AT Takawira I Training Base, one vampire fighter jet flown by Haigh Kesby was shot down (Wood 1977: pp.42-3) and it dropped inside the Takawira I Military Training Base.
The Rhodesians attempted to bomb and destroy the evidence, but the Canberra missed the target by more than 50 metres on the large drill ground and the vampire wreckage remained.
The 4 K-Cars which were supposed to quickly close in on the training base were quickly dispersed by heavy anti-aircraft fire.
The main ZANLA escape route was south-east and was cordoned by stop groups 1, 2, RLI paratroopers and by SAS paratroopers in stop groups 3 and 4.
At 8am, 15 minutes after the battle had started, a large group of ZANLA comrades had tried to escape through the south of Percy Ntini and HQ bases, but were caught in a well-set ambush. (Wood 1977: p.40)
Their mass graves still exist at that spot south of HQ Base close to the road to Chimoio Town.
At around 8:11am, 26 minutes after the battle started, about 280 comrades, mainly women and children were also caught up in a well-laid ambush south-east of Chitepo College or Commissariat. (Wood 1977: p.41)
Their mass gravesite was wrongly labelled by those exhuming bodies to the present shrine as ‘Parirenyatwa Base’.
Throughout the morning, the hunters continued to assault anti-air positions with 68mm rockets and 30mm cannons as well as other targets with 1 000 lb bombs and frantan (napalm) bombs.
The lynx continued to pound base targets and depressions with 500lb frantan bombs.
Because all the K-Cars had been hit, an orbiting Canberra was directed to drop its alpha bombs at the Commissariat or Chitepo College, and at the Parirenyatwa, Chaminuka and Nehanda bases before the Rhodesian ground forces swept these bases. (Wood 1977: p.43)
At Parirenyatwa Base, a big number of comrades, including Dr Felix Muchemwa, had taken cover close to the anti-aircraft gun position which was still defiant and firing.
There were too many casualties at the anti-air position, but CASEVAC was impossible.
While Dr Muchemwa was attending to injured comrades in a depression, the anti-air position was totally wiped out by the Canberra alpha bombs.
Meanwhile, the SAS who attacked the Logistics Base had met stiff ZANLA resistance and a corporal Trevor Kershaw had been killed.
In the same fight, another one Frans Nel had been shot between the eyes by a ZANLA woman comrade. (Wood 1977: p.46)
Even though General Peter Walls, in the command Dakota, claimed to Combined Operations that ZANLA anti-air fire had been silenced by 11am, it was only at around mid-day that the last anti-air gunners abandoned their positions and the Rhodesian security forces captured the camp between 12:30pm and 2pm. (Wood 1977: p.46)
And, even then, Canberras with alpha bombs were, on several occasions, recalled to bomb out various hide-outs.
Hunters also spent the whole day, up to 6pm, pounding specific targets as directed by K-Cars. (Cole, 1984: p.183)
War crimes
According to Dr Muchemwa, the tour of post-attack Chimoio was a doctor’s nightmare.
The carnage was worse than Nyadzonia.
The majority, over a thousand, had died on the parade grounds from high velocity shrapnel from the bombs.
The bodies were mangled, with injuries to the head, neck, chest and abdomen resulting in blown out chests and eviscerated bowels.
Ghastly traumatic amputations of limbs were also common among the dead and almost all survivors of the bombing had shrapnel injuries to the limbs.
The effect of napalm bombs was also devastating.
Vatoto/Chindunduma Base
At Chindunduma Base, hundreds of children had been caught by both cluster and napalm bombs while still on morning parade.
Around mid-day, the SAS quickly advanced towards the tented base and children who had survived the morning bombing rushed towards them, crying for help, and almost every one of the children got a pistol bullet between the eyes.
Percy Ntini Base
Most of the amputee comrades at the Percy Ntini Base could not move quickly enough away from the parade ground and had therefore been decimated by the initial cluster and napalm bombing.
Around 8am, some of the disabled survivors ran into an RLI ambush and were all killed. (Wood 1977: p.40)
ZANLA HQ Base
The SAS advancing towards the HQ Base got there very early and, the first inmate they encountered was Mudhara Baya, an elderly member of the ZANLA High Command.
In broken Portuguese, he quickly convinced the SAS that he was a Mozambican who had come into Chimoio Camp for food help.
The SAS believed and left him and aggressively searched the HQ Base, only to find about five comrades who had been cooking breakfast porridge in big drums.
The SAS did not shoot the five comrades but buried them alive, head first, in the drums of boiling porridge.
All of (the) 20 captured ZANLA comrades were executed with their hands tied to the back after the Rhodesian Special Branch had finished interrogating them at the ZANLA HQ Base.
It is worth noting that ZANLA forces never used the HQ Base as an interrogation centre as asserted by Wood (Wood 1977: p.47). Chaminuka Security Base was the interrogation centre.
Parirenyatwa Base Hospital
Hundreds of patients at Parirenyatwa Base Hospital were burnt to death while still inside their barrack-rooms by both ordinary fire and napalm.
During their sweep, the SAS who passed through Parirenyatwa Hospital Base found an ambulance which Dr Muchemwa had intended to use to carry patients to Beira that morning.
The patients were still squashed, hiding inside the ambulance, believing they would be spared since the ambulance was clearly marked with a Red Cross emblem.
All of the patients were shot mercilessly inside the ambulance.
A number of totally naked female comrades who had taken cover underneath the ambulance were also shot dead as they scrambled to get away.
A UNIMOG Ambulance was also blown up with explosives by Captain Willis of the Rhodesian Engineers. (Wood 1977: p.49)
Nehanda Base
The major drama took place at the Nehanda Base where one of the thatched barracks had survived the fire from other barracks. Female comrades, most of them fully dressed, had crowded inside the barrack for cover when the SAS found them.
Some of the SAS were armed with RPK guns (Wood 1977: p.39) but some, especially foreign mercenary SAS (including Captain Mackenzie), were armed with M16 rifles (Harper Ronald p. 122). The SAS literally executed the young girls and women, one by one.
Hundreds of them!
For almost one hour, from around 2pm, their M16 rifles were heard firing non-stop.
The hollowed air-filled war-heads of the 5,5mm M16 rounds yawed and tumbled on impact, so that the entry wounds appeared ghastly and bigger than those caused by ordinary rifle bullets and the exit wounds were worse.
Comrades in the operational zones called them ‘propaganda bullets’ because of the explosive sounds they made on impact with tree leaves.
The mass graves at the Nehanda Base contain the bodies of the young girls and women who were executed by the use of M16 rifles that day. (Martin and Johnson, 1981: p.288)