Pilot Story I
by
Sqn Ldr Norman Rose
All day on April 11th, 1965 there was a flurry of secretive activity at the RMAF Base at Kuala Lumpur. We knew something was up but what? We were told to attend a briefing in the Operations Room at 1800 hrs. There we heard that RMAF was mounting a leaflet-dropping strike against the Indonesians -- Herald were to fly to the distant targets while Twin Pioneers to the nearest ones. It was a clear, moonlit night, ideal for the operation so that we could sneak out to our targets on the ground.
I was briefed to drop my leaflets at a known terrorist insurgent training camp at Berakit on the north east coast of Pulau Bintan, east of Singapore. I was to fly with Flying Officer Brian Love (who was later the First Officer on the British Airways 737 that caught fire at Manchester airport killing 76 or 70 people) and my AQM was my favourite Sgt. Syed Mustapha (retired as a Major). We had flown many times together and I felt happy to know he would be in charge of the Army despatches down the back.
Intelligence reports stated that there were two or three thousand insurgents at Berakit and it was also where they set out from to raid mainland Malaya.
We took off from Kuala Lumpur (Sempang) at 1 a.m. on April 12, 1965 and flew airways to Singapore just as if we were on a normal route flight. We had filed a Flight Plan to Changi and made normal radio calls. On the way down Syed showed me his great piles of leaflets ready in the fuselage stacked near the rear freight door.
We came off "Singapore Airways" and called Changi "Approach" and commenced an ILS approach. We changed to Changi "Tower" but when we were about to touch down we opened the throttles and climbed ahead. As we did so we blacked everything out, extinguished our Navigation light, flashing red beacon and all internal fuselage lights. We pretended over the radio that we were taxying in at Changi and called out "Shutting down-good night". Changi ATC went along with this as they were in the know. We did this in case aircraft radio transmissions were being monitored by the Indonesians.
With the Herald in complete darkness and radio silence we set off at low level-about 250 feet -- straight to Horsburgh Light. We hoped we would be below any Indonesian radar at that height. At the Horsburgh Light we skirted 200 yards south of it and descended to about 100 feet above the water. This was a bit 'scary' because it is difficult to judge height accurately at night over water even in moonlit condition.
We set course for Berakit peninsular. Syed went off to organise the opening of the rear door and pre pare for the drop. We all donned our 'Mae-West'. We did not have parachutes. Brian Love and I peered out looking for the coast line and the flashing marine light we had hoped might be operating on the outline of the coast and adjusted our course to take us towards the headland. I warned Syed down the back to prepare to drop-we were using the red and green warning lights normally used for supply dropping. As we crossed the coast as low as we could get, Brian switched on the green light. We had been warned at the briefing of the presence of anti-aircraft gun but because of our very low altitude and the surprise factor no gun opened up.
We flashed down the eastern coastline of the Berakit peninsular about 500 yards out to sea. Our target should have been about 5 miles ahead just in from the coast. Even at this hour of the morning there was the odd light about but nothing to give us much of a clue about the location of the target. When we reached about 2 miles from where we thought the target was, (nothing much could be identified in the jungle background even though it was quite brightly lit by the moon), I pulled up to 500-600 feet and slowed right down to "dropping speed". Syed had the door open and his despatchers were all ready with the leaflet bundles watching for the "green on" to replace the red one. I flew now at about 80 knots straight and level peering down to try to identify our drop zone. Brian had been timing on a stop watch on the run in as we crossed the coast and he yelled, "now" and depressed the "green-on" switch. At the same time I called Syed on the Intercom saying "Ok, let them go". Syed and the despatchers started throwing the bundles out and quite a few fluttered back into fuselage. After about two minutes I yelled "stop" to Syed and Brian switched off the "green-on" light.
I banked away towards the coast accelerating out to sea. As we turned, Brian said over the Intercom that he could now see the target and that we had been slightly off it. We hoped the slight wind would drift some of the leaflets over that way. I asked Syed how many he had dropped. "About half," he replied. I told Brian to keep his eye on the target and I turned sharply over the sea and ran back in preparing to drop again. This time we couldn't miss, so again, I slowed down to 80 knots, warned Syed, "red-on" then "green-on" and away went the rest of the leaflets. Syed called "All gone, Captain!" and I told him to shut the door. I opened up full power power and dived the Herald towards the coast line. So far no one had fired at us as far as we knew though it was possible that small arms fire could have been aimed at us but we couldn't have seen or heard anyway.
Then, just as we passed a beam of the Berakit Peninsular heading for Horsburgh Light, coloured balls of light arched up from the coast passing below, above and behind. I knew what it was as I had seen it before during World War II. I knew I had to get down as low as possible as quickly as possible. I dived hard for the surface of the sea and turned our tail on the source of the coloured tracer shell -- one or two still shot past us or a little to the side and quite a few above us. I weaved and banked as much as possible and hugged the surface of the sea as best I could in the vague moonlit-reflection and headed at full power for Horsburgh Light. I suppose we were being fired at for about 2 minutes but it seemed an eternity. Syed and Brian were fascinated by those coloured balls which seemed to start out so lazily and then zip past the aircraft. Luckily we were not hit.
We stayed right on the surface until we were in sight of the friendly lights of Pengerang on the South Johore coast and Singapore. About 10 miles from Changi we climbed up, switched on our navigation lights, our beacon light and the aircraft internal lights and called Changi ATC for a normal circuit and landing there. Syed cleared up some of the mess of leaflets and gave me one which till this day, I have treasured in my album here at my home in England.
I hope that, at least, some of our leaflets landed on target. It would be nice to think they did and maybe had some psychological effect on those who were intent on doing harm to Malaysia. Herald FM-1027 came through completely unscathed.
