or above the ground surface and the resultant flaming mass would then set the grass on fire. The fires sometimes burned for days and could be seen quit clearly at night by the halo of fire in the hills above Salalah and by day by the smoke column on the horizon. I do not know if they did much good but every little harassment kept the enemy at bay and struggling to re-supply their ground forces.
My logbook is full of the
names of long forgotten landing strips that were used to re-supply the
soldiers in the field. Among those names are Defa, White City, (named after
the first pilot to do a successful landing there and set up after Operation
Jaguar),Iskander, Karlsberg, Habrut, Ravens Roost, Marbat, Sadh, Waterbeach,
Idlewild, Tawi Atair, Taqa, Marboosh, Jocelyn Park, Manston, Mudhai, Mugshayl,
Jib Jat, Landing Zone Bravo, Arzat, Ayun, Oven and many many others. It
was also necessary to carry out parachute drops where these landing strips
were not available. Many such strips were used only temporarily and were
nothing more than areas cleared of the larger stones on a relatively level
piece of hilltop with huge drop-offs at either end or perhaps a rock wall
that stared you in the face on landing and could only be used in one direction.
These strips were sometimes very difficult to get in and out of and had
been constructed by soldiers with a minimum knowledge of the requirements
of even a STOL aircraft. To them, a 300 yard strip of more or less level,
cleared ground, roughly paced out, was considered to be good enough. It
says a great deal for the skill of the pilots operating into and out of
these minimal strips that we did not have more accidents. We did have incidents
of course but fortunately nothing serious in terms of lost lives although
several aircraft were damaged too seriously to be removed and were abandoned
or pushed off the side of the strip and probably remain there to this day
some forty years later.
Jib Jat |
I clearly recall one such incident that happened to me at a strip we called Oven. This was a typical landing area quite high up with severe wind problems, it was extremely rough and rocky even after the largest stones had been removed. It had to be approached at an angle since higher ground on the approach intruded into the approach path and precluded a straight in landing run. It also had a 1600-foot drop-off immediately at the other end of the runway. I had touched down normally and put the engines into full reverse thrust, as was usually required at such strips, but as I braked I could feel no resistance and realized that without brakes I was about to plunge over a 1600-foot drop in to the valley below. I desperately ruddered the Skyvan starboard to take advantage of a small outcrop on a rocky hillside to my right and managed to stop amongst the rocks before coming to the end of the available space. The problem had been that a rock kicked up by the wheels upon landing had severed a brake line at the starboard wheel and dumped all my hydraulic brake fluid. The little rocky outcrop had saved me from a long drop into the valley. Apart from some bent paneling and the broken brake line, everything else appeared to be ok. Fortunately I was off to one side of the short and narrow strip, just far enough for another aircraft to be able to get in with a repair crew. The brake line was replaced, the paneling roughly hammered into shape and the airplane manhandled back onto the cleared area and I flew it out again about six hours later. This was just one of many such incidents that punctuated our lives but resulted in no great damage or loss of aircraft.
Umm Al Ghwarif, a headquarters unit for the Army was yet another very tricky strip to get in to. It lay just a couple of miles to the east of Salalah on the coastal plain and the inclusion of a landing strip seems to have been a last minute thought. It was very short and squeezed in between the perimeter wire at on end and construction at the other. It had to be approached as slowly as possible with the stall warning going and the aircraft had to be literally dropped onto the ground just beyond the wire, which was situated right on the end of the strip. Maximum braking then had to be applied immediately to avoid colliding with the structure at the far end. It was where we loaded live goats to be distributed to the troops on the djeble for special feast days. The goats had their feet tied and were then put in a plastic bag that was fastened in such a way as to leave their head free to breathe. We would carry eight or nine at a time. The biggest problem was to keep their urine from coming into contact with the aircraft structure due to its very corrosive nature. I remember this strip for a couple of reasons. On one occasion, Ian Goddard, one of our pilots, had picked up a load of goats and was taking off when, for some reason unknown to me, he either decided that he could not attain flying speed within the short distance available and throttled back and applied brakes in an endeavour to stop before running out of runway or perhaps he hooked the perimeter wire. Whatever the reason, the Beaver nosed over and came to rest with its tail pointing toward the sky and the propeller firmly embedded in the sand. Naturally the eight live goats that had been in the rear of the cockpit all came forward on impact and joined Ian in the front seat. Ian finally managed to extract himself from the smelly and very panicked goats and climbed out. Seeing that the goats were very distressed and in danger of harming themselves in their struggle to get free, Ian started to cut them loose from their plastic shrouds and leg bindings only to be stopped by the indignant howls of the soldiers who were running to assist him out of the downed aircraft and could see their comrades suppers skittering off across the desert at a high rate of knots.
