Rhodesian McClellans and the Greys Scouts

[Pat Holscher]

re camo horses in greys scouts sinioa jan 1980

This'll be a stupid question, but from these photos I take it that these horses were not so much camouflaged, as disguised as zebras?

[roy elderkin]

Pat

A very resonable question, to the casual observer they would appear to be Zebra, and that was the object. Camo was designed to break a solid cover, and distort the image, so that it gave no definate profile and blended into its surroundings. A grey horse in the bush would stick out like a sore thumb, but by breaking its profile it blended. Because it is Africa, the markings of a Zebra would not appear out of place, so both objects were achieved, that of camoflauge and concealment.

Roy

[Pat Holscher]

Pat

A very resonable question, to the casual observer they would appear to be Zebra, and that was the object. Camo was designed to break a solid cover, and distort the image, so that it gave no definate profile and blended into its surroundings. A grey horse in the bush would stick out like a sore thumb, but by breaking its profile it blended. Because it is Africa, the markings of a Zebra would not appear out of place, so both objects were achieved, that of camoflauge and concealment.

Roy

Thanks Roy.

This is an interesting approach to a concealment problem in that it not only seeks to conceal the object, and in this case in the same fashion in which nature has chosen to conceal a native species (the zebra), but it also seeks to conceal the object by making it look like something else. That is, if the eye does catch it, the viewer might be fooled into thinking that they're looking at a native wild species.

I'm sort of reminded of the WWI practice of adding false stacks to ships, in an effort to make them look like another type of ship.

[wkambic]

Long ago I learned that the essence of hiding something big is not to make it "disappear" but to make it look like that which it isn't.

In the long ago we operated USS INTREPID (a 45,000 ton ESSEX class carrier) in a box of water 50 miles by 100 miles for almost five days and were not found. We conducted flight ops the whole time. We were opposed by surface, air, and subsurface units. By using a variety of visual, electronic, and acoustic "tricks" we fooled the Orange Force. They even sailed within sight of us one night; I saw their lights on the horizon. They never knew we were there. We got "tagged" when are RAF F-4 with an emergency overflew us on his way back home. He reported us and we were "sunk" several hours later by an air strike. Our survival embarassed the Hell out of a bunch of people, don't you know.

Breaking up lines really helps an item blend in to the background. Particularly if the object doesn't move it can be a bear to see. Emulating the Zebra seems to me to be eminantly logical as natural selection would have "proven" that particular "deception scheme."

I must say, though, it looks really weird!!!!!

[Pat Holscher]

There's so much detail in these threads, it's easy to miss some of it the first time around. Here's an example. Eric discussed this earlier, and noted it, but I think I failed to appreciate that the FALs he mentions here were South African manufactured. I'd thought they were likley Belgian manufactured, and supplied through South Africa, but in retrospect I now realize, I think, that South Africa was manufacturing the metric selective fire FAL.

That's interesting in and of itself, as many nations that had substantial British influence, like Australia and New Zealand, adopted inch patter L1A1s. But here we see South Africa adopting the more common, metric, FAL.

During the Federation of Rhodesia & Nyassaland period (1957-1963), Great Britain supplied the weaponry, including L1A1 SLR, MAG GPMGs, Sterling SMGs, and HP 9mm pistols to regular units (RAR, RLI, SAS), up to Ferret armoured cars. There were even shipments of some hundreds of L1A1 from Australia. Territorials were still armed with .303 rifles.
After UDI, South Africa took over as armament supplier, the British weapons going to Territorial units and BSAP. SA FN FAL is of the metric pattern, can fire full-auto - which the SLR cannot - and have a rifle grenade sight around the front sight. The SA MAGs also differed on details from the British ones. SMGs were SA-made UZIs.
After 1975, the Rhodesians acquired (officially ?) many G3 rifles from the Portuguese who were then leaving Angola and Mocambique.

The Rhodesians kept the heavier 7.62 mm NATO ammo because it was more powerful in a bush environment. As an aside, it was standart practice to camouflage the weapons after 1977.

