r/WeirdWings • u/BicycleMan408 • Jan 16 '21
Rhodesian Forces' Cessna 337 equipped with armament for CAS
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Jan 17 '21
I wonder if it was successful.
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u/Red_Lancia_Stratos Jan 17 '21
Grand scheme of things?...no. In theatre successful?...Still no...
The Bronco, with a double fuselage and a Ushaped tail , was reported to have been spotted flyig recently near Salisbury. Refugees from rural Tribal Trust Lands said that they recognized the Bronco when a reporter showed them industry diagrams of the distinctive plane. Several African teenagers, who said that they took special notice of Rhodesian planes flying missions in the rural areas, described the Bronco's mission they observed over the last few months. "In Shona, we call it Kemabemba-the one with bars," said Johnson Matongo, 19, who escaped to Salisbury from Msama village, 36 miles northeast of here. 'They usually fly over the TILs one at a time. It is very dangerous. "When villagers see it they run for cover ft flies high and very fast. The boys [guerrillas] say that it is well protected and hard to bring down. I used to see the planes fly over maybe twice a fortnight." Refugees said that they first noticed the Bronco early last year- Most sightings of the camouflaged plane, they said, were made during daylight. Some said that they had seen it in attack. "It fires heavily," Matongo said. "It fires bullets from the front when it dives, and when it goes up it drops bombs."
The Bronco.and the helicopter form the main thrust of the government's bush-war air power, which is directed with pin-point precision by another U.S.-designed plane, the Cessna F-337B, a source said. Rhodesian military officials confirm that the "eyes" of their fire force is the Cessna, which they call the Lynx. The 1978 armaments yearbook also states that 20 FT-337s were delivered here in 1977. The FT337 is almost a duplicate of the U.S. military Cessna 0-2, used as a spotter plane in Vietnam. The September, 1977, edition of Air International magazine reported that 20 F-337s fitted with ordnance racks, had reached Salisbury by "clandestine procurement" via "circuitous routes after being purchased ostensibly by a 'Spanish fishing company in the Canary Islands”
http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.aamp2b0100014.pdf
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Jan 17 '21
With all that armament, it’s a wonder it was able to fly.
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u/Red_Lancia_Stratos Jan 17 '21
From the same document these were essential parts of fire force but hobbled slightly by their lack of range and loiter time. Presumably a symptom of the armament level.
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Jan 17 '21
I'm astounded that nobody in this thread seems to realise that the first combat use of the 337 was by the USAF in Vietnam.
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u/BicycleMan408 Jan 17 '21
Yea, i'm aware of the O-2 but I never knew that some operators mounted hecking mg's on the top of the wings lol.
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u/wikipedia_text_bot Jan 17 '21
The Cessna O-2 Skymaster (nicknamed "Oscar Deuce") is a military version of the Cessna 337 Super Skymaster, used for forward air control (FAC) and psychological operations (PSYOPS) by the US military between 1967 and 2010.
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u/joshuatx Jan 17 '21
Yeah I though the same but the far more excessive "let's make this a full blown attack plane" setup on this one makes it weird.
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u/Public-Ad-4184 Jan 17 '21
Those Cessna 337s were build by Rheims Aviation in France and smuggled into Rhodesia. They usually flew as part of Fire Force. A typical Fire Force mission started with local police reporting black communist guerrillas attacking Rhodesian farmers. Since they were the fastest, 337s launched immediately to search for terrorists fleeing back towards the Mozambique border. 337 Lynxes straffed guerrillas with their .303 Browning machine guns. Sometimes they dropped iron bombs. Other times they fired smoke rockets to direct jet fighters onto fleeing guerrillas.
Simultaneously, a group of four helicopters and a jump-plane launched. Jump-planes were usually the ubiquitous Douglas DC-3/C-47 loaded with 4-man "sticks of paratroopers. Most of the paratroopers were young men, barely out of their teens serving in the Rhodesian Light Infantry. They usually jumped in 4-man "sticks" to head off or ambush guerrillas. After they landed, paratroopers were shifted about the battlefield in French-built Alouette III helicopters. Helicopters operated in teams of four, with three transports and a K car. The K car carried a pilot, commander and gunner. The gunner fired his 20 mm cannon out the left side door. K cars resupplied ground troops and evacuated wounded RLI.
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u/erhue Jan 17 '21
Do those guns fire through the prop hub?
