the consternation of Hills, the Chief of the South African Army, Lieutenant-General Constand Viljoen. The MAOT set up their radios and navigational beacons at the HAA, by now code-named Whisky-Three, and signalled the all-clear for the rest of the force, consisting of the rest of the Hawk Group protection element (31 paratroopers), six medical personnel, two more members of the MAOT and eighty-six 200-litre drums of helicopter fuel, all on board a fleet of five Super Frelon and ten Puma helicopters. The HAA was then completed, and the 17 helicopters refuelled and waited for the call to extract the paratroopers after the completion of the attack. Also at around 07h00 the solitary Cessna C-185 took off and began flying towards Cassinga. Its role in the operation was to be an airborne observation post, giving the all-clear for the paratrooper drop, as well as being a radio-relay aircraft (known as "Telstar duty" in the SAAF). It would later be forced to withdraw due to sustained anti-aircraft fire. At around 07h50 two Mirage III fighter aircraft took off, heading straight for Cassinga. Bombing runs The defence-suppression bombing attack by the Canberras was two minutes late, occurring at 08h02 instead of 08h00 as originally planned, because the lead navigator failing to maintain effective timing-adjustment during the low-level approach phase. This made no difference to the intended effect. As the bombing had been timed to coincide with SWAPO's daily roll call on the parade ground, most of the people in the camp were assembled in the open when the Canberras initiated their low-level fragmentation bomb attack from the north. Each of the four Canberras – flying in loose 'line abreast' at and 300 knots – dropped 300 Rhodesian-designed "Alpha" fragmentation bombs, which were small finless bombs like '10-Pin Bowling' balls, designed to bounce up to into the air before detonating. A zone of some 800 metres by 500 metres was carpeted, each aircraft having its own 'bomb line'. The weapons were devastatingly effective against the assembled groupings below, causing most of SWAPO's casualties on the day, and also destroying vehicles, POL ("Petroleum Oil Lubricants", military acronym for flammable liquids) storage tanks and soft buildings. Immediately after the Canberras came the Buccaneers, from the west, who flew their dive-bombing runs along a generally east–west axis. Photography from the cockpit of one of the aircraft showed the graphic lines of the preceding "Alpha" bomb strikes, was