Many SKSs and AKs were captured from the CTs, either during internal or external ops. After registration by the Special Branch of the BSAP, many if not most were delivered to the Selous Scouts for their pseudo-ops and to the Rhodesian-trained RENAMO anti-communist guerillas in Mocambique (from 1976). Almost all versions from Communist block found their way into the conflict, included East-German, Romanian, &c.

Eric

I forgot to mention the SA-manufactured 9 mm Star pistol, based on the M1911 Colt, which was used alongside the Browning HP.

On the FN FAL, most military versions (at least those based on the original Belgian FAL) have selective fire, excepted the British and Australian L1A1s (I don't know about the Canadian C1). A couple of veterans of the Faulklands War (that is Brits) told me they took Argentinian FALs so they could use them in full-auto and get more fire-power.

Eric

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by Pat Holscher
As a total aside, I ran across a net item claiming that the Germans abandoned the FAL (which they adopted prior to the G3) as they didn't want anything associated with WWII. That certainly strikes me as an odd statement, as the rifle isn't a WWII rifle, and they didn't have any problem with using the MG42 or the P38 after the war.

Pat,

Just a bit of info for you:

Yes the Canadian FNC-1 was semi only but at that time the Canadian forces did not use the MAG. The MAG or C-6 as we call it, only came along when we switched from the FNC-1 to the C-7, which is the Canadian version of the M-16A2(?). Up until then the standard Canadian GPMG was the old Browning 1917 only in 7.62X51 NATO instead of 30Cal.

The section(or squad) weapon was the FNC-2 which was a heavy barreled FNC-1 with selective fire and a folding bi-pod. They used 30rnd mags which were carried in a "Brazier" ammo chest pouch very much like what the Rhodesian Troopies pulled off the Terrs.

As for the German FAL,...the story I read somewhere was that when the Bundeswehr was replacing it's hand me down American weapons, they bought a batch of FALs from FN Belgium, which were designated the G1. They were so impressed that they asked to manufacture them under license in Germany,(as FN did with many other countries). Basically the Belgians told the Germans to get stuffed. So the German gov't made the deal with Heckler and Koch who were building the CETME for the Spanish army in Spain, to come back to Germany to build it for them. The new firearm in 7,62NATO was the G3.

Now,...besides what Subotai has asked, I would like to know something about how the horses were prepared or rather trained up to the point where they were issued or assigned to the individual trooper for joint training as it were![eek] You know, how old were they, how were they chosen, what early handling and training,etc.?.

"ACER ET CELER"

Jack Kunst

As a followup to this it appears that the first German FALs were purchased from FN for the German border police. The Bundesheer, at that time, was equipped with the US M1. Later, at some point in the 50s, the FALs were purchased for the Bundesheer and adopted as the G1. Subsequent to that, the BDR sought to purchase a license from FN to manufacture the rifle in Germany, but bitterness in Belgium about WWII, which hadn't really been over all that long, kept that from occuring. At that point, the BDR contracted with H&K for the manufacture of the G3, which had already come out in Spain as the CETME. It had been designed there by German engineers.

I still don't know what the G2 was.

The G1 pattern of FAL is apparently nearly identical to the Stg 58, the version made by Steyr in Austria. Apparently Belgian bitterness did not extend to Austria.

[Pat Holscher]

Somewhere in this thread Eric mentions the practice of the Rhodesian Army sometimes camouflaging their R1s. That would generally put them years ahead of other armies on that. That's become fairly routine, to some extent, in other armies now.

[Pat Holscher]

Wonderful and greatly interesting information. By contrast it brings to mind the process of horse selection used by a U.S. National Guard Cavalry unit upon being called to border duty in 1916. Apparantly there were more volunteers for duty than there were available horses. Since only troopers with servicable mounts would be accepted for duty, a method was devised by the Squadron's NCOs that they considered objective and fair. A large fenced concrete area was watered down to, "the proper degree of slipperiness", the horses were driven onto the wetted concrete and all the troopers were turned loose to catch an available mount. Medical staff was standing by to attend to, "the many bruises, bloody abrasions and broken bones", of both successful and unsuccessful troopers. Surprisingly no injuries to horses were reported.

