On 4 January 1964, Federal and British forces launched Operation Nutcracker into the Radfan, a mountainous district north of Aden where dissident tribesmen had spent months attacking government positions and threatening the road to Dhala. The operation was a limited demonstration in force: three battalions of the Federal Regular Army, supported by British tanks, field artillery and Royal Engineers, pushed into the hills to pressure named dissident leaders, show the government’s reach into Wadi Misrah and open the Wadi Rabwa track towards Wadi Taym.
The Radfan and the Dhala Road
The Radfan lies astride the road linking Aden to Dhala, one of the few routes running north through the Western Aden Protectorate towards the Yemeni border. Tribesmen opposed to the Federal government, formed the previous year to bring the protectorate states under a single administration, had used the high ground overlooking the road to cut traffic and defy government authority. Yemen, across the border, was a source of arms reaching the dissidents, and part of the concern behind Nutcracker was to check that flow of weapons as much as to reopen the road itself. A state of emergency had already been declared in Aden in December 1963 following an escalation in nationalist and tribal unrest, and the disruption of the Dhala road brought the Radfan itself to the centre of the government’s attention.
Aims of the Operation
Brigadier James Lunt, who had commanded the Federal Regular Army since 1961, planned Nutcracker as a limited but forceful sweep east of the Dhala road. The Federal Regular Army itself was the Federation’s own force, recruited from the protectorate states and built up through the early 1960s to give the new Federal government a military arm of its own rather than relying solely on British troops. Nutcracker’s objectives were specific: to press the dissident leadership, demonstrate government reach into Wadi Misrah, and improve the track through Wadi Rabwa so that government forces could reach Wadi Taym. Thumier, on the Dhala road, served as the forward base for the operation, with the wider air effort flown from RAF Khormaksar on the coast.
Air Support from Thumier and Khormaksar
Bristol Belvedere helicopters of No. 26 Squadron flew troops and supplies and positioned 105 mm guns on sites that were inaccessible by vehicle. One Belvedere was damaged by ground fire on the operation’s first day, a reminder of how exposed the helicopters were over open high ground. Four Westland Wessex helicopters of 815 Naval Air Squadron from HMS Centaur reinforced the troop and supply movements alongside the RAF Belvederes.
Hawker Hunter FGA.9s from RAF Khormaksar provided close support to the advancing Federal forces, attacking positions that threatened the movement through the wadis. Sycamore helicopters of the Khormaksar search and rescue flight stood by for casualty evacuation, a role they had performed through earlier Aden operations.
The January Sweep
Ground forces advanced from 4 January, with the Federal Regular Army battalions pushing along the axis the operation had set out to clear while air strikes suppressed opposition on the heights above the tracks. Royal Engineers worked on the Wadi Rabwa route as the ground force secured it. The operation was completed on 15 January, by which point the immediate dissident presence east of the Dhala road had been dispersed and the track towards Wadi Taym had been improved.
A Limited and Temporary Result
Operation Nutcracker achieved what had been set for it within the time allowed, but it did not settle the Radfan. Once the Federal and British force withdrew, the tribesmen it had pushed back returned to their former positions and resumed their attacks on the road. The pressure relieved in January built again over the following months, and by the spring the government faced renewed fighting on largely the same ground it had swept in January.
Into the Wider Radfan Campaign
Renewed fighting brought a much larger British commitment in the spring of 1964. Operations from late April and May involved British Army and Royal Marine forces alongside the Federal Regular Army, with RAF Hunters and helicopters supporting a campaign on a far greater scale than the January sweep.
Operation Nutcracker stands as the opening move in that sequence: a January demonstration that showed what air mobility could achieve over the Radfan’s terrain, and how quickly a force withdrawn from the ground it had cleared could see that ground contested again. The Federal Regular Army, the Belvederes of No. 26 Squadron and the Wessex of 815 Naval Air Squadron between them established the pattern of ground and air cooperation that the RAF and its Fleet Air Arm counterparts would repeat, at far greater scale, later in 1964, as the Radfan campaign moved from a limited January sweep to a sustained British military effort that ran for the rest of the year.