This story started in June of 1975 during the Rhodesian Bush War, but had a most unusual twist almost forty-two years later.
One of a number of Alouette III helicopters that were sent to Rhodesia by South Africa at that time was deployed to the scene of a landmine attack in a tribal trust land in the Binga operational area. Two local headmen had sustained injuries and needed to be evacuated to a hospital in Kah-ree-bah.
After picking up the injured men, the helicopter developed engine trouble over Mlibizi, so the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing. The pilot and his co-pilot identified what appeared to be a suitable spot on the edge of Kah-ree-bah Dam on which to execute the landing. The pilot deftly manoeuvred the Alouette onto the ground only to discover, when it was too late, that they had touched down on an expanse of thick weed that grows along the shores of the lake. Very slowly, the helicopter started to sink while the crew helped the injured to dry land and took cover awaiting support (which located them the following morning). The headmen were taken to hospital where they underwent treatment and ultimately recuperated.
Aircraft, like most military equipment, were in short supply during the war and there was no way that the damaged Alouette was to be lost, so an instruction to recover this one was duly issued, and members of the British South African Police sub-aqua team were dispatched to fish the aircraft out of the water.
The helicopter was put on a recovery truck to be transported back to Binga. But en route to Binga, the truck hit a landmine and both the truck and helicopter were badly damaged, although the soldiers escaped with minor injuries.
Eventually the Alouette was sent back to Armscor in Pretoria where it underwent refurbishment before being returned to the Rhodesian Airforce to continue its war service. It was later during the war that the same helicopter saw action in eastern Rhodesia. In early 1978, while flying the same helicopter, an air force technician and co-pilot Henry Jarvie were killed while involved in a firefight with insurgents.
Following this incident the helicopter was christened ‘Henry’ and the name was painted on the craft just below the front cockpit windshield.
After the war the helicopter was sold off to a mining company in Mozambique and was painted white. However, the nameplate ‘Henry’ was retained throughout its working life.
Lance Chief Inspector Barry Woan was a longtime friend and colleague of mine, and in retirement he lived two kilometres from me in Ramsgate on the Kwah-zoo-loo Nah-tahl South Coast. For some years prior to 2017 he and a team of his comrades had been putting The Black Boots: the history of the BSA Police Support Unit book together. Barry had told me the story of Henry around a campfire one evening.
It was in 2017 that another very good friend of mine, a former South African policeman and a passionate pilot and collector of interesting aircraft, Wayne du Plessis, who was also living nearby, invited me to meet him at his hangar at Margate Airport where he kept two helicopters and two fixed-winged aircraft. Wayne pulled open the hangar doors and to my amazement, standing in front of me was a refurbished, maroon coloured, Alouette III with the name ‘Henry’ blazoned across the front forward beam.
Alouette III helicopters are considered among the safest and most versatile of their kind ever built and rank among highly sought-after collector’s items all over the world. The fact that, of all the places it could have ended up in, ‘Henry’ found its way back to Margate within five kilometres of a number of the men who served in the BSAP and had intimate knowledge of its escapades, was an amazing coincidence.
I called Barry and shortly thereafter Wayne graciously took a group of us retired policemen for a flip in ‘Henry’ down the South Coast and on a trip down memory lane.
Henry’s full story is recounted by Alan Brent, a Special Branch Officer who was based in Wahn-kee at the time, in his contribution to The Black Boots: the history of the BSA Police Support Unit, published in 2019 by the BSA Police Support Unit Association in South Africa.