I'd like to hear more about this, either in this thread, or a new one. Interesting stuff.

[roy elderkin]

Pat
The first unit of the Rhodesian Army to adopt the camouflageing of weapons was the Rhod SAS, it was later adopted by other Infantry Regt. The Selous Scouts apart from this practice, developed a drum that fited on the side of weapons to catch expended cartriges so as to leave no trace of the weapons or amunition used.

Aside from this was the use of mine proof vehicles, with slopeing armour on the underside of the vehicles, plus we used to fill the tyres with water to obsorb the blast. Having seen modern vehicles in use in current conflics it is suprising to see vehicles without this. The object if I remember is to deflect the blast upward and away from the vehicle. Without any disrespect to the British Army, why do they send a vehicle into conflicts that are basicaly a farners 4x4 and at best what we would call a safari vehicle. Land Rovers of the Rhod Army were not permitted to go beyond a Base camp, as they were considered unsuitable for opps. The war in Rhod has been over for 29 years, and yet in recent years things have been adopted that we were using and developing all those years ago.

Grey's would never send the horses or men in a vehicle which was considered unsuitable, or mine proofed and blast proof. For a third world country we did not do to badley in our thinking and development.

Roy

[Pat Holscher]

Pat
The first unit of the Rhodesian Army to adopt the camouflageing of weapons was the Rhod SAS, it was later adopted by other Infantry Regt. The Selous Scouts apart from this practice, developed a drum that fited on the side of weapons to catch expended cartriges so as to leave no trace of the weapons or amunition used.

Aside from this was the use of mine proof vehicles, with slopeing armour on the underside of the vehicles, plus we used to fill the tyres with water to obsorb the blast. Having seen modern vehicles in use in current conflics it is suprising to see vehicles without this. The object if I remember is to deflect the blast upward and away from the vehicle. Without any disrespect to the British Army, why do they send a vehicle into conflicts that are basicaly a farners 4x4 and at best what we would call a safari vehicle. Land Rovers of the Rhod Army were not permitted to go beyond a Base camp, as they were considered unsuitable for opps. The war in Rhod has been over for 29 years, and yet in recent years things have been adopted that we were using and developing all those years ago.

Grey's would never send the horses or men in a vehicle which was considered unsuitable, or mine proofed and blast proof. For a third world country we did not do to badley in our thinking and development.

Roy

Your comments on vehicles is interesting. There was a lot of discussion in the U.S. press on the lack of armored vehicles during the last two years. As you know, there were not all that many in the U.S. inventory. They've been coming in, and some of them are amazingly similiar to those used in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Israel over the past 40 years.

The vehicle situation is hard to understand. You put it very succinctly. In a lot of ways, the 4x4 vehicles in common use in the US inventory are very little removed from civilian 4x4s. Ironically, the 4x4 itself really came into wide use because of US military use, and the Western Allies using them, during WWII. The U.S. Army used purpose built military 4x4s almost exclusively up until the military adopted the Jeep Goliath to replace the M37 Power Wagon type truck. The Goliath was a terrible vehicle, and never did replace the M37, but the expense of building it and the M37 did cause the Army to go to buying civilian 4x4s more or less of the shelf.

I think the original idea was that they wouldn't be used as combat vehicles, but over time that faded. The Dodge D880 truck came in, which was nothing more than a heavy variant of the commercial Dodge W300. After that, came diesel version of the Chevrolet 1 ton pickup and the Chevrolet Blazer. I always thought that all three of those later vehicles were a bad idea for combat units, as they were simply too light for military vehicles. And the early 80s version of the GM diesel was a terrible engine. Added to that, as civilian body styles change all the time, I always thought that put the military into an odd situation in regards to keeping vehicles in use. I suppose all this made some sense, however, when we had to plan for fighting the Soviets.