The coming of the helicopters saw the end of our problems at this strip and I think it fell into disuse as the Beavers were phased out, and it was far too dodgy to have attempted to put a Skyvan in there.
I also remember Umm Al Ghwarif for an entirely different reason. Peter Hulme and I would sometimes go there for a bit of relaxation with Major John Cooper. John was an avid amateur radio operator and ran the only ham radio in the Oman at that time. The station was quite unique and very much in demand by amateur operators all over the globe trying to contact John. It was very informative to sit with John whilst he spoke to many people all over the world whilst they discussed their situation and surroundings and the weather, etc and their working lives so far removed from our situation.
A couple of operations that
I took a part in were Operation 'Simba' and Operation 'Mainbrace'. Of these
perhaps 'Mainbrace' was the more memorable. In May of 1972 it was decided
that prior to the true onset of the monsoon it would be wise to have the
advantage of an outpost near Defa that could command the main camel and
re-supply routes for the Adoo below the escarpment. During the rainy season
the weather more or less halted air surveillance and the Adoo took advantage
of this weather to move large quantities of armaments via trails located
between the edge of the escarpment and the coast. This was an area of dense
vegetation and good cover with many large rocks and caves known only to
the Adoo. Because of the nature of the terrain and the cover it afforded,
it was virtually impossible to patrol or control this area without significant
loss of life. Even casevac by helicopter would have entailed unacceptable
risks and it would have been almost impossible to get wounded men out of
there or re-supply and reinforce them. But overlooking these trails was
a pinnacle of rock known to us as the 'finger feature' an almost vertical
finger of rock with a flat top and quite unassailable, I think it was called
Sarfait. If we could establish and re-supply this feature with a garrison
then it would almost certainly cut off the Adoo from access to their only
lines of communication to the central area and hills around Salalah. Short
of a very risky attempt to bypass, under cover of weather or darkness,
this feature that totally dominated their routes, or an equally inadvisable
end run around the perimeter of the bush country where it merged into open
desert and left them totally exposed, we should have them more or less
bottled up and confined to the western end of Dhofar.
Defa |
Officers compound Defa |
Officers Mess Defa |
Officers Mess Defa |
Operation 'Mainbrace' started in pre monsoon weather officially but I suppose the monsoon started to gather a little earlier than usual that year. I was flying a Caribou at that time and as the battle for the 'finger feature' started it began to rain. Not the continuous drizzle and deck level cloud of the full monsoon but a level base to the cloud of about a thousand feet with columns of rain and with lightning. It was truly an inspiring sight as we flew just below the dark cloud with bright sunlight in the far distance where the cloud ended. We were flying out of Midway (Thumrait) and between us and Defa there was a prospect that looked for all the world like a great columned hall. We were flying just below the ceiling and the rain formed the well defined columns that we could weave our way through. These columns were lit up by streaks of lightning that met the ground in an almost continuous display of fireworks. The helicopters, with Neville Baker in the lead, were dropping troops onto the top of the ‘finger feature’ under fire but being supported by our troops from the top of the escarpment and the Jet Provost aircraft strafing the approaches to the base of the rock. I believe I am correct in saying that our first casualty was a soldier struck by lightning. It was not much of a battle, as the Adoo were taken by surprise and totally disorganized and once our troops had control of the high ground on the 'finger feature' the Adoo faded into the background, though they still managed to bypass the position at times by using the dead ground. The war in Dhofar was to continue for many months to come but I believe their back was broken by the 'Mainbrace' operation and our control of the supply routes that eventually led to an almost complete cessation of Adoo activity in the hills surrounding Salalah and the year-round control, by the Sultan’s forces, of the road between Salalah and the interior. We gradually pushed the Adoo out of the hills and back toward the Yemen border and the war slowly wound down.
