Is this marking Rhodesian or Zimbabwian ? While looking for decals I saw a photo of a C-R 337 Lynx with markings for ZAF markings wearing it. Where the yellow warning marking post Rhodesia too?
That looks to me like the Zimbabwe Bird - the national emblem of the Army; this would techncially date the pic to 1980 - ie immediate post Rhodesian Army - but as in all things military, there’s always a lengthy transition period so it could be anywhen post 1980 - which probably doesn’t help much at all!
I cannot envisage the Rhodesians utilising the Zimbabwe Bird as a marking.
'More than happy to be proved wrong, as always.
My leanings too. Running into this issue researching Ukranian Mi-24s. A bunch of photos allegedly from the current unpleasantness are actually from the Donbass cluster, 2014 -2017 ish. (As far as I know they are not using the white tail boom stripes these days. )
I have one photo showing a cobra on the tail but I have no idea of when it was taken or what it represents however there are numerous photos of Cheetah in RhAF service with something indistinct painted on the tail fin. Edit. Added the photo. After checking all the photos I have it appears that the Cobra only appears in some photos they also appear to feature (some nothing more than a smudge) the yellow tail rotor warning while other (earlier?) RhAF photos have no markings at all. All Zimbabwe AF photos feature the Zimbabwe bird and yellow tail warning. None have any external aircraft serial number except applied with white/grey tape for a specific cross border operation and then only a single large number on the nose e.g. ‘2’ and ‘3’