Still, it's interesting to note that the US has always been light in armored vehicles. We have tended to disfavor armored cars or armoring on vehicles. The British, by contrast, have tended to have some nice light armored vehicles as a rule. Things have changed over recent decades, but we're no doubt catching up in a major way in the current wars.

As a pure aside, it's also interesting to note the extent to which all the wars the US has fought since 1960 have featured small unit, ground combat, indeed, foot hiking combat, in a major way, with the first Gulf War as an exception.

[roy elderkin]

Pat

Thank you for your interesting comments.

Roy

[Tom Muller]

Originally posted by Pat Holscher
As a total aside, I ran across a net item claiming that the Germans abandoned the FAL (which they adopted prior to the G3) as they didn't want anything associated with WWII. That certainly strikes me as an odd statement, as the rifle isn't a WWII rifle, and they didn't have any problem with using the MG42 or the P38 after the war.

Pat,

Just a bit of info for you:

Yes the Canadian FNC-1 was semi only but at that time the Canadian forces did not use the MAG. The MAG or C-6 as we call it, only came along when we switched from the FNC-1 to the C-7, which is the Canadian version of the M-16A2(?). Up until then the standard Canadian GPMG was the old Browning 1917 only in 7.62X51 NATO instead of 30Cal.

The section(or squad) weapon was the FNC-2 which was a heavy barreled FNC-1 with selective fire and a folding bi-pod. They used 30rnd mags which were carried in a "Brazier" ammo chest pouch very much like what the Rhodesian Troopies pulled off the Terrs.

As for the German FAL,...the story I read somewhere was that when the Bundeswehr was replacing it's hand me down American weapons, they bought a batch of FALs from FN Belgium, which were designated the G1. They were so impressed that they asked to manufacture them under license in Germany,(as FN did with many other countries). Basically the Belgians told the Germans to get stuffed. So the German gov't made the deal with Heckler and Koch who were building the CETME for the Spanish army in Spain, to come back to Germany to build it for them. The new firearm in 7,62NATO was the G3.

Now,...besides what Subotai has asked, I would like to know something about how the horses were prepared or rather trained up to the point where they were issued or assigned to the individual trooper for joint training as it were![eek] You know, how old were they, how were they chosen, what early handling and training,etc.?.

"ACER ET CELER"

Jack Kunst

As a followup to this it appears that the first German FALs were purchased from FN for the German border police. The Bundesheer, at that time, was equipped with the US M1. Later, at some point in the 50s, the FALs were purchased for the Bundesheer and adopted as the G1. Subsequent to that, the BDR sought to purchase a license from FN to manufacture the rifle in Germany, but bitterness in Belgium about WWII, which hadn't really been over all that long, kept that from occuring. At that point, the BDR contracted with H&K for the manufacture of the G3, which had already come out in Spain as the CETME. It had been designed there by German engineers.

I still don't know what the G2 was.

The G1 pattern of FAL is apparently nearly identical to the Stg 58, the version made by Steyr in Austria. Apparently Belgian bitterness did not extend to Austria.

Pat,

as I did never serve in the Bundeswehr I had to do some googeling on the G2 (I did not know it either). It was the Swiss SIG assault rifle model 56. You'll find some info at the bottom of this page:

http://www.bimbel.de/artikel/artikel-12.html

Before being issued with R5's and a few R4's we used R1's, R2's (heavy barrel R1) and Portuguese G3's.

Tom

[Pat Holscher]

Pat,

as I did never serve in the Bundeswehr I had to do some googeling on the G2 (I did not know it either). It was the Swiss SIG assault rifle model 56. You'll find some info at the bottom of this page:

http://www.bimbel.de/artikel/artikel-12.html

Before being issued with R5's and a few R4's we used R1's, R2's (heavy barrel R1) and Portuguese G3's.

