I love this story. As a former smokejumper, I really have a ton of respect for how these operations went down. In today’s conflict, you don’t hear a lot about parachute operations, other than the para-cargo stuff in Afghanistan.
The lowest I ever jumped out was at between 1400 and 1600 ft AGL(Above Ground Level) with the Forest Service. And usually para-cargo was dumped out at the same AGL these guys were jumping out at(around 400 ft). Crazy.
And I imagine that if the altimeter was not precisely set and the pilot was not totally on his game, that these guys could get injured pretty easily. It looks like the bush was some good jump country though, and these guys made it work. –Head Jundi
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Fire Force
The Rhodesian Light Infantry’s most characteristic deployment was the “fire force” reaction operation. This was an operational assault or response composed of, usually, a first wave of 32 soldiers carried to the scene by three helicopters and one DC-3 Dakota (called “Dak”), with a command/gun helicopter and a light attack-aircraft in support. The latter was a Cessna Skymaster, armed with two machine-guns and normally two 30 mm rocket pods and two small napalm-bombs (made in Rhodesia and called “Fran-tan”). The RLI became extremely adept at this type of military operation.