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195really knew what we were there for. Members of the Rhodesian forces were able to resign with 3 months%u2019 notice when Zimbabwe was formed. Many of the Air Force pilots did so and they were desperate to train more. We were there to run a CFS Course made up from several pilots who had elected to stay. They had flown a variety of aircraft including Dakotas and the Cessna O2 Skymaster. We spent the first night in Harari and met Army officers from BMATT Followed the next morning by a meeting with the General in charge of BMATT and the head of the Zimbabwe Air Force. We were then flown to Thornhill in a Skymaster and saw our aircraft for the first time. It was a low wing single piston aircraft with a retractable undercarriage that was electrically powered. It had a performance somewhere between a Bulldog and a Jet Provost but we did live nearly 5000ft up which reduced it a bit and left us a bit out of breath to begin with. The airfield had 2 parallel runways. We used one and the other was used by the Vampires. I think we could be in the circuit together but went round different ways. We had a look around an aircraft and must have been given some notes on it and presumably check lists. We were on 6 Squadron. This had 2 flights. One, which we were on did the instructor training and the other did basic flying training. It had been training a course of 12 students but there were only 2 left. The rest had been chopped.President Mugabe had hoped to form an Air Force from the young black men he had sent to be trained in Russia, but the established white officers were horrified at that. Mugabe thought they could go straight on to the Hunter but there were real problems. During the civil war, young men were told they could go to university if they had several %u201cO%u201d levels and went to Zaire. The young black chaps were very keen to be educated and so this looked a very good idea. However, once they arrived in Zaire, they were told they had to be trained as pilots first and were sent to Russia for this training. They said it was very cold and they did not like it, but they were taught the very basic rudiments of piloting.