I helped out the local economy of Salalah on one occasion when flying a BAC 167. I had been scrambled to a callsign up in the hills and after attacking with guns I did a bombing run only to discover that I had a hang up and the bombs would not release. I do not recall what size the bombs were but they were pretty big, probably 250-pounders. I tried several times to get them to release but without success, I switched switches and did violent maneuvers to try and get rid of them but all to no avail. In a situation such as this a big danger is that on touch down to land or at any time whist on the ground, if the bombs drop off then there is always a chance that they might explode. But after a while, I had no choice other than to land the aircraft and take a chance on it. I burned off as much fuel as possible by flying over the sea offshore from Salalah and all the time trying different combinations of switches. I had just decided to go in for a landing when without warning the bombs released and dropped into the sea and not too far offshore. Apparently the whole town was startled at first by the loud bangs and large waterspouts offshore. As soon as they realized what had happened, the local fishermen made all haste to push their boats into the sea and begin harvesting millions of fish that floated to the top. It was quite a bonanza and there was no shortage of fish in the market that day.
From the air it was always possible to see the large schools of fish that congregated offshore and especially if the sharks were feeding. They would hunt in packs, darting in and out of the schools and causing them to bunch up to such an extent that they were literally swimming on top of each other and forming a hump that would extend above the surface, literally a hillock of live fish trying to escape the attacks of the marauders. There were also huge whales that cruised up and down the coast, but I understand that they fed on plankton and such and for all their size they were quite harmless.
I had amassed nearly two thousand hours of flying time in the Beaver, Skyvan, Caribou, Piston Provost and Jet Provost (BAC 167) and some four hundred operational trips in Dhofar before finally transferring onto the Viscount four-engine turbo prop aircraft in December of 1973. I had received one or two hits but I had never lost an aircraft and had only ever suffered minor damage in the one incident at Oven, due to loss of brakes through stone damage. It had been a remarkable yet unremarked experience, and I had not received any medals nor yet expected any, because it was all done for a sense of adventure and the money.
I was to fly many thousands of hours in civil aircraft both in Oman and elsewhere once I ceased operational flying at the age of 41 in 1974. I did not greatly enjoy civil flying but it was relatively well paid work. I found it to be boring and dull and my heart was never fully in it. There was never the sense of achievement that compared to flying a Beaver, Skyvan or Caribou into a short difficult strip on a mountain top and battling the cross winds and downdraughts to deliver some much needed ammunition or water, carry out a wounded soldier to a place of safety, nor yet to deliver some well placed ordnance to a patrol pinned down in a hostile situation and who were relying upon you to help them out of trouble.
I was to see Oman grow from dirt tracks and donkeys to dual lane highways and Mercedes Benz, from barusti huts to high rise hotels, from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, from one-sail dhows to enormous oil tankers. My early days were spent in the company of Officers who had served the King in the British Raj in India. It was an experience not given to many.
I could hardly leave the subject of Oman without a mention of one or two of the Sultan’s Army officers that I came into contact with. There were of course many such meetings but they were sometimes fleeting and an intervening forty years has dimmed my memory somewhat.
I quite well recall a chap called Captain Ran Fiennes (Sir Ranulph Twistleton-Wyckeham-Fiennes, to give him his full title). Like myself he was interested in the history and geography of Oman and I first made a note of him when I was flying him in a Beaver and he asked me if it was possible to divert a little in order that he could look at the Falaj system surrounding Nizwa. I sometimes got the feeling he joined the Sultan’s Army mostly to gain access to the country, and indeed, it was probably the only way in which one could gain entry in those days. But he was a good soldier like the majority of both the contract and regular service soldiers who were willing to lay their life on the line in this hot and remote land. My logbook also says that he accompanied me as a passenger in a BAC167 jet during formation flying exercises on 21 August 1969.
