Mike Hoare - Congo Crisis

Congo Crisis

During the Congo Crisis Mike Hoare organized and led two separate mercenary groups:

• 1960–1961. Major Mike Hoare's first mercenary action was in Katanga, a province trying to break away from the newly independent Congo. The unit was called "4 Commando." During this time he married Phyllis Simms, an airline stewardess.

• 1964. Congolese Prime Minister Moïse Tshombe hired "Major" Mike Hoare to lead a military unit called 5 Commando ANC made up of about 300 men most of whom were from South Africa. His second in command was a fellow ex-British Army officer, Commandant Alistair Wicks. The unit's mission was to fight a revolt known as the Simba Rebellion. Later Hoare and his mercenaries worked in concert with Belgian paratroopers, Cuban exile pilots, and CIA-hired mercenaries who attempted to save 1,600 civilians (mostly Europeans and missionaries) in Stanleyville from the Simba rebels in Operation Dragon Rouge. This operation saved many lives. Hoare was later promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in the ANC and 5 Commando expanded into a two-battalion force. Hoare commanded 5 Commando from July 1964 to November 1965.

The epithet "Mad" Mike Hoare comes from broadcasts by Communist East German radio during the fighting in the Congo in the Sixties. They would precede their commentary with "The mad bloodhound, Mike Hoare."

Irish-South African novelist Bree O'Mara (1968–2010) was his niece. She had written an unpublished account of his adventures as a mercenary in the Congo, when she died on Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771.