╨╧рб▒с>■  @B■   ?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ье┴s ┐Л$jbjb└ └ %LкkкkЛ       ]ЦЦЦЦЦЦЦююююю · ю/ъьюююююю,Ї ЬЦRЦЦRRR╩ЦЦьк"╠"ЦЦЦЦьRЪRьЦЦь └o╗юю▄vь Chapter XVII - Kenya 1954 Operations Against the Mau Mau Take up the White Man's burdenand reap his old reward: The blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard Ц Rudyard Kipling In March, 1953, the Kenya Government requested air support for its ground forces in operations against the Mau Mau, the Kikuyu terrorist organisation. A state of emergency had been declared six months earlier, in October, 1952. The problems were most difficult: landmarks were few; targets in uncharted jungle areas were not easy to find, and equally difficult to attack; and reconnaissance only served to warn the terrorists of impending attack, encouraging them to disperse. Despite the many problems there were spectacular successes. The force itself was quite small: ten old Harvard trainers, half a dozen Lincoln bombers, two photo-recon Meteors, and a handful of transport and liaison planes. These slender resources, boldly applied, helped to rob the Mau Mau gangs of the initiative, broke up large organised groups into isolated parties of no more than ten or twenty disorganised individuals, and drove them into the arms of the security forces. A determined campaign of area clearance began in August, 1954, with a prolonged bombing and strafing programme in the Aberdares, prior to a sweep of the softened areas by ground force. When the army eventually moved in, it was supplied by air. The success of this campaign was followed by a second clearance operation around Mount Kenya. There, in a night raid on Nyambeni, three Lincolns of 214 Squadron bombed the target so accurately they killed fifteen out of the eighteen hard core Mau Mau terrorists. General Sir George Erskine, OC land forces, visited the Squadron shortly afterwards, giving his congratulations for the night's work, and the aircrew involved were presented to him. The surrender rate increased significantly after this raid. A third area clearance was then mounted in the Mau forest south west of Nairobi. Partly as a result of these and other operations, and the effect on the terrorists, the Kenyan Government declared an amnesty in January, 1955. Here again it was the Air Force which sought out the demoralised terrorist hide-outs with sky shouting equipment, giving the amnesty news in the local language and dropping over a million leaflets. The state of emergency was not ended for another five years, but the police and civilian administration resumed responsibility for the maintenance of law and order. In June, 1954, a 214 Squadron detachment was sent from Upwood, Hunts, to help British ground forces in Kenya. S/Ldr 'Hunk' Bowhill, son of Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill, CBE, KCB, CMG, DSO, commanded the original party consisting of sixteen officers and approximately sixty other ranks, equipped with four Lincoln bombers. An additional two Lincolns were flown out from the UK later. Chief technician Williams, who was in charge of armaments, states: "Although we worked pretty hard (I only had one weekend off during the six months we were there), morale was excellent and when the last two Lincoln crews arrived at Eastleigh, Nairobi, we put on a rag reception in which the whole detachment took part. For operations we usually loaded seven 1000 lb bombs and three 300 lbs to a plane. Eventually the Kenyan Government decided not to buy any more thousand pounders and the load was changed to fourteen 500 lbs." On August 14th, 214 suffered its first casualty of the campaign on a million to one chance that involved F/O Crockford and his crew. Three strikes had been flown without incident in the morning and the crews stood down for the day. They were relaxing in their billets or out on other activities when an urgent signal was received from the Army, requesting an immediate air attack on a large body of Mau Mau terrorists which had been spotted in the Nyeri area. In a quick search of the camp, three crews were located and these were briefed and sent off without delay. Some of the men were still wearing civvies under their overalls as they had had no time to change. The three aircraft involved were RE332, piloted by F/Lt Steve Nunns, RE229 by F/Lt Roy Matthews, and F/O Stan Crockford in SX976. All these machines were on stand-by readiness, fuelled and bombed up, so no delay occurred. On reaching the target area, the cloud base was found to be below 900 feet. F/Lt Nunns bombed first, followed by F/Lt Matthews. Then came F/O Crockford's turn and he, too, bombed from a low altitude. What happened next is not known, but it is believed that the bombs were fused for instantaneous impact and when the first bomb went off it started a string of sympathetic explosions in the following bombs. The chain reaction caused two large pieces of shrapnel to enter SX976. John Groome, the rear gunner, has this to say about the incident: "One piece of shrapnel passed clean through the fuselage and caused no other damage, but the other fragment entered by way of the bomb bay, then up through the cockpit floor, hitting first the engine controls, and then passing through the body of our flight engineer, Lou Pinn, and out through the canopy. With the control levers jammed, the two starboard engines set up a violent vibration, and Stan Crockford, with the help of Jeff Jeffery, nav/radar, succeeded in feathering them. Lou Pinn, meanwhile, was slumped in his seat bleeding profusely and it was with great difficulty that Jeff and our other navigator, Doug Malpas, lifted him from his seat and took him into the nose of the aircraft. "It took us about fifty minutes or so to get back to Eastleigh, and Stan did a marvellous job on two engines. We flew along valleys, skirted around hills, and came into Nairobi for a perfect landing. But during this time Lou's condition had worsened and he died soon after we landed. It was a tragic personal loss, for Lou was a good friend of mine, and he was badly missed as well on the Squadron." John Groome was later seriously injured in a crash and spent 19 months in RAF Ely hospital, finished 25 years service, then emigrated to New Zealand where he now lives. Doug Malpas, was later killed in a flying accident. John Spear, who was a navigator with Sgt Brown's crew, said his most vivid memory of those days was of some of the briefings he attended. He recalls: "We were presented with a photograph of a section of forest on which a small circle, labelled 'nest', indicated a target, but did very little to help accurate bombing. Dropping to low level to shoot up the same trees was quite a novel experience for us Lincoln crews. Not all targetting was so sketchy, though. Some of the photography did provide enough detail to be useful in map reading. In the later stages of the campaign, bombing was carried out under control of a GCI Station. We just released the bombs when they told us to, which was an eerie situation but absolved us of all responsibility. Some members of our unit did in fact accompany army patrols into the jumgle, but as far as I know were never involved in any skirmishing." Eastleigh, Nairobi's civilian airport, also housed Kenya's military aircraft, and at times reports would circulate that the Mau Mau were going to infiltrate. It was during one of these scares that Cpl engineer fitter Roy Monk recalls: "We were told to be on the alert for an expected attack and I happened to be orderly corporal that evening. I had locked the Flight offices and, wearing my webbing and carrying a large bunch of keys, made my way to the guard room some distance away. As I walked I noticed the grass moving at the side of the track close by. I stopped. It stopped. I continued walking. It followed. I was convinced that I was being stalked by terrorists and, when suddenly a figure sprang at me from the undergrowth, I thought my number was up! It turned out to be Simba, a big ridge-backed dog we had made a pet of, and it sure scared the living daylights out of me. There were other adopted strays with the Squadron. One was a bull terrior named Winston and another was a mongrel called Jimmy which hung around the Sergeants' mess." By December, 1954, the detachment had finished its tour in Kenya and returned to Upwood. On December 30th No 214 (FMS) Squadron was disbanded once again. 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