ebooks Egalitarian Revolution in the Savanna: The Origins of a West African Political System (Approaches to Anthropological Archaeology) by Stephen A. Dueppen in History

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The militarily acclaimed Fireforce concept Fireforce as a military concept dates from 1974 when the Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF) acquired the French MG151 20mm cannon from the Portuguese. Coupled with this; the traditional counter-insurgency tactics (against Mugabe’s ZANLA and Nkomo’s ZIPRA) of follow-ups; tracking and ambushing simply weren’t producing satisfactory results. Visionary RhAF and Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) officers thus expanded on the idea of a ‘vertical envelopment’ of the enemy (first practised by SAS paratroopers in Mozambique in 1973); with the 20mm cannon being the principle weapon of attack; mounted in an Alouette III K-Car (‘Killer car’); flown by the air force commander; with the army commander on board directing his ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette III troop-carrying gunships and latterly Bell ‘Hueys’ in 1979) and parachuted from C-47 Dakotas. In support would be a propeller-driven ground-attack aircraft armed with front guns; pods of napalm; white phosphorus rockets and a variety of Rhodesian-designed bombs; on call would be Canberra bombers; Hawker Hunter and Vampire jets. Richard Wood; BA (Hons) (Rhodes); PhD (Edinburgh); FRHistS was born in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He was educated at St George’s College; Rhodes University in Grahamstown; South Africa; and Edinburgh University; Scotland. He was a Commonwealth scholar and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Research Fellow at the University of Rhodesia and a Professor of History at the University of Durban-Westville. He is undoubtedly the foremost historian and researcher on the history of Rhodesia in the decades following World War II and; with exclusive access to the hitherto closed papers of Ian Smith; has written three definitive publications: The Welensky Papers; So Far and No Further! and A Matter of Weeks Rather than Months. He is a renowned military historian; having served as a territorial soldier in the Rhodesia Regiment; and the Mapping Research Unit of the Rhodesian Intelligence Corps. He has published The War Diaries of André Dennison (1989); numerous articles; conference papers and chapters in books. He has a lifelong interest in matters military; rugby and fly-fishing. He lives in Durban; South Africa with his wife Carole.