Choppertech: A Helicopter Technician's Account of the Rhodesian Bush War.

Not every hero wears a medal. They flew where the maps ended and the shooting began. Choppertech is the true, firsthand account of the men who kept them in the air, and of the young technician who armed the guns, fought the battles and had the aircraft ready again by first light. Gordon “Beaver” Shaw served as a helicopter technician with 7 and 8 Squadron of the Rhodesian Air Force from 1976 to 1980, during the hardest years of the Rhodesian Bush War. He was far more than a mechanic. In the air he was a K Car and G Car gunner, crouched behind a 20 mm cannon during Fireforce operations that often decided the battle on the ground. Between call outs he rearmed, refuelled and rebuilt, checking every rotor, seal and blade tip because the lives of pilots, crewmen and soldiers depended on his hands. Two jobs, no room for error and no headlines waiting when he came home. This is the Bush War seen from the open door of an Alouette III. The helicopters were everything. The Alouette III was the workhorse of the Rhodesian Air Force, later joined by the Bell 205. Beaver knew them down to the last bolt: the gearboxes, the tail rotors, the fuel lines and the guns. A missed fault meant a lost aircraft and a lost crew. He reveals the real work behind the flying: the long nights beneath a workshop lamp, the repairs improvised in the bush and the impossible deadlines met with ingenuity, determination and sheer will. Beaver takes you into the call outs and the contacts, the adrenaline of a Fireforce assault and the hard silence that followed. He was there for Operation Gatling and the raids on Chimoio and Tembue, for helicopter crashes and burning airfields, for hot extractions across hostile borders into Mozambique and Zambia, and for the shooting down of the Viscount airliners Hunyani and Umniati that stunned a nation. He writes of the friends who never came home, the men who carried wounds no one could see and the black humour that held a squadron together. Drawn from his own flying logbooks, newspaper reports of the day and the recollections of the pilots, gunners and soldiers who served beside him, this abridged and illustrated edition brings together personal memory, historical record and period photographs. It includes a foreword by Major Don Price, BCR, of the Rhodesian Light Infantry. Read Choppertech if you are drawn to: * A genuine, unglamourised memoir of the Rhodesian Air Force and the Alouette III at war. * The Fireforce story told from inside the aircraft by a K Car gunner and helicopter technician. * A rare ground level view of Rhodesian counter insurgency and southern African military history. * Firsthand accounts of Operation Gatling, the raids on Chimoio and Tembue, the Viscount shoot downs and the men of 7 and 8 Squadron. * Aviation and military history for readers of Rhodesian, Bush War and Commonwealth memoirs. This is a book for the veterans who were there and who will know every airstrip and every name. It is for the sons, daughters and grandchildren who want to understand what their fathers lived through. And it is for anyone who has ever wondered what it took to keep men alive in a small, hard pressed air force fighting a war the world had turned its back on. There are many books about the men who flew helicopters into danger. There are very few about the technicians who worked through the night to keep them flying. Choppertech is one of the few, told plainly and without seeking glory by one of the last men who lived it. Rhodesia has long since vanished from the map. The men, the machines and the courage have not. They shall never be forgotten.