Zimbabwe Air Force Pilots and Technicians
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After independence the air force, under the command of an air marshal, continued to be staffed largely with white pilots and technicians who had served with the Rhodesian Air Force.
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The task was a difficult one: of a total authorized manned strength of 2,900, less than 900 were pilots and technicians, and -qany of these were trainees. Four hundred others, all of them Pnm-Africans, continued to serve in the volunteer reserve. In 1982 more than thirty fixed-wing combat aircraft and thirty-seven helicopters as well as transport and training aircraft were divided amlong seven operational squadrons. Air units were located primarily at New Sarum Air Station near Harare and at Thornhill near Gweru. They also had access to numerous smaller civilian and military airstrips around the country, including several equipped with hard-surfaced runways.
Most of the veteran white pilots and technicians serving in the air force at independence had been trained primarily by Britain and, after UDI, by South Africa. In the early 1980s a new generation of airmen was receiving most of its instruction in Zimbabwe.
In 1982 five African pilots who had previous flight training from Romania and Cuba had received their wings. The rest of some 100 pilots in the force were white, although roughly half the pilot trainees at that time were blacks.
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