I mention his name because he went on to become a well known explorer and television documentary maker. One of his more recent exploits (2000) was a documentary concerning the search for the fabled city of Ubar. The existence of this city was an oral tradition carried on by the caravan masters in their journey across the 'Empty Quarter', a vast expanse of sand to the north of Oman, as they traversed it on their way to the markets on the upper Gulf. Recent satellite photos have indicated a whole series of tracks beneath the sand. Ran Fiennes had quite a little adventure story to tell on the television, struggling through almost impassable sand dunes and shortage of water. They eventually came to the conclusion that the fabled city of Ubar was in fact the modern Shizur, about an hours flying by Beaver, north of Midway and a place I had visited a number of times. Shizur today is a little collection of dusty, fly-blown Barusti huts, surrounded by the remnants of a crenellated mud wall that enclosed quite a large area originally, and it’s only redeeming feature was a well. Not much left of the fabled city and not much to show that it had ever been more than a collection of mud walled buildings at the height of it’s fame. Ran Fiennes did not have to go through all that hardship to get there, as I could have flown him there in about an hour and we could have surveyed it by air.
Hugh Affleck-Graves is another SAF soldier who comes to mind, and he was to die at the hands of one of his own soldiers. I heard that he had had occasion to reprimand the soldier and in a fit of resentment that soldier had entered Hugh’s tent one evening and shot him dead and then taken off into the desert wilderness, no doubt to become a soldier of the Adoo.
In December of 1973 I was transferred onto the Viscount Fleet, which was a four-engine turbo prop passenger and freight carrier. The fun and the adventure came to an end and the work started. I guess I was ready for it by now and initially enjoyed handling the bigger aircraft and not having to worry so much about getting a Strella ground-to-air missile up my tailpipe. But what is there to say about it; we took off, we flew and we landed. A trip that was uneventful and in no way memorable was a very successful operation and this is the whole essence of civil flying - years of boredom punctuated by seconds of panic.
Although I was just a contract
pilot and no longer a part of the British Armed Forces, I had in the past
been a commissioned Officer in the Royal Air Force. In SOAF we did not
get medals and received scant recognition other than a paycheck but I felt
a very strong bond to the BATT men and SAS and to those RAF chaps who had
put their career on hold. We were all fighting men and our lives and battles
were closely aligned. We endured similar conditions and dangers and I almost
felt myself to be an 'honorary' member of those illustrious outfits, we
depended upon each other and I have nothing but admiration for the BATT
and SAS together with those unsung heroes of the Sultan’s Armed Forces
with their Arab and Baluch soldiers who fought in just another of those
fiercely contested engagements known as Britain's small wars. Hardly a
word of this elongated conflict got into the British press but the ramifications
of a failure to hold the line in Dhofar would have had far reaching effects
upon Britain and indeed upon the rest of the world had the revolution spread
to the other Gulf States.
Midway Road |
The end of the Dhofar war was also to mark the end of my engagement in fighting 'hot' wars. I was to stay in Oman for many more years flying for SOAF and the oil companies up and down the Arabian Gulf. I would often look down upon the sites of our previous battles where the villages were sprouting up and paved roads were beginning to appear. The whole dirt track from Muscat to Salalah, the infamous 'Midway Road', was to be paved over and 'Ambush Corner' was just another bend in the highway. The names changed and my rumpled old flying maps that spent so many years tucked in my sweaty flying suit pocket became out of date. The little red crosses that marked a panic call to an embattled army unit, "Scramble for callsign 04" were no longer relevant and faded with time. The heavy Colt pistol became 'surplus to requirements'. I grew older but my memories remained sharp, gone was the old khaki green flying suit to be replaced with neatly pressed slacks and a white or cream shirt resplendent with the gold bars of a civil pilot, but beneath it still beat the heart of a fighting man and things were never quite the same.
But that is yet another part of the story!
© 2003 Ralph Swift.
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