Tom

That's a surprise. That'd be the 7.62 NATO version of the Swiss Stg 57. I was unaware that the BDR had ever even considered that rifle. It had a pretty good reputation, but it was a very large weapon.

[Pat Holscher]

Pat

Thank you for your interesting comments.

Roy

I don't know that I had any original thoughts there, but one thing that does strike me is how the NATO countries necessarily had to prepare to fight a large conventional war in Europe, and were so equipped. As it happened, we never fought that one (thankfully), but we did end up fighting in several smaller pitched conventional wars. In some ways, therefore, we sort of ended up in the too much, and not enough situation, as the only instance in which our equipment was really used in the manner intended was in the first Iraq War, and in the conventional phase of the second Iraq war. And I suppose, also during the Korean War. And even during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the U.S. Army still had to be trained and equipped to fight a conventional war in Europe. To add to it a bit, for almost that entire period, the US also had to plan for, and equip for, a renewed Korean War, which has also thankfully never arrived. Fortunately, I suppose, for us, equipping to fight in Korea wasn't greatly different than equipping to fight in Europe. All in all, the military tried to train and equip to fight 2.5 wars, that being one in Europe, one in Korea, and one somewhere else, all at the same time, which made for some rally broad thought on some things.

I do think that made quite a difference, however, in our military thought, even if we didn't always recognize it. It probably really wasn't until the Vietnam War that we considered the problems associated with fighting a big guerrilla war again, and fighting a lower level counter insurgency was something that we probably have gotten most of our experience with in the last six years. Not that there weren't lessons around before that. Our experiences in Somalia gave an early warning as to what some combat in the middle east could be like, for example. It'll be interesting to see how our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan impact our future thinking. One of the surprising oddities of the warfare since 1945 is that infantry has ended up, at least in American wars, retaining a much greater role, in a truly traditional sense, than some would have thought that it would.

[Couvi]

The U.S. Army used purpose built military 4x4s almost exclusively up until the military adopted the Jeep Goliath to replace the M37 Power Wagon type truck. The Goliath was a terrible vehicle, and never did replace the M37, but the expense of building it and the M37 did cause the Army to go to buying civilian 4x4s more or less of the shelf.

Pat,

The infamous M715! The Pontiac overhead-cam engine fired just a well with the switch off as it did with the switch on. One had to put it in fourth gear and dump the clutch to kill it! It, in turn, was replaced with the even more infamous Gama-Goat.

There is an M37 running around Duncan and Lawton that looks new! Someone did a remarkable restoration on it.

[Pat Holscher]

The U.S. Army used purpose built military 4x4s almost exclusively up until the military adopted the Jeep Goliath to replace the M37 Power Wagon type truck. The Goliath was a terrible vehicle, and never did replace the M37, but the expense of building it and the M37 did cause the Army to go to buying civilian 4x4s more or less of the shelf.

Pat,

The infamous M715! The Pontiac overhead-cam engine fired just a well with the switch off as it did with the switch on. One had to put it in fourth gear and dump the clutch to kill it! It, in turn, was replaced with the even more infamous Gama-Goat.

There is an M37 running around Duncan and Lawton that looks new! Someone did a remarkable restoration on it.

I've never met anyone who was familiar with the M175 in military use who liked it. Everyone universally disliked it, and the M37 managed to hang on well after the M175 was gone. At least some NG units were still using M37s into the late 80s, and feared what would happen when they were replaced.

There's one M175 around here in civilian use. I always wonder if the owner retained the original engine. And I think the mountain fire district has one. M37s are still in common use as a rural fire truck here, stationed out in small towns and ranches where volunteers use them for fires. Lots of old 6x6s in that use as well.

In thinking on it, even though heavily armored trucks were in use by at least the South Africans, Rhodesians, and Israelis at least as far back as the 70s, and the British used armored cars in Malaysia, I can't think of a widely used US armored wheeled vehicle in official use after the M8 until the recent 8x8 vehicles, although I know there were a few here and there that saw some use. Perhaps the US preference for tracked armored vehicles precluded their seeing widespread use.

