After the shooting down of the first civilian Viscount passenger aircraft near Kariba talks broke down between the Rhodesian government and Joshua Nkomo of ZAPU who had laughed and bragged about the atrocity on internationally broadcast TV.

The attack on ZIPRA camps at Westlands Farm, Mkushi and CGT-2 were in retaliation for the downing of the Viscount

The Westlands Farm attack was an air force only affair with the SAS doing Mkushi and the RLI doing CGT-2.

At Westlands Farm the Hawker Hunter jets lead with Golf bombs and Frantan (50 gallon naplam) followed by Green Section (Camberras) with Alpha bombs and followed up by four Alouette III with 20mmm cannon. Later ZAPU itself announced that that attacks cost them 396 killed and 719 were seriously wounded and 192 missing. (missing normally relates to no identifiable body parts found or those who took to the hills deciding that the freedom struggle was not worth the risk)

These attacks are well remembered through the release of the cockpit voice recording made by the pilot of Green Leader - Squadron Learder Chris Dixon of the bombing run itself and his instructions issued to Lusaka (the capital of Zambia) Tower with a message to the Zambian Air Force.

The Green Leader Tape

Notes:
Golf Bombs were a Rhodesia invention and are described as follows:
"The 450kg Golf Bomb employed double steel plating to sandwich thousands of pieces of chopped 10mm steel rod. The double skin and chopped rod driven by the high-volume gas generating explosive, Anfo (Amatol), when added to shredded vegetation proved Golf Bomb to be a truly devastating weapon. A pair of these bombs gave a bush flattening-pattern 90 metres wide by 135 metres in the line of attack with lethal effects extending beyond."

Alpha Bombs were a Rhodesia invention and are described as follows:
A circular shaped anti-personnel (cluster) bomb that, when dropped by the Canberra from level flight, gave a natural dispersion pattern. The bomb would strike the surface activating the fusing mechanism and then bounce into the air to detonate about four metres above ground.
Due to the sphere shape, when released they spread apart both laterally and vertically because air pressure builds up between them and pushes them away from each other. The Alpha is a hallow sphere(155mm external diameter.) pressed out of 3mm plate with two halves welded together. Inside the outer casing is a smaller sphere of 8mm steel. Between the two spheres is packed 240 hard black rubber "bouncing" balls of 15mm diameter. (Similar to those glow in the dark type bouncing balls kids have.) When dropped from low and fast aircraft, they hit the ground at less than 17 degrees from the horizontal. On impact most of the rubber balls compressed against the outer wall, thus creating forward bounce for about 60ft in the direction of the aircraft and rising no higher than 12ft. The inner sphere is similar to a grenade and on impact with the ground the fuze fired a cap with a 7 sec delay. The bomb exploded between 6 - 12 ft above the ground dispersing on average one lethal fragment per square yard with a radius of 15 yards from explosion. The Canberra carried 300 Alpha bombs in groups of 50 inside six hoppers fitted to the bomb bay and was operated electrically. They could be dropped in salvo or in ripples. Delivered at 400ft at 300 knots the effective coverage was 1,100m long x 120m wide.