All matters Rhodesian / Rhodesia (merged thread)

[Biggus]

If you haven't already read this, here is a start point:

The Pookie - A History of the World's first successful Landmine Detector Carrier - by Dr J.R.T. Wood

The key was this: "The net result was that ZANLA would stop laying landmines on roads regularly swept by the Pookie and lay them elsewhere in the hope that they would not be found before they could achieve their objective."

That's a thoroughly interesting link.

I'd previously only read Dr Wood's Helicopter Warfare: 1962-1980 article and found it very informative. I found it an excellent bit of further reading after Chris Cocks' Fireforce.

There are a couple of books on vehicle development. Rhodesian contacts were proud of their record and as part of the relationship with South Africa gave the SADF full access, even one example of each vehicle. After 1980 IIRC they were amazed to see how much the SADF had developed the concepts further, usually putting them into service in SW Africa (Namibia now) and annoyed they had not been updated.

I'm not surprised at how amazed the Rhodesians would have been at seeing what the South Africans had accomplished. When you consider how quickly things seemed to progress from looking at Pookie prototypes to developing the Bosvark, the Buffel and then the Casspir, it's an incredible achievement. Then to consider how successful both the Buffel and the Casspir have been over the last three decades or more, it's really quite remarkable. They've been quite long-lived vehicles.