Steve Joubert - Gunship Over Angola - The Story of a Maverick Pilot

The orderly officer was required to sleep in a designated room on the base on the nights that he pulled duty. So, when 17 Squadron’s operations clerk walked into the crew room, just as I was preparing to depart for the orderly officer’s digs to while away the dark hours, and asked whether I’d be interested in doing a trip the next day, I accepted.

The envisaged flight entailed taking an Alo III from 17 Squadron early the next morning, collecting an army general (one General Hanekom) and his aide from the Movements Control area at Swartkop at 06h00, and flying them to the army base at Amsterdam, near the border with Swaziland, to attend a parade. We would return to AFB Swartkop later the same afternoon.

By the standards of the day, this was a simple two-leg mission – there and back in one day. Total flying time would be about four and a half hours. I had never been to Amsterdam, Transvaal, before, so I looked forward to the trip. I also figured that I could relieve some of the boredom of the ED by doing all my route preparation in the orderly officer’s room that evening.

As I was leaving the squadron that evening, the operations clerk ran out and told me that notification had just come through that the mission take-off time had been moved to 07h00 the next morning and not 06h00, as originally stated on the tasking signal. But, being in a hurry, I didn’t wait for the written confirmation of the later take-off time.

I checked in to the orderly officer’s post just before 18h00, had something to eat and then returned to the squadron planning room to continue with the route preparation, which I completed by 22h00. This included a series of calls to the meteorological office at AFB Waterkloof to confirm weather conditions along the route for the next morning.

‘Weather will be a bit kak early on, Lieutenant,’ warned the meteorologist. ‘Low cloud and mist all the way to Ermelo, but the worst is that the maximum air temperature will vary between only minus five and plus three degrees Celsius.

‘Colder than a witch’s heart,’ I chuckled. ‘I’ll dress warmly and I hope my passengers do too.’

The following morning when I woke at 05h00, I called the met office again. There was no real improvement in the weather and confirmation that the mist and low cloud would probably start to lift after 07h00. As far as the temperature was concerned, brass monkeys were advised to cover their groins with additional layers of warm clothing.

I dressed very snugly indeed, with three or four layers of thermal clothing to insulate me. Looking a bit like the Oros man I made my way to 17 Squadron, where the designated Alo awaited. During the preflight inspection, my flight engineer for the day, Johnny Smith, and I picked up a problem that needed to be fixed before we could fly. As the repair was unlikely to take too long, it would not delay the scheduled 07h00 take-off unduly. I was not perturbed and told Johnny to take his time. The longer we stayed on the ground, the more likely it was for the clouds and mist to lift and allow us safe passage, particularly across the elevated sections of the eastern Highveld.

I phoned the Movements Control office and told the chap who answered to please look out for an army general and inform him that there might be a small delay in wheels-up time but that it was not expected to be significant.

‘Make him a nice cup of hot beverage and we’ll be there in a jiffy,’ I said brightly.

At around 07h00, Johnny walked in and told me that the aircraft was repaired and that we could go when ready. I walked out into the frigid air, conducted a full preflight check on the chopper again, started up and air-taxied down to Movements Control to collect my passengers. As the Alo settled onto the concrete slab in front of the entrance to the Movements Control area VIP lounge, I initiated the engine shutdown. Just then, movement at the edge of my peripheral vision caused me to turn my head 90 degrees to the left, where I observed a strange sight.

Emerging from a long black Mercedes-Benz was a clearly agitated senior army officer, possibly a general, with another army officer, a colonel, trying to placate him. The general was gesticulating wildly, with lots of clenched fists and a flurry of punches being thrown at an imaginary opponent.

‘I wonder what’s got up that pongo’s nose?’ I asked myself, as the chopper’s rotor blades slowed and began to droop against their stops.

Convinced that his odd behaviour had nothing to do with me, I focused on watching the Alo’s rotor and engine RPM indicators wind down. Suddenly I became aware of someone running towards the port side of the aircraft – a dangerous thing to do when the rotors are slowing. Looking up, I could see that the irate general had broken free of his colleague and was making his way at great speed towards my aircraft.

Fearing that he would be decapitated by the whirling rotor blades, I thrust out my gloved left hand aggressively at his advancing figure in the universal gesture to halt. My prompt action, which probably saved the unappreciative officer’s life, formed the basis for the first of 14 counts under the Military Discipline Code (MDC) that he would later charge me with, namely, ‘Insubordination, count 1’.

As soon as the blades had stopped spinning, he charged into the aircraft and began to curse me for my tardiness. From the way he was ranting and raving, I don’t think that the boys in blue were his favourite arm of the service. He had almost certainly experienced a delay or two at the hands of some of my less time-aware colleagues in the SAAF.

However, I was not late and I told him so.

‘I had arranged for a 06h00 take-off and it’s already past 07h00!’ he shouted.

Thus, the first count of Absent Without Leave was born and the tally of charges rose to two.

‘Well, General, I was told that the take-off time was 07h00,’ I said, perhaps not as subserviently as I could have (but then again he was shouting at me), ‘and it’s 07h00 now. Also, I asked the Movements Control personnel to advise you that we may be a little late and to take care of you, but it seems that you did not avail yourself of the Movements Control facilities?’

This statement resulted in ‘Insubordination, count 2’.

‘Get this chopper into the air now and make sure I am in Amsterdam on time!’ he demanded.

‘I must first complete the paperwork at Movements before we can leave, General,’ I said, and strolled off into the building while he was still shouting. This resulted in ‘Insubordination, count 3’ and ‘Disobeying a Lawful Command, count 1’.

The charge tally was now up to five, and we hadn’t even left the ground.

After completing the relevant paperwork in record time, I got back into the Alo and started up but realised quickly that I couldn’t hear the radio chatter because the general was still bellowing at me into the microphone of his headset at full volume. So, I disconnected him by (not completely) pulling out his headset plug. This resulted in ‘Insubordination, count 4’.

Eventually the general stopped spitting and spluttering and we proceeded on our way, but goodness me, was it freezing. Johnny and I were okay because we’d dressed for the occasion, but the general and his aide had only pongo step-outs on and they were freezing!

‘Put the heater on!’ came the order from behind.

Now, anyone who flew Alos at 17 Squadron will know that the heater controls in the cockpits of our choppers were not connected to the hot-air bleed on the engines, as they were in Bloemfontein, for instance, as this adversely affected the total power output of the engines (or so I was told). It was no use switching them to the ‘on’ position as they simply wouldn’t feed hot air into a freezing-cold passenger cabin.