[roy elderkin]

Pat

I think you are refering to the Ferrit Armoured Car used by the British in Malaya, the Rhodesian had a few of these until they converted to the SA Eland 90mm, along with Bren Gun Carriers. The BSAPolice were also using the French Panhard for a number of years, until they could not get the spares.

Roy

[Pat Holscher]

Pat

I think you are refering to the Ferrit Armoured Car used by the British in Malaya, the Rhodesian had a few of these until they converted to the SA Eland 90mm, along with Bren Gun Carriers. The BSAPolice were also using the French Panhard for a number of years, until they could not get the spares.

Roy

The Ferret is what I was thinking about. A fellow here in town used to actually own one.

Armored cars are something that I know little about. I've heard of the Panhard and the Eland, which I guess is a SA made variant of the Panhard, but otherwise, that's about all that I know about them. The US did have an armored car in its inventory that went by the designation of M117, and there's a predecessor to that, I think that sort of remind me of the Panhard, but I don't know whether their really equivalent in class or not.

Much more recently the US has adopted a version of the 6x6 armored car which I think was originally a Daimler product. It's a heavy armored car, which distantly recalls the Mercedes 8x8 armored car of WWII. Canada and Germany also use it. It's interesting to see the extent to which it's now in use by the US, as traditionally the US had not favored armored cars very much. Once the US went to tracked APCs, we stuck pretty much with tracked vehicles for combat vehicles, pressing them into service as armored cars when necessary, heavy for that role though they may be.

Countries that have done a lot of anti insurrection work, however, have used armored cars a great deal more. Israel has used some heavily armored vehicles, as Rhodesia and South Africa did. The US used a few in Vietnam. Israel also kept the old US half track in use seemingly forever. The UK kept armored cars in use for a long time, which might have reflected various colonial commitments, and perhaps even some need for them in Northern Ireland. Now that we're looking at counter insurgency roles, I have to wonder if armored cars might be a thing that has arrived in terms of US use. They have to be a lot cheaper to use than tracked vehicles.

The Rhodesian use of Bren Gun Carriers surprises me. They're so light their utility always catches me off guard.

I suppose another thing that our recent experiences show is that all wars are really local, or at least can be. So we see some surprisingly old equipment back in use in Afghanistan and Iraq, reflective of conditions. One U.S. rifle, for example, which was not manufactured for military use after the early 60s is back in production on a very small scale, as it's proven useful. This would show that paying attention to lessons learned by others, in similar circumstances, ought always to be undertaken.

[Sam Cox]

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol013gt.html

worth a look

[Pat Holscher]

I forgot to mention the SA-manufactured 9 mm Star pistol, based on the M1911 Colt, which was used alongside the Browning HP.

On the FN FAL, most military versions (at least those based on the original Belgian FAL) have selective fire, excepted the British and Australian L1A1s (I don't know about the Canadian C1). A couple of veterans of the Faulklands War (that is Brits) told me they took Argentinian FALs so they could use them in full-auto and get more fire-power.

Eric

Thanks to rental guns at the Rocky Mountain Annual MG Shoot, I've now fired selective fire variants of the FAL and the G3.

I've heard or read again and again that these weapons were uncontrollable on automatic, but having shot both of them now on automatic, I haven't found that to be the case at all. The G3 is really easy to handle on automatic, the FAL is as well, but a little less so. Neither are uncontrollable, as I've so often read. I haven't tried an automatic variant of the M14 yet, but one was there, so maybe I'll try that next year.

Automatic likely was usually a waste of ammunition, as Roy notes, but I can't see where the idea that these weapons were uncontrollable comes from. Shot the way you're supposed to, interrupting your shot ever few rounds, they're not bad to shoot that way at all. They're not a whole lot more lacking in control than a regular smg, although a smg is clearly easier to control. FWIW, however, the G3 seems to me to be more controllable than the M16A1 was on full automatic.