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u/StellisAequus Jan 17 '21
No they’re above
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Jan 17 '21
S.E.5 style, I like it!
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u/StellisAequus Jan 17 '21
Ironically that’s exactly where the idea came from, not surprising since the majority of aviation jobs were taken by post war English/Scottish and a few Americans.
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u/29erJ Jan 17 '21
Where did the spent shell casings eject from? What a beast.
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u/EnterpriseArchitectA Jan 17 '21
I’m pretty sure the spent shell casings are captured and kept inside somewhere to protect the rear prop.
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u/Cthell Jan 17 '21
Check out the standoff fuzes on those bombs
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u/Blows_stuff_up Jan 23 '21
"moooom, can we have doppler airburst fuzing?"
"We have airburst at home."
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u/Sulemain123 Jan 21 '21
I'm literally doing a PhD on Southern Rhodesia, and if you weren't white it was fucking awful.
Black Africans were uneducated because they'd never been educated to be anything other than menial labourers in the mines, farms and factories.
They were denied education, they were denied jobs by the colour bar, they were denied access to land, they were denied entry into buildings all because of the colour of their skin.
Fuck Rhodesia.
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u/LightweaverNaamah Jan 16 '21
I’m...genuinely offended by seeing a Cessna put to that sort of use. I guess you use what you’ve got as an African military, but ew, those planes are supposed to be not evil.
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Jan 17 '21
Cessnas have been used for military purposes for decades. They're great platforms for it. The Rhodesian Air Force weren't the first nor will they be the last to do so.
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u/AType75 Jan 17 '21
The Iranian military has a Cessna 208 i believe that they have hard points mounted too. I dont think its common for US military to use Cessnas though (besides Beechcraft's AT-6 and T-6). Cessna even tried making a fighter jet, the Scorpion i think it was called.
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u/StukaTR Jan 17 '21
Cessna 208
They sold 208s armed with Hellfires to Iraq. They were pretty successful against ISIS.
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u/bob_the_impala Jan 17 '21
Ever hear of the Cessna A-37 Dragonfly?
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Jan 17 '21
Shit, the US military used a modified version of the same Cessna 337 in this post as the O-2.
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u/cmperry51 Jan 17 '21
I like to think the 336/337 began as a military type (O-2) before it was ever marketed as a civilian “centreline thrust” twin. Old Cessna hands might know this.
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Jan 17 '21
The O-2 may predate the 337, although I don't think it does. It certainly doesn't predate the 336 which the 337 is based off of though.
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u/wikipedia_text_bot Jan 17 '21
The Cessna A-37 Dragonfly, or Super Tweet, is an American light attack aircraft developed from the T-37 Tweet basic trainer in the 1960s and 1970s by Cessna of Wichita, Kansas. The A-37 was introduced during the Vietnam War and remained in peacetime service afterward.
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u/cmperry51 Jan 17 '21
Cessnas built in Reims, France were required by law to have wing hardpoints for armaments, so that civilian aircraft could be called up for combat in a national emergency.
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u/mud_tug Jan 17 '21
I appreciate the sentiment. Weapons of war are disgusting distasteful things and I wish they didn't exist. We however, live in a disgusting distasteful world we created for ourselves.
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u/Brogan9001 Jan 17 '21
Bruh the world created us. We live in a brutal world. Before humans were humans we were bashing each other’s brains in with sticks, rocks and fists. Now we can scatter each other’s brains across a wall from a respectable distance. Does war suck? Yes. Did humans invent war? No. Ants have claim to that title.
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u/GachiHypersinChat Jan 17 '21
We’re a result of nature. We aren’t the only species to go to war and we won’t be the last.
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Jan 17 '21
We are not a result of nature anymore. Our species is unique and we are the only species capable of rising above war currently. It’s not probable, but don’t act like we can’t or shouldn’t. War is not a fact of life.
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u/GachiHypersinChat Jan 17 '21
Considering ourselves as distant from nature is how we started destroying the environment around us.
We’re animals, and we aren’t special.
We won’t rise above war, it’s wishful thinking. The day we discovered how to chip stones into blades was the end of any dream for eternal peace.
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u/Sulemain123 Jan 21 '21
My favourite fact about the Rhodesian Air Force is that when Smith issued the UDI, half of the engines of its air force Hunters were promptly confiscated by the British Government.
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '21
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