OP Agila Rhodesia 1979

Quote baconbutty “The Scouts I flew from Gwelo where 626,603,642,628,645,130. Sorry can’t give you the letter designation.”

All prefixed XT, except XV130 & XR603. You must have treated them well bb – XT626 is still flying with the AAC Historic Flight, and XR603 with the RAN Historic Flight on HMAS Albatross!

All I can say is that the Rhodesian Air Force was the best in the World.

XW228 was lost – wire strike and was in the scrap compound at New Sarum which I robbed for radio spares. I worked on the Puma in RAF – not a good helicopter. I will try to get remaining numbers.

Op Agila Scout helicopters.

It’s a long shot I know, but can anyone perhaps list the British aircraft used during OP Agila?

Puma XW204, XW228, XW236, XW237……
Hercules XV304, XV181…..
Scout ??????
Gazelle?????

I would also appreciate any suggested reading material about this OP.

Cheers,
M’Pacha

The Scouts I flew from Gwelo where 626,603,642,628,645,130
Sorry can’t give you the letter designation. I never put that in my log book.
Regards
Mike

Op Agila

Thanks for the post’s guys, I had already done the “Google” bit, but I appreciate your reply’s!

The Puma lost was XW228. Some people still believe that she was shot down, although the evidence points to an accident.

XW228 was a 230 Squadron aircraft – the rest of the detachment were from 33 Squadron. I was at New Sarum when we were informed that the crash was “not due to hostile action” – but speculation obviously existed. When I was working at Thornhill a few years later I had occasion to visit New Sarum and the scrap compound and rob 228 of some radio bits – that is real “cannibalisation”![ATTACH=CONFIG]228917[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the post’s guys, I had already done the “Google” bit, but I appreciate your reply’s!

The Puma lost was XW228. Some people still believe that she was shot down, although the evidence points to an accident.

TonyT your memory is unfortunatley correct about the wire location

http://riv.co.nz/rnza/tales/subritzky5.htm

http://www.newrhodesian.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=269

http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/906F3042-9921-4571-BBCD-E9F1E3F01C3A/0/maas79_03_puma_helicopter_27dec79.pdf

The Puma we lost of which I have included to report above as said hit cables 18ft above the road, what it does not mention is the wires were, if memory serves me correctly found wrapped around the rotor head, the rotor head of the Puma is 15 feet above the ground, so it was travelling at speed about 3ft off the ground, I seem to remember it took a while to recover the engines because they sheared off and dug themselves into the bank.. They were sitting in the back of our hangar for a while at the time of recovery, not a whole lot was left.
There is more background to this and as to what happened, but I will not besmirch their memories by repeating it.

Have a look here

http://ukmamsoba.org/agila.htm

a number of photos here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/16498755@N07/sets/72157629051344335/

Thanks very much Dave!

I may have a note of some of the Gazelles, I’ll have a look later in